All my old anttikoski.fi blog posts about Adobe Analytics and Adobe Launch from 2013 to 2019 - PDF file summary

Table of contents – Anttikoski.fi all blog posts, years 2013 - 2019
Adobe Analytics for Dummies Book.............................................................................................................. 3
My biggest learnings about Adobe Launch after few implementations ..................................................... 3
Bye Bye Adobe API Explorer and welcome some new API tools................................................................ 6
Edit description for tables in Analysis Workspace....................................................................................... 7
Most wanted Analysis Workspace ideas in 2018 .......................................................................................... 8
Adobe Analytics component curation gives you meaningful data ............................................................ 10
Summary for Adobe Analytics Fall 2017 Update....................................................................................... 11
Adobe Analytics Update – September 2017 ................................................................................................ 15
New data storytelling features in Analysis Workspace.............................................................................. 17
Adobe Analytics calculated metrics just got even better with dimensions aka internal segments......... 19
Approximate count distinct function in Adobe Analytics calculated metrics.......................................... 20
Most wanted Analysis Workspace ideas – Promote and make Workspace even better!........................ 21
Adobe Analytics cheat sheet – Best resources to master Adobe Analytics, including Workspace &
DTM................................................................................................................................................................ 24
Analysis Workspace: How to use breakdown by position feature............................................................ 29
Adobe Analytics custom link tracking (by default with some browsers) is not counting all the hits when
moving to another page on same tab ........................................................................................................... 31
How to use Analysis Workspace projects with full speed without slowness ............................................ 33
How to step up your game to learn analytics implementations and debugging....................................... 33
My blog in year 2016..................................................................................................................................... 36
Testing new flow pathing report and repeat instances settings in Adobe Analysis Workspace............. 37
Adobe Analytics fall 2016 release – Lots of new features to Analysis Workspace .................................. 42
Testing and playing around with new fallout report in Adobe Analysis Workspace.............................. 46
Reporting window allocation and event assists in Adobe Analytics ......................................................... 50
Basics of pages, marketing channels and tracking codes in Adobe Analytics.......................................... 53
4 huge time-saver tips for Analysis Workspace in Adobe Analytics......................................................... 58
5 key learnings & tips for Adobe’s Analysis Workspace........................................................................... 59
What is Analysis Workspace inside Adobe Analytics? .............................................................................. 61
s.abort flag can prevent hits firing in Adobe Analytics.............................................................................. 63
Count function in Adobe Analytics calculated metric builder .................................................................. 64
Adobe DTM: Using doPlugins to capture every hit for pathing report ................................................... 66
Why tag management tools (or systems) suck ............................................................................................ 69
How to add correct time zone to Klipfolio’s data source........................................................................... 70
Useful tips to exclude test and other unwanted data from your Adobe Analytics report suite.............. 72
Save full page url and referrer url to Adobe Analytics using javascript.................................................. 74

Adobe Analytics event serialization & custom javascript coding for purchase event............................. 76
Tips & tricks to start a/b testing in (big) organization............................................................................... 77
HTTP POST requests not visible in many analytics debuggers, including Omnibug – Use a packet
analyzer .......................................................................................................................................................... 79
Klipfolio (is easy to use) business dashboard with Adobe Analytics data................................................ 80
Google Adwords upgraded URL structure & strange visits for 3rd party analytics tools ..................... 82
Adobe Analytics Fall 2015 Release............................................................................................................... 83
Quick tip: Tracking offline campaigns (tv, print, radio, sms etc) with online analytics......................... 85
Adobe Analytics quick tip: How to get full pathing for every (prop) action............................................ 85
Adobe Analytics calculated metrics breaking bad with derived metrics ................................................. 86
Non-interaction events (that wouldn’t affect bounce rate% etc) not possible in Adobe Analytics........ 87
Best practices for naming custom success events in Adobe Analytics ...................................................... 89
Adobe Analytics 2015 Spring Release – My first comments...................................................................... 92
How to use custom variables wisely – Adobe Analytics Quick Tip........................................................... 93
Polarity settings for custom events in Adobe Analytics ............................................................................. 94
My top 3 blog post in year 2014.................................................................................................................... 96
All I want for Christmas is 10 new Adobe Analytics features................................................................... 97
The decision: Mobile application and website in one or two (Adobe Analytics) report suite!? ........... 100
Adobe Analytics test laboratory: Ranked comparison stats with eVars & scheduled monthly reports
....................................................................................................................................................................... 102
Getting started with Adobe Analytics mobile application tracking & (Android) tagging.................... 106
Adobe Analytics Spring 2014 Release; buzz, features, tips & links........................................................ 112
Adobe SiteCatalyst quick tip #2: how to find reports and search metrics ............................................. 115
Tips for Adobe Summit 2014 – Digital Marketing Conference in Salt Lake City & London .............. 117
How to make Adobe Analytics tagging map aka solution design requirements for SiteCatalyst
implementation ............................................................................................................................................ 119
Adobe SiteCatalyst quick tip #1: Save full referrer and page url with Processing rules...................... 122
Search engine optimization is not dead and never will be ....................................................................... 124
New to Adobe Analytics aka SiteCatalyst? The ultimate (cheat) list of resources, help and people to
follow............................................................................................................................................................. 126
Getting started with A/B testing by Optimizely........................................................................................ 131
Google can redirect mobile user (who clicks link to web-version) to mobile site directly from the search
results............................................................................................................................................................ 133
Ready, steady, go!........................................................................................................................................ 135

