Debugging the redirect cookie

Append ?optimizely_log=debug to your URL and open the developer console in your browser. Search the log for a line containing Optly / Relay / Found redirect cookie. That line will contain the cookie information. The cookie is set on pre-redirect page and the Optimizely log is reading and printing it from the post-redirect page.

If you parse the cookie information by "&" you can review the data passed from the pre-redirect page to the post-redirect page.

What to watch out for

• An opted-in snippet will set a large (but temporary) cookie for the duration of the redirect. Specifically, it will set an optimizelyRedirectData cookie that can contain ~500 characters, or even more if there was a long referrer URL to the pre-redirect page. This could cause the customer's server to return an error instead of the expected post-redirect page (but only for redirected visitors, and only in the immediate aftermath of a redirect; pausing the redirect experience will restore functionality).

  • We recommend that you QA the redirect experience on the customer's servers before unlocking it for live visitors.

  • Cookie size will decrease in the distant future. See Phase 3 of the redirects launch plan.

If you encounter any issues, ping @nikhil in the #analytics-redirects Slack channel, and feel free to follow the opt-out instructions at the bottom of this page.

Third-party analytics

If you're expecting results via one of the supported third-party analytics integrations, you need to make sure the integration is included in the post-redirect snippet even though that the integration may not be explicitly enabled for any campaign or experiment in that snippet.

For a redirect to a basic, project-specific snippet

You likely don't need to do anything here because you're original page and redirect page are on the same snippet and would include the 3rd party analytics tracker in the snippet if you enabled it for the experiment.

If you're redirecting to a separate snippet and want to ensure the 3rd party plugin is included in the snippet, you can follow these steps to add it.

Emulate the post-redirect project, go to Settings > Implementation > Optimizely X, and ensure that the Overridden Defines section includes the following if enabling Adobe Analytics:

{
  ...
  "__ANALYTICS__": {
    "ADOBE": true
  },
  ...
}

or the following if enabling Mixpanel:

{
  ...
  "__ANALYTICS__": {
      "MIXPANEL": true
  },
  ...
}

or both:

{
  ...
  "__ANALYTICS__": {
    "ADOBE": true,
    "MIXPANEL": true
  },
  ...
}

Each integration that you specify may increase the size of the snippet payload, so only include integrations that the customer is likely to use in their pre-redirect snippets.

If the project has no other Overridden Defines, remember to remove the trailing comma. The UI will warn you if you forget.

For a redirect to a custom snippet

Emulate the account, open your browser's developer console, and enter

(function(snippetName) {
  $.ajax('/api/v1/snippets').then(function (data) {
    var snippet = _.find(data, {
      resource_id: snippetName,
    });
    var newOverriddenDefines = _.extend({}, snippet.client_build_settings.overridden_defines, {
      "__ANALYTICS__": {
        // Only include if necessary
        "ADOBE": true,
        // Only include if necessary
        "MIXPANEL": true,
      },
    });
    return $.ajax('/api/v1/snippets/' + snippet.id, {
      type: 'put',
      contentType: 'application/json',
      data: JSON.stringify({
        "client_build_settings": {
          "overridden_defines": newOverriddenDefines
        }
      }),
      headers: {
        'x-csrf-token': optlyConfig.csrf
      }
    });
  }).then(function () {
    console.log('Enabled new cookie redirects in snippet:', snippetName);
  }, function (e) {
    console.log('Error enabling new cookie redirects in snippet:', snippetName, e);
  });
})('SNIPPET_NAME');

after replacing SNIPPET_NAME with the actual name of the post-redirect snippet and after filtering the list of integrations (ADOBE, MIXPANEL , etc.) as necessary. Each integration that you specify may increase the size of the snippet payload, so only include integrations that the customer is likely to use in their pre-redirect snippets.