“Will the Email Experience Manager module work in Sitecore 8 with analytics turned off?”
A client in the middle of an upgrade to Sitecore 8 reached out recently about the impact of using Sitecore 8 without xDB.
Sitecore introduced their Experience Database in version 7.5. Whether it’s called DMS, xDB, or Experience Marketing capabilities these features consistently get pushed into “phase 2” of projects. With the old DMS setup every interaction was tracked, but you couldn’t keep track of all the data because it was just too much. With the new xDB, a Sitecore instance can now gather and collect data continually at much faster speeds. There are a couple of licensing options that customers can choose from: xDB Cloud or On Premise. xDB cloud is managed by Sitecore, and charged in a subscription model. On Premise requires MongoDB and additional hardware which is charged in a perpetual model.
Let’s look together at which capabilities are impacted by a customer that chooses to disable analytics. Sitecore recently updated a Knowledge Base article (https://kb.sitecore.net/en/Articles/2015/04/20/08/28/296641.aspx) that breaks down this compatibility in much greater detail.
NOT FUNCTIONAL
- Email Experience Manager
- Experience Optimization
- Experience Analytics
- Federated Experience Manager
- List Management
- Path Analyzer
- Social Connected
FUNCTIONAL WITH LIMITATIONS
- Experience Editor and Experience - Personalization on historical behavior that is stored in XDB or relies upon tracking will be unavailable (Channel, Contact, Tag, Engagement Value, etc…)
- Sitecore Desktop - this is functional, but limited. The option of assigned profiles to items is gone. The analytics tab is non-functional.
- Marketing Control Panel - Federated Experience Manager and Experience Analytics segments will be unavailable.
- Web Forms for Marketers (WFFM) - Form submissions are saved in the XDB by default. This can be overridden using a custom processor, to define a different location to save form submission data. Reporting on WFFM will be unavailable.