SiteCatalyst Widgets [Inside Omniture SiteCatalyst]

Lately, there has been a lot of buzz around “Widgets” which allow you to take snippets of the data or content you want to see and put it all in one convenient place.  Based upon this and customer feedback, Omniture has created a SiteCatalyst Widget that allows you to add reportlets from SiteCatalyst Dashboards to your aggregator/portal of choice (iGoogle, My Yahoo, etc…).  In this post, I will walk you through the steps required to take to see SiteCatalyst information through a Widget.

Step-By-Step Instructions for Creating SiteCatalyst Widgets
The following are the steps you would take to add SiteCatalyst Widgets to an aggregator’s web page.  In this example, I will add SiteCatalyst reportlets to an iGoogle page.

1. Create Dashboard
To begin with, you must create a SiteCatalyst dashboard.  This is relatively straightforward and is done by viewing a report in SiteCatalyst and clicking on the Dashboard icon, selecting a Dashboard name and saving (if you have not created a dashboard yet, please refer to the SiteCatalyst User Guide or contact ClientCare).

2. Open SiteCatalyst Widget Page
Next, open SiteCatalyst and navigate to the Widget set-up page, which is found in the tools area drop-down arrow within the Omniture Suite toolbar icon as shown here:

3. Choose Widget Type
Once on the SiteCatalyst Widget page, click the button of the vendor you would like to use.  In this scenario, I will select Google.  Be sure that you have logged into your iGoogle page and consider creating a separate Omniture tab and having that open at the time you click the button shown here:

4. Click Vendor Link
After you have clicked on the vendor link from within SiteCatalyst, you will be taken to the vendor’s page where you can click on a link to add the widget to your page as shown here:

5. Select Dashboard Report
Once the SiteCatalyst Widget is added to your iGoogle page, you will see a list of Dashboard reportlets to choose from as shown here:

Simply, select the one that you would like to see in the selected SiteCatalyst Widget and notice that you can use the “more” and “previous” links to scroll through all of your dashboard items.

6. Rinse & Repeat
After your first widget is added, you can add more by clicking again on the Google link from within the SiteCatalyst Widget page or by clicking on the down arrow from within the Widget and selecting “About this gadget” which will bring you to a page where you can add a second Widget.  You can repeat this process as often as you like and build an entire page of different report Widgets.  When you are done, you should have a screen that looks like this:

(Click the image below to see completed iGoogle page with several SiteCatalyst Widgets)

Important Things To Know About SiteCatalyst Widgets
The following are some important things to know about SiteCatalyst Widgets:

1. In addition to adding SiteCatalyst widgets to a Google or Yahoo pages, it is possible to add them to any web page, company intranet, Sharepoint, etc…  Instructions for doing this can be found on the SiteCatalyst Widget set-up page shown above.
2. Keep in mind when attempting to share SiteCatalyst Widgets are tied to a SiteCatalyst user ID so users will only be able to see dashboards and bookmarks to which they have access in SiteCatalyst.
3. If you have several SiteCatalyst Widgets on a page, logging into one Widget will log you into all Widgets.  Simply log into one and then refresh the page.  On the flip side, logging out of one SietCatalyst Widget will log you out of all of them.
4. You can customize the appearance of SiteCatalyst Widgets by defining a custom CSS class.
5. For iPhone users, similar functionality exists through a custom iPhone application that has been developed.  To download this free application, simply search for “SiteCatalyst” or “Omniture” from within the iTunes App Store.
6. For Google Android users, similar capabilities exist as well.  See press release for more details.

Have a question about anything related to Omniture SiteCatalyst?  Is there something on your website that you would like to report on, but don’t know how?  Do you have any tips or best practices you want to share?  If so, please leave a comment here or send me an e-mail at insidesitecatalyst@omniture.com and I will do my best to answer it right here on the blog so everyone can learn! (Don’t worry - I won’t use your name or company name!).  If you are on Twitter, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/Omni_man.

• Adam Greco
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