Numeric Classifications in SiteCatalyst
In Sitecatalyst there is something called Classifications a.k.a SAINT (SiteCatalyst Attribute Importing and Naming Tool), in short this is a really nice feature that can be used to tie meta-data to existing data in SiteCatalyst, if this sounds strange, think of it as a very effective way of grouping large amounts of data into groups that makes more sense than the original data.
Classifications are often used on campaign or product data. You can find a great Omniture blogpost here, explaining things in a lot more detail.
Apart from some trouble with the tools used to setup Classifications it seems to be pretty solid technology.
There is a special kind of Classifications called Numeric Classifications, as the name implies, these can be used to tie numeric data to Classifications. If you think of Classifications as being smart, then Numeric Classifications are übersmart. Numeric classifications are like special calculated metrics, where the classification data you provide becomes part of the calculation.
A Numeric Classefication is what could be used to calculate the cost of a campaign based on a click price and the existing Click-through metric.
But, beware, there are a few things that are nice to now before you get started on Numeric Classifications.
- It appears to be possible to delete a Numeric Classification, but it is not, the delete function is badly broken and will just show you a blank page when trying to use it.
- If You want to create more than one Numeric Classification on a variable you can’t use SiteCatalyst 14 for the job, switch to SiteCatalyst 13.5 where the feature isn’t broken.
- Not even Clientcare has the tools needed to delete a Numeric Classification, It’s a job for Omniture Engineering and it’ll take around a week to complete, so for testing purposes, I would recommend you create yourself a throw-away report suite.
Oh by the way, one last thing, the metrics created by Numeric Classifications are not working on any of our report suites, whenever I add one of those metrics, it effectively prevents my reports from loading.
I’m so glad to see that someone else is having numeric classification issues (misery loves company).
I’ve been having this issue with a numeric campaign classification for several months now. I have a classification called “cost,” for campaigns and then some calculated metrics based off that classification, like ROI, etc. I used to be able to show the cost field as a metric in my campaign reports, along with those calculated metrics. Somewhere along the way of a SiteCatalyst update, the “cost” classification would show only $0 in every report suite, even though the SAINT file shows the proper dollar amount.
Yes it’s actually really nice to see you’re not alone with a problem
According to ClientCare this isn’t a widespread problem, so it could probably take some time before Engineering fixes it.
My numeric classifications started behaving correctly recently, but for no apparent reason, nobody did/changed anything.
I’ve been trying to get an explanation on why things suddenly started working from ClientCare/Engineering, but so far without any luck.
Although numeric classifications is a very useful feature, I must say I’m having my doubts about whether it’s entirely ready for production use.