The Optimize platform comes with mechanisms for switching contexts, allowing you to test your tag updates before pushing them out to users.
This article describes a recommended approach for how to manage these updates.
Step 1 - Create your draft tag
First, we want to create a context to work in. Find your live tag, and click Clone.
Give it a reasonable name and click save.
Once saved, it will appear in the list - this is where you will make your changes.
Step 2 - Make updates
Whatever your changes are - masking, additional metrics in your conversion package, etc. - make your updates.
If you're trialling new 3rd party integrations, you can apply them to this draft tag config too.
Note that any tag updates, including to draft contexts, are served from a CDN and can take a while to cycle through all edge nodes. We recommend adding a versioned console log to the top of your tag, so it's easier to spot when the change has been rolled-out.
Step 3 - Test your changes
Next, QA.
Make sure your test your changes before going live. Tag updates are amongst the most important to test, and often the most overlooked.
There are a few things to note:
You can enter this preview mode for tags from any site - it's not confined to your dev/staging environment.
Test delivery and metric capture should remain unaffected, so everything can be tested.
Tag preview is separate to test staging mode, so you can check both staging and live tests against your new tag as appropriate.
At this point, we're ready to update your live tag.
Step 4 - Create a backup
Backups are useful for handling rollback scenarios, and easy to create in Optimize.
Just like Step 1, create a backup tag by Cloning your live tag. We recommend a name like backup010124.
Ideally, you will not need to use this and can delete it after a few days. However the platform does not automatically keep backups for you, and so this is a valuable practise to maintain.
Step 5 - Copy changes into your live tag
To publish your changes, use the Copy-To functionality.
Copy your working tag into the live tag.
This will effectively set your changes live.
Note: tag updates take time to circulate through the CDN. You will need to be patient at this stage, and hard-refresh or check in incognito mode.
Step 6 - Test the updated tag
Finally, and importantly, once your tag update has been made available and you have access to it, make sure to test your changes again.