1. Presented by:
Andy Parry
Date:
November 6, 2019
Automate
everything!
Extending your Marketing Automation
toolkit with custom actions

2. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
#SitecoreSYM
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Introduction
Activity types
Custom activity types and Sitecore
Building the front end code
Building the back end code
Deploying to Sitecore
Extending with custom predicates and services
Debugging and troubleshooting
Today’s agenda

3. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners. #SitecoreSYM
Introduction
Andy Parry
Sitecore lead at Insight in Perth, Australia
Co-organizer of SUG Perth
@handee_andee
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-parry/
Git https://github.com/parrya/ma-demo

4. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
So what are we covering today?
A technical
walkthrough of how to…
• Build a custom Activity Type to send SMS
- Front-end code
- Back-end code
• Add it to Sitecore
• Deploy it to Marketing Automation
• Try it out!

5. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Introduced in Sitecore 9
• Replaced “Engagement Plans” in Sitecore 8
• Rebuilt from the ground up for v9
• Angular UI
• Super cool
Some background on Marketing Automation

6. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners. #SitecoreSYM
The Marketing Automation engine

7. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.#SitecoreSYM
Activity Types

8. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
“Activity Types” in Sitecore are the building
blocks of Marketing Automation plans.
They act on, or take actions based on, the
xDB contact enrolled in the plan.
Activity Types

9. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Activity Types
These are all Activity Types:
• Marketing actions
• Listeners
• Decision point
• Campaign entry
• Other

10. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Some more terminology
Currently 4 Activity Type
classifications:
• Marketing action
• Listeners
• Decision points
• Other elements

11. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Some more terminology
Activity Type Editor
Parameters

12. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Some more terminology
Activity Type Result
Paths

13. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Some more terminology
Sitecore items
• Activity Descriptors
• Paths
• Parameters

14. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.#SitecoreSYM
Custom
Activity Types

15. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
1. Editor (Marketing Automation UI)
2. Sitecore items
3. .NET code (runs on the engine)
An Activity Type has three parts:
Elements of a custom Activity Type

16. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Custom Activity Type editor
ActivityActivity Editor
Angular components:
• Activity
- Read-only
- Describes the step
• Activity Editor
- Editable component
- Edit the step properties
• Deployed together as a “plugin”

17. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Sitecore Activity Type descriptor
Sitecore components
• Stored in: /sitecore/system/Settings/
Analytics/Marketing Automation/Activity Types/
Activity Type
• Properties
• Parameters
• Paths
• Implementation type
• Classification

18. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Custom activity type – .NET code
.NET components
Activity class
• Extends IActivity
• Accepts parameters
• Does the work!
• Returns ActivityResult
• Moves to next “path”

19. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.#SitecoreSYM
Building
the front end
with Angular and webpack

20. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
TypeScript source code
• Activity
• Editor component
• Module (wraps the module)
• Plugin (exports deployable plugin artifact)
Elements of the front-end code

21. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Activity
• Describes the appearance of
the step in the plan
Elements of the front end code

22. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Editor
• Describes the UI of the editor
panel
• Handles the passing of
parameters
Elements of the front end code

23. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Module
• Wraps the code up into a
portable module
• This becomes a plugin
Elements of the front end code

24. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Package.json
• Dependencies on Sitecore
MA modules @ma-core
• Angular package versions
• Differences between
Sitecore 9.0, 9.1, 9.2
Elements of the front-end code

25. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Other project files
• tsconfig-aot.json
• tsconfig.json
• webpack.config.js
Elements of the front-end code

26. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Build the front end code
• npm install
• npm run dev
• Output artifacts are in /dist
• Plugin file to be deployed to Sitecore
If you build it….

27. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.#SitecoreSYM
Building
the back end
with .NET and Sitecore

28. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Custom Activity Type – Back-end
Custom Activity Class
• Interface implementation
• Service dependency injection
• IActivityServices
(Sitecore built-in services)
• Parameters
• Invoke() method
• Activity Result
• NuGet packages

29. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Custom Activity Type – Back-end
SmsService – using Twilio

30. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Custom Activity Type – Back-end
Service injection in engine XML configs

31. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Custom Activity Type – Sitecore items
The Activity Type
Descriptor in
Sitecore:

32. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.#SitecoreSYM
Deployment
Pushing the code & configs

33. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Deployment – What needs to go where?
We need to deploy to:
• Marketing Automation Engine
• Custom activity DLL
• XML configs
• App settings (if needed)
• Sitecore
• Activity Type descriptor (content item)
• CM Server
• Custom activity DLL
• Plugin JavaScript code
• Plugin descriptor config

34. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Sitecore MA service
• Activity Type DLL
• XML configs
- Service dependency injection
- Activity Type definition
• AppSettings.config
Deployment (continued)

35. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Sitecore CM server
• Activity editor UI plugin (JavaScript code)
/sitecore/shell/client/Applications/MarketingAutomation/plugins/
• Config file for plugin loading
/App-Config/Include/Project/MA.Demo.AutomationExtensions.plugins.config
• Activity Type DLL
/bin
• Content (Activity Type descriptor, including Implementation Type*)
/sitecore/system/Settings/Analytics/Marketing Automation/Activity Types/Send SMS Message
*Don’t forget to set the parameters, path, editor, object type
Deployment – What needs to go where?

36. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.#SitecoreSYM
Extending
further

37. #SitecoreSYM © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Extending automation further
Where to from here?
• Create and use a custom predicate in a conditional
• Using the Framework Rules Engine (ICondition)
• Inspect custom facets and custom interactions in your predicate
• Enroll contacts in a plan with custom events
• Explore the Marketing Automation API
• Use Paths and Activity Results
• Use the Sitecore built in Services via IActivityService
• xConnect Client API
• Taxonomy Managers, Definition Managers, Reference Data Service Client API
• Activity enrollment service, Condition evaluation service
• Integrate the Editor UI with Sitecore content items (lookups)
• Integrate with line-of-business apps (e.g., Azure Service Bus, other APIs)

38. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.#SitecoreSYM
Troubleshooting
Debugging and saving your sanity

39. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners. #SitecoreSYM
Debugging and troubleshooting tips
• You don’t have access to the Sitecore context!
• No access to retrieve items
• Use the API’s provided for this
• Ensure your activity ID is the same across
• Your config patch
• Sitecore Activity Descriptor item
• Angular package (also lower case)
• If using custom facets, you have to include a config so that the Engine
knows about them (contact loader)
• MA engine won't recycle on XML changes. Need to restart manually

40. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners. #SitecoreSYM
Debugging and troubleshooting tips
• Logging
• Ilogger
• Files are separate to the Sitecore logs
• In XP Single topology ([EngineRoot]App_DataLogs)
• In Azure PaaS scaled (webjobs)
• Debugging your code
• Attach to the MA engine for local debugging
• Azure PaaS: Use the Webjobs dashboard

41. © 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners. #SitecoreSYM
Some key points
• The Engine is separate from Sitecore Experience Manager
• No Sitecore kernel or Master Database access
• Uses the “new” Rules Engine
• Use correct Angular package versions (see github)
• Easy to extend and integrate
Key takeaways

42. #SitecoreSYM© 2001-2019 Sitecore Corporation A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property of their respective owners.
Resources
• Github sample code:
https://github.com/parrya/ma-demo
Blogs and videos
• https://doc.sitecore.com/developers/92/sitecore
-experience-platform/en/activity-types.html
• https://www.brimit.com/blog/sitecore-9-custom-
marketing-automation-action
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-sitecore-9-
marketing-automation-works-deep-dive-
emmerzaal/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HxUph2YL
Zc&list=PL1jJVFm_lGnyicywCcwcWa8RtsoiJEbC9
&index=5
Also, shout out to Alexei Vershalovich for his
excellent blog posts.
Thanks and questions!
Finally {}

43. Thank you
FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY.
Sitecore Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 Sitecore Corporation
A/S. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks
of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand names are the property
of their respective owners.