Part 1: Coveo for Sitecore - ML Model - Product Recommendation (PR) - Introduction

Coveo ML for Commerce offers cloud-based AI-powered search and personalized recommendations to enhance customer engagement. 

There are various commerce model types used in different applications.

• Product Recommendations (PR)
• Query Suggestions (QS)
• Automatic Relevance Tuning (ART)
• Dynamic Navigation Experience (DNE)

There are more advanced and personalized types. 

• Predictive Query Suggestions (PQS)
• Session-Based Product Recommendations (SBPR)
• Intent-Aware Product Ranking (IAPR)

In this series, we will discuss about Product Recommendations (PR) model which provides relevant product suggestion (for your Coveo-powered commerce implementation) to end users. This is heavily dependent on the Coveo Usage Analytics (Coveo UA) which tracks the end user's search event, product click events, add to cart events and purchase events. With this data, model gets trained continuously and starts returning relevant results to the end users. 

Coveo ML PR models offer strategies to adapt product recommendations to the evolving needs and preferences of customers throughout their shopping experience. Various strategy types for PR models are listed below. 

• User recommender
• Frequently bought together
• Frequently viewed together
• Cart recommender
• Popular items (viewed)
• Popular items (bought)

In the next article, we will discuss about the prerequisites of PR models.

Happy Searching and Happy Customer! 😊

Coveo for Sitecore - Endpoint Migration - Coveo UA Endpoint during Initialization

Coveo Usage Analytics (UA) Protocol is currently considered as Legacy. The newer Event Protocol for new Coveo for Commerce implementation is recommended. This blog article for the Sitecore client who uses Coveo UA Protocol to log commerce events. 

In order to send commerce events, it is important to initialize Coveo UA library. Please note that Coveo is deprecating legacy endpoints. You can read about here. In order to use Organization specific endpoints for this analytics events, it is important to provide the endpoint at this stage. 

Earlier, endpoint was not required during the initialization. As Organization specific endpoint is recommended, it is important to provide the endpoint URL during initialization. 

Happy Coding!

Coveo for Sitecore - Endpoint Deprecation & Migrate to Organization Specific Endpoint

When Coveo was launched, there were only a few API endpoints for search requests and analytics events. As Coveo has grown, the need for organization endpoint URLs has become increasingly important for several reasons:

• Clear Separation: Client-specific subdomains create clear boundaries between different clients
• This helps to isolate specific environment to an organization. 
• Independent Scaling: Ability for Coveo Infrastructure to scale specific client based on license.
• Coveo Infrastructure Security: 
• Isolation: Client-specific subdomains can isolate API traffic
• IP Whitelisting: By restricting access to specific IP addresses through the subdomain.
• Better Performance

As part of the endpoint deprecation, Coveo is moving towards the usage of organization specific endpoints for Search and Analytics events. 

<ORD_ID>.org.coveo.com - Search requests

<ORD_ID>.analytics.org.coveo.com - Usage Analytics logging

<ORD_ID>.admin.org.coveo.com - Organization administration

Currently, analytics.cloud.coveo.com is the designated domain for sending analytics events. Previously, platform.cloud.coveo.com served multiple purposes, including the Coveo Administrator console, search requests, and analytics. Coveo is deprecating the use of platform.cloud.coveo.com for analytics events. As of December 9th, 2024, any analytics events sent to this domain will be ignored or result in errors. Along with this change, analytics.cloud.coveo.com is also marked as Suboptimal endpoint which encourages to use organization specific endpoint. 

How to check the current endpoint usage:

In order to check the current endpoint usage, you can go to Coveo Administration Console, Organization -> Settings. Under Organization tab, select Traffic. 

In the below screenshot, deprecated endpoint usage for last 7 days is listed. It also provides the recommended endpoint to use to avoid any interruption of service. 

How to update the endpoint in Sitecore:

• Open Sitecore CM Control Panel, and select Configuration Manager under Coveo Search. Coveo Command Center will be opened in a new tab. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• In Coveo Command Center, click Log in.
• Log in to your Coveo organization.
• Click Apply and Restart.
• This action triggers Coveo for Sitecore to Switch to Organization Endpoints.
  
  
  

Under the hood:

In case, the following changes are updated in the Sitecore configuration. 

File Name: \App_Config\Include\Coveo.CloudPlatformClient.Custom.config

• Key: cloudPlatformUri
• Value: Changed from https://platform.cloud.coveo.com to https://<ORG_ID>.admin.org.coveo.com 
  
  
• Key: cloudGeneralPlatformUri (newly added)
• Value: https://platform.cloud.coveo.com 

File Name: \App_Config\Include\Coveo.SearchProvider.Rest.Custom.config

• Key: analyticsUri
• Value: Changed from https://analytics.cloud.coveo.com to https://<ORG_ID>.analytics.org.coveo.com 
  

• Key: searchApiUri
• Value: Changed from https://analytics.cloud.coveo.com to https://<ORG_ID>.org.coveo.com 
  

You can copy these two files from CM to each CD servers.