Content Automation FAQs
We get asked a lot of questions. Here's some fo the most common Content Automation FAQs.
Yes. It is possible to use the Inspector - text functionality to apply filtering, regular expressions and build simple rules to exclude / replace content.
Here's an overview of what you can do:
- Prefix - add a prefix to content e.g. was / now price or currency symbol
- Suffix - add a suffix to content
- Truncate - Cut off the word after a set number of characters with an ellipsis (...)
- Truncate Nearest Word - Cut off the sentence to the nearest word, after a set number of characters with an ellipsis (...)
- Replace - Replace set words within the parameter data
- Replace If Empty - Replace if there is no data for a parameter
- Replace If Shorter - Replace if the parameter is shorter than x number of characters
- Replace If Longer - Replacing if the parameter is longer than x number of characters
- Regular Expression - Replace Regular Expressions bu defining a sequence of characters to replace (e.g. if your brand name appears in all of your product titles you could replace this regular expression)
- Remove Emojis
- Remove Links
- Get Char at Pos – Allows bringing through initials if commanded to pull in Position 1 of the first name and last name.
- Reverse String – Reverses the characters within the block
- Current Time – In the correct time zone and format
If your tag is displaying product attributes (for example the title and/or price is showing) but the product image is not showing, this could be due to your image server blocking our call to retrieve the image or your image server being slow to respond to our call.
If you are experiencing product image slowness, we recommend testing image load time in your browser using developer tools. If the image loads quickly (under 400ms) we recommend speaking to your IT department to check that Kickdynamic have not been blocked by your server.
It is possible to pass an authentication token in the image call if necessary.
When building a content automation template there may be a white boarder around the edges of the template. Firstly, be sure to set the image to '0' from Top and '0' from left in the righthand inspector menu.
You may want to rename the block that you want to resize to full width. This is done in the block manager area.
Once you have created your tag, it is possible to add a syntax command to the end of the tag to control the size of the block. This is a special syntax that allows users to edit a template in real time via "URL parameters" that can be merged onto content automation tags. For example, it is possible to change the font colour, font size, the position etc of any block you wish with the right command in a URL.
If you wish to change the size of the block called 'Banner' in your template to add or remove remove a border you could do this with the syntax below:
&Banner.height=600&Banner.width=400
Another use case is changing branding based on ESP flags. Let's say you have a template with a block named "Title" and you wish to change the title colour based on users' preference that are saved in an ESP, you can add the following parameter to our CA tag:
&title.fontColor=#ff44aa
You start by writing the block name (Title) followed by a dot, then you add the command (in the above example you used "fontColor") with the value you wish to set. In this example, since we are changing a colour we need to provide a valid HTML colour code.
This is typically used for customers that have multiple brands but wish to create one single template.
Top Tip - Block names and the command names are case-sensitive
Below is a list of available commands for reference. All examples refer to a generic block named "Block1".
Command name | Description | Unit/Values | Example |
width | Change the width of a block | Pixels | Block1.width=300 |
height | Change the height of a block | Pixels | Block1.height=90 |
top | The distance between the top border of a block and the top of the canvas | Pixels | Block1.top=5 |
left | The distance between the left border of a block and the left border of the canvas | Pixels | Block1.left=4 |
fontFamily | The font used to render the text of a block | The name of a font available in your account | Block1.fontFamily=Arial |
fontSize | The size of the font used to render the text of a block | Pixels | Block1.fontSize=24 |
fontColor | The colour of the font used to render the text of a block | HTML color code | Block1.fontColor=#ff44aa |
visible | Show/hide a block | Two values allowed: true false | Block1.visible=true |
Last modified 3yr ago