Web Services API Series – Reporting API, You Have The Power

Welcome to the start of the Web Services API Series. In part 1, I will describe what you can do with Omniture’s Reporting API and what to pay attention to. So stick with me and you will soon learn how you can take advantage of this tool that gives you the power to enhance your reporting experience.

What is Omniture’s Reporting API?

Omniture’s reporting API is an interface that will allow you to programmatically connect to SiteCatalyst and pull reports.

Think of SiteCatalyst in the palm of your hand or on your desktop, or anywhere you want it to be and inside of any tool you can think of. That is the reporting API in a nutshell, you pull reports and do with them anything you can imagine.

Examples to get your idea factory running

Example 1:

You have an internal portal and you want to display SiteCatalyst reports so they are quickly accessible and do not require anyone to log into Omniture tools. Well this is easily solved with the reporting API. Build an interface and integrate it with your internal portal and you quickly have almost any report you can imagine right at your finger tips.

Example 2:

Let’s say you subscribe to Dale Carnegie’s methods to influence people and you want to impose a little competition inside your company. Well one way you could do that is pull SiteCatalyst reports and display them on a screen or on the front page of your internal portal.

Example 3:

You use software to build reports for your companies executives. Normally, you would need to use the Excel client to pull the desired reports and import them into the software on a regular basis. Well, assuming the software has some type of application interface you can pull reports from Omniture and import them automatically into your reporting software.

Getting Started

The Reporting API is a programmatic solution, so you will need a developer if you don’t know how to code. Also, if you are short on resources you can request Omniture’s Engineering Services team to build the solution for you. Just contact your Omniture Account Manager and they will get the process started.

First step is to set up your web services accounts. Go into SiteCatalyst then go to Admin > Admin Console. Then click User Access, then Groups, finally Web Service Access. Bookmark it so you can easily find it again. Inside this interface you can add users to the Web Services Access group. This will allow that user to pull reports from the reporting API. (Warning: giving someone access to web services gives them the ability to use all web services functions which include administrative functionality.)

Next step get your Web Services API Username and Shared Secret. First, you want to go into SiteCatalyst then go to Admin > Admin Console. Then in the menu on the left you go Admin Console > Company. And finally you click Web Services. This interface will display the number of tokens each user has used and how many tokens your company has left. This is also where you will get the username and shared secret you or your developer will use to access the APIs.

Resources

developer.Omniture.com – This is your one stop location for tons of information related to Omniture’s APIs. Here you will find example code and all the methods that are offered.

Code Gallery – Part of developer.Omniture.com. Is a location for a ton of prebuilt solutions that utilize Omniture’s APIs.

Here are some of the solutions you can find in the code gallery that use the reporting api.

My team mate Mark Heidbrink and I built one of the solutions called Daily Time Parting. It is desktop graphing program that allow you to graph reports side by side. It’s main benefits are the usage of C# and a simple example that any developer should be able to download and run without having to code anything.

Sean Gubler, Aaron Wilson and Nate Purser are three members of my team that built the Geo Money web application that is not only nice to look at but also a great way to compare metrics across the United States. This interactive flash application will allow you to compare conversion state by state and see the effectiveness of your sales at a glance.

As always, post your comments or e-mail me at paurigemma (at) omniture.com. It is your comments and e-mails that keep me posting and give me ideas for future posts. If you do decide to purchase an Engineering Services solution, make sure you mention the blog and you will get white glove treatment.