When you deploy your implementation to Launch, a relationship is formed between Apollo, your Launch property, and all of its components. As a result, any changes you make could effect Apollo or your Launch property and may have unintended consequences.
Adding Additional Components
Any components you create outside of Apollo will not be overwritten by subsequent deployments. These include:
-
Rules you manually create
-
New rule events you manually add (regardless of whether or not Apollo created the rule originally)
-
New rule conditions you manually add (regardless of whether or not Apollo created the rule originally)
-
New rule actions you manually add (regardless of whether or not Apollo created the rule originally)
-
Data elements you manually create
-
Extensions you manually add that aren't included in the list of extensions Apollo configures
-
New Environments you manually add
Apollo was intentionally designed this way to enable you to add non-analytics tagging and configuration to your Launch property.
Apollo Managed Components
Apollo will overwrite any changes made to the components it manages during subsequent deployments. All updates should be made in Apollo to maintain alignment between your Launch property and Apollo implementation. Each tag manager component is handled differently during the build process. You will find the specific details pertaining to each component below.
Rules
During a deployment, Apollo will always update the rule name. If you have changed an Apollo rule's name in your Launch property, it will be overwritten. If the rule's name is altered in Apollo (i.e. by updating your deployment marker), you can expect to see the updated rule name in Launch following a successful deployment. Any additional events, conditions, or actions you have previously added to the rule will not be affected by an Apollo deployment.
Rule Components
Rule components consist of Events, Conditions, and Actions. All Apollo-managed rule components are compared against what is already present in Launch during each deployment. Any net new changes will be published and should be brought into a new Launch library that you create and add all changes items to, then progress through the Launch publish process as normal. Any customizations you make to Apollo-managed rule components in Launch will be overwritten when you deploy from Apollo. Examples of items that are not overwritten are rules that you create outside of Apollo such as 3rd party tags, additional rule conditions that were not built with Apollo (such as additional consent exclusions on existing rules), and manual customizations to the built-in consent management data element that Apollo creates.
Data Elements
Apollo will compare data elements it manages during a deployment to what is present in Launch and send through any updated items. Any manual updates made to an Apollo-managed data element's name or configuration will be overwritten.
Extensions
Launch Extension configurations are a bit more nuanced, as Apollo may or may not overwrite them. Before you make any changes to extension configurations, it is recommended that you review which changes Apollo will and will not overwrite.
Deleting an Apollo Managed Component
If you delete a component managed by Apollo in your Launch property, your future Apollo deployments will fail with errors. If you would like to remove a component from your implementation, do so in Apollo to prevent any errors. After deleting a Launch component, there is no way to restore it to your library, even if you republish a previous version. Please be aware that deleting a component will make your Launch property unusable for Apollo deployments. If you have deleted an active component, reach out to Apollo Support with details on what was deleted for resolution. The ideal order of operations is to disable the item in Apollo, deploy from Apollo, then disable the item in the tag manager.
Additional Notes
If you are having trouble identifying which components Apollo does and does not manage, we recommend implementing the Organization Marker feature. When you enable this feature, Apollo managed component names will be appended with a common suffix/prefix. Be default, markers are not added to data elements. Follow this article to enable markers for data elements.