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Enhancements

• Added the Date Range to dashboard reports.
• Added Publishing List Override to the Edit Reportlet page. This feature prevents a publishing list from overriding the report suite used in the reportlet. 
• Added an improved format for displaying a CSV report. 
• Updated Web Services API with ReportSuite.GetIPAddressExclusions,  ReporSuite.SaveIPAddressExclusions, and ReportSuite.DeleteIPAddressExclusions.
• Added Video Sharing (beta), a report that displays video usage across common Web video sharing sites.
• Changed the layout of Breakdown menus so that they are patterned after the main report menus in SiteCatalyst.
• Improved Back, Forward, and Refresh behavior, letting you step back and forward through incremental report configuration changes.
• Added the ability to tie metrics to products in data sources integration. 

Improvements and Fixes

• In the Scheduled Reports Manager, you can reset reports scheduled via ExcelClient.
• Fixed a JavaScript error regarding the date range on bookmarked data extract reports.
• Improved the reliability of reportlet placement in the dashboard.
• Fixed Total row cut-off in report tables.
• Improved the save reliability of reconfigured reportlets.
• Fixed a bug in the trended view of breakdowns.
• Improved shared calculated metrics across report suites for ExcelClient.
• In Data Extract, we fixed ExcelClient’s report list to match SiteCatalyst’s when building the list.
• Fixed a mixed content warning when downloading a report in IE6.
• Resolved a login issue in the developer portal.
• Fixed an error in the Account Activity report in the Admin Console.
• Trended page report now returns Daily granularity as expected.
• All appropriate classifications now display in the Classifications Manager.
• Improved the tabular version of the Next Video Flow report.
• Fixed the display of Japanese characters in report notes.
• Fixed Overtime reports to display the complete date range in the graph.
• Fixed an Access to Resource error in the Scheduled Reports editor.
• Fixed a persistency issue occurring in Fixed Dates in a dashboard.
• Improved the Company Summary report to use the proper currency.
• Fixed an issue in which calculated metrics were being classified as traffic metrics in the reporting API.
• Fixed error issued when using report suite functions in the admin API.
• Added Romania to Geosegmentation reports.
• Fixed date-enabled classifications not displaying in the Classifications Manager.
• Removed invalid classifications from the Classification Manager.
• Fixed totals for orders in Customer Loyalty reports.
• Fixed an issue in which the SAINT upload was not refreshing.
• Improved filter persistency in bookmarks.

Speak to your account manager to get yours booked ASAP. Places are limited.

• The breakdown menu now separates the available correlation and conversion breakdown options for the current report. Also, the breakdown menus have been visually improved.
• Persistent gradient headers have been added to dashboard reportlets.
• The Comparison field in the Calendar has been improved to no longer auto-fill with a previous timeframe when you manually change the date range of a report.
• The Notes field has been enhanced to provide report-specific information that includes a timestamp and user’s name, and the ability to edit or delete the note.
• The Application Measurement Solutions for Android, Blackberry, and iPhone are new.

Improvements and Fixes

• Corrections in the x-axis of charts.
• Corrected a security warning pop-up appearing in IE6.
• Improved the visits metrics in T&T reports.
• Fixed a fatal error issued in rollup reports.
• Fixed a data retrieval error in the Path Length report.
• Improved mobile breakdowns for dashboards.
• Improved the breakdown
• Improved the Data Extract wizard navigation.
• Improved display of international number formats.
• Improved international text support in the Admin Console.
• Improved localization display in charts.
• Improved support for video subrelations.
• Fixed date display in the Return Visits report.
• Improved how report titles are displayed.
• Improved the stacked vertical bar display in Page reports.
• Fixed ability to save a custom report for a mobile breakdown.
• Fixed date display in reportlet graphs.
• Improved trended views in Mobile > Devices report.
• Fixed the name length limits in reportlets to match how they display.
• Improved multilanguage support in the Search field.

I use sitecatalyst on a regular basis and what frustrates me the most is just how much of a handicapped tool it is for real world analytics. Sitecatalyst gives the impression that it will be useful but then disapoints so easily. A Omniture staff member once told me that the Omniture consultancy team do not use Sitecatalyst, they have access to and pretty much exclusivley use the very expensive Discover tool. It also appears that Omniture use Sitecatalyst as an upsell platform for their Discover tool. So I thought I would share with you some of the common problems we encounter in Sitecatalyst. Some of these points are feature requests, interface changes and bugs but they all have one thing in common the ability to infuriate the user. 

