- Why Microsoft Purchased nCompass
- Fitting Commerce Server and Content Management Server Together
- Feature Overview
- What's So Great About the Content Connector?
- Microsoft's Version of the Dashboard
- What's Working and What Needs Work
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What's So Great About the Content Connector?
Content Connector extends Commerce Server so that channel and campaign management initiated with the latter platform can be integrated with the Content Management Server's content. Using the Commerce Server 2000 Content Selection Framework, business users can create classifications for targeting and personalizing content. Classifications can be based on a customer group or a product.
Content pages are tagged according to the classification, and pages are served up dynamically to site visitors based on personalization preferences or user groups. The original author of the page, by the editor who approves the page, can do this tagging or classification automatically, based on properties of the template that creates the page.
The first integration objective for the acquisition of the nCompass products and their resulting product definition as Content Management Server was to fill the biggest deficiency that Commerce Server had, and that was making content available that could be used in channel and campaign management strategies. The Content Connector made the accomplishment of this design goal possible.
The second design objective for making Content Connector was to integrate the extensive content that many companies have in nCompass products to the Commerce Server analytics features. Being able to use the content that is stored and managed in Content Management Server for doing predictive analysis of all metrics over and above simple click stream data was a major driver for the acquisition of nCompass, and the development of the Content Connector. Now, Microsoft is demonstrating the capability of companies to get metrics and levels of interest by the type of content shown by a Web site running both of these components. Figure 2 shows the closed loop analysis approach that Microsoft is using for integrating information about how content is viewed and used by potential purchasers of products from within the Commerce Server platform.
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Figure 2 How the closed loop system works in Content Connector.