1) Sitecatalyst cannot display any segment data what so ever! Take a look at Google analytics and I can define and show up to 4 segments on a standard report it takes me 10 seconds to set this up. Sitecatalyst has datawarehouse feature which is itself a chargable addition to the standard package. Now datawarehouse allows you to build a segment then wait a few hours for an excel sheet to come back with some data. Then if I want to see the same data for a different segment I can repeat the process. There’s no way for me to compare this data in Sitecatalyst this is all done externally by pull this data together by hand. 

2) Excel client can’t deal with Segments so I can’t automate pulling multiple segments together in an excel sheet in point 1. 

3) The boardroom ready reports are not ready for the boardroom. Try building a big dashboard and downloading a PDF version of that file. The formatting will be slightly strange but also some headers will overlap and become un-readable.

4) At least in version 14 where an evar has a none value and is associated with a product there is no way to remove the none value and have the totals in the product adjust accordingly. We can do a filter does not contain none but the numbers don’t change. It may be a bug but its been there for 4 point releases of version 14 now. 

5) Publishing lists are useless, on release of version 14 a big deal was made around this functionality which should allow you to distribute the same master dashboard for different report suites with out having to re-build the dashboard. It does not work and has not been fixed in 4 point releases of version 14.

6) Why do I have to create a default metric for bounce rate and other common metrics? Why can’t we put this metric against useful items such as search keywords, referrer types etc etc

7) Why can’t I trend on useful items such as referrer types! Can do this in excel client but why should I?

Percentage change alerting is almost useful but when dealing with percentage changes across a large amount of values I get some text in a e-mail in no sort order either by the value or the percentage change. There’s no option for an csv file just this plain text e-mail which is not useful.

9) Monthly forecast has gone in version 14

10) Contextual performance against last month and year is only available on some report types and some graphs

11) We can do stacked graphs but no 100% stacked graphs (these are very useful when reporting to clients and you want to provide comparitive performance without providing numbers).

12) The only way to report on google news performance is to look at all referrer url’s and then do a filter for news.google why? referrer is an exceptionally long report to run.

13) Why does the excel client time out when pulling larger and more usful data set. E.g I can’t event pull in top 50 search terms month on month in excel with out time outs. 

14) Having multiple data blocks on an excel worksheet causes all data blocks to fail. 

15) Why do I need to set-up a plug-in to establish if a visitor is new or returning. 

16) Just when you need it Sitecatalyst reports never have a total colum.

17) The video reporting integration may not upload a persons viewing information until they visit the site for a second time. What happens if they dont no data for that video play.

They fix and improve a load of things in the process… bye bye whitespace in your dashboards Publishing Lists still useless :( 

SiteCatalyst 14.3 provides the following enhancements and improvements:

Integration with Test&Target

• Optimize site performance by analyzing your Test&Target campaigns in SiteCatalyst.
• Compare different tested experiences using SiteCatalyst success events.
• Leverage SiteCatalyst traffic variables in Test&Target for targeting, profiling, steps, and conversion.

Integration with Omniture Survey

• Survey v1.5 combines the power of Web site analytical data with survey responses to help drive marketing and remarketing strategies.

Limited Administration Permissions

• You can grant non-admin users specific administrative rights, such as editing classifications or naming variables.

Reporting API Enhancements

• Access video and mobile reports via the Web Services API.

Redirect Tracking

• Redirect tracking for mobile link and podcast tracking.

Improvements and Fixes

• Improved dashboard look, feel, and functionality.
• Enhanced readability in charts.
• Enhanced correlation/subrelation functionality for mobile and video reports.
• Added video report functionality: Hourly granularity for Video Views reports, and report smoothing on Video Segments Viewed reports.
• Added a new and improved Advanced Scheduler for scheduled reports.
• Added the ability to rerun failed scheduled reports.
• Improved calendar functionality for comparing date ranges.
• Improved rendering for Excel downloadable/scheduled reports.
• Fixed advanced filter persistence.
• Improved data extract functionality for the Natural Keywords report.
• Improved the adding calculated metrics experience.
• Improved downloading for Pathfinder reports in Excel format.
• Improved localization in Bubble charts.
• Improved Video report granularity.
• Improved the CSV report download.
• Improved creating public bookmarks.
• Improved the Referring Domains and Referrer Types reports.
• Improved the Mobile 5×5 breakdown report.
• Improved handling of half-width Japanese characters for property and eVar values.
• Improved handling of plain text reportlets.
• Improved pagination in the Admin Console log.
• Improved the mobile SiteCatalyst client.
• Improved the localized login page.
• Improved the Schedule Report Manager.
• Improved interoperability in Visual Studio for Web Services API.
• Improved single sign-on.

Maintenance Release 11/13/08

• Fixed refreshing performance of Excel Client spreadsheets that have multiple data blocks and multiple report suites.
• Data extracts can now be bookmarked and retrieved in Excel (version 14.2).
• You can filter the data in Customer Loyalty reports in data extract.
• Fixed daylight savings issues in certain time zones, and for ASI scheduling.
• Improved login issues with reports on mobile devices.
• Fixed calculated metric data display when emailing dashboards.
• Fixed issue with date compare, where date fields were being populated incorrectly.
• Fixed issues when importing classifications for video.
• Fixed submission of email questions in Internet Explorer.
• Fixed error when scheduling a bookmarked report.
• Fixed report filters to filter special characters correctly.
• Changed how the system closes the Report Suite Selector when you click the View Complete List link. The Report Suite Selector now remains open.
• Fixed dashboard and Excel rendering issue for clients with multiple character encodings in the data.
• Fixed ReportBuilder log in issue when logins failed because Temporary Login was enabled.
• New report API method added: Report.GetStatus. See the API documentation for more information.
• Fixed several bugs in the Omniture SOAP WSDL.
• Reports emailed from Discover as an .xls file have the following additions to the email notification:
  • A report name and title
  • The date range of the report data
  • Segmentation information
• In the heading of the .xls report, the following information has been added:
  • The date range of the report data
  • Segmentation information

The holy grail of analytical measurement has to be Visitor Engagement. What is visitor engagement and how can we measure this metric and how can we apply it to our analytical strategy? Web analytics demystified provided a very insightful and complete guide to one approach in how to measure the immeasurable. 

Don’t be put off early on when you read the part which says there are only a few analytics platforms capable of measuring all these metrics. Typically the premium on-demand packages like Omniture Discover. The whitepaper is full of interesting interpretations of standard readily available metrics. It also does an excellent job of listing the pitfalls of these standard metrics and will help any understand the true meaning of these metrics. Let me know what you think.

The popular e-commerce search and merchandising solutions provider Mercado have agreed acquisition terms with Omniture. Mercado are a long standing partner of Omnitures, who were one of the earliest solution providers to directly integrate using the Genesis platform. Its main competitive edge is that it can use third party analytics or in built reporting to continually optimise search on e-commerce sites for the highest revenue/profit returns. 

Omniture recently released Site Search a platform which has the same basic principles as Mercado. When questioned about the status of the Site Search product for existing customers, Omniture responded by saying that there will be no immediate changes for site search customers. However in the future we can expect that Omniture will merge the best features of each into one product. 

Omniture has had a difficult year this year with a buggy new release of SiteCatalyst 14 which is has some significant issues. A unspectacular release of Omniture Survey. And its still falling short on the complete integration of the Omniture Marketing Suite. However it still has some best of breed products and Mercado adds to the list of A class solutions.  Acording to market watchers we can expect Omniture to make a massive investment of capex in 2009 to invest in infrastructure. Lets hope that this is focused on improving and fully integrating the solutions they have now.

So if you have not spotted this then its worth a visit. Omniture’s blogs are very useful for newbies and experienced users. One of the latest post there gives an overview of how to use Omniture Excel Client. This tools great for those who are used to using Excel as the number cruncher. For those users who simply don’t want to log in to SiteCatalyst. 

There are some interesting methods for Excel work group distribution that the author states they will be covering in a later post. This would be interesting as I have so far failed to get the publish list feature working correctly with dashboards. So if you are looking for a build it once, report on many report suites type distribution then this could be the way to go.