Adobe Analytics for Dummies Book
March 30, 2019 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: adobe analytics
Just want to make shout-out to Eric and David for publishing new Adobe Analytics book. There are
only few books available for Adobe Analytics. Order your copy now through Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Analytics-Dummies-Business-Personal-Finance/dp/1119446082
I pre-ordered mine already. I have used Adobe Analytics many years, but I am pretty sure this
book will include new information for me too, and if not, I can share this to my co-workers who are
just starting to learn Adobe Analytics.
My biggest learnings about Adobe Launch
after few implementations
September 1, 2018 Categories: Adobe Launch
Just wanted to write small summary what I have learned after few Adobe Analytics
implementations through Adobe Launch. Luckily there are awesome people that have already
written great blog posts and shared pretty much all these little tricks and tips so probably nothing
new to share, but hopefully my post highlights few important issues and features. And as said
before, I write these posts mainly to myself. When I write this I will better memorize these details
with codes and will surely come back to my post many times when wondering what was that great
blog post I found or what was that cool code needed for custom code etc. I am my blog´s biggest
fan, oh sweet… I wonder does Jan, Jenn and other feel this too about their own blogs? Ok, back to
the topic.
Adobe Launch has great documentation in here https://docs.adobelaunch.com/, but these official
documentations (no matter what tool) are always missing some crucial details and at least I have
sometimes difficulties to understand what you can do with this and that. That’s why blog posts with
real use cases are important, so huge thanks Jenn, Jim and many others who are blogging about
Adobe Launch.
1. It’s awesome.
Older Adobe Dynamic Tag Management aka DTM is “ok”, but Adobe Launch takes things
to another level and especially makes many things so much easier to do. Bye bye hundreds
rows of custom code especially for single page application sites. For every new site I would
start with Launch and forget about DTM. Sure there are many features on the roadmap that
Launch users are waiting eagerly, so it’s not 100% complete product, but so good already at
this point that it gets my approval.
2. You can add additional information to direct rules aka _satellite.track calls
Direct calls meet data layers, oh yes! If you want and sometimes there might be no other
choice than ask your coder to hard-code Adobe Analytics hits to different kinds of actions as
button clicks. It is easier (at least to the coder) to hard-code these _satellite.track calls with
additional information and then you can “map” this information to Adobe’s custom
variables and events etc in Launch. Few examples how direct call rule is hard-coded with
additional information:

_satellite.track("click",{type:"internal",element:"link",anchor:"buy"})
_satellite.track("click",{type:"external",element:"link",anchor:"adobe.com
"})
Try to think all the actions you need to track on your site and hopefully the result will be
“easy to understand” instructions for the coder and you don’t have to educate about props
and eVar and so on. I’m not going to explain this more detailed way, because Jenn has done
perfect blog post for this: https://33sticks.com/direct-call-rules-launch-new-power-passing-
additional-info-_satellite-track/ (note! You can even do multiple layers of information, read
Jenn’s post for details)
Btw, before finding Jenn’s post I was struggling with this, because I tried to access those
values in direct calls using data elements, but I guess that is impossible (scope?). However,
you can add these values directly on your direct rule call when adding variables to populate.
To me this isn’t logical, but this is how you get access those values:
%event.detail.yourObjectHere% On my first example this would mean
%event.detail.type% if want to return value “internal”.
If you want to use custom code editor for this then you could do like this:
s.eVar4=”event.detail.type”;
s.linkTrackVars=”eVar4″; // Yep, you have to add this. I mean eVar4 is not sent on the
hit without this Adobe specific “custom link coding”.
It doesn’t make sense to use custom code just for single eVar, but if you want to use
anything custom (e.g. if else coding) or want to combine different eVars to another custom
variable then custom code is needed. But with this easy eVar4 example I wanted to point out
that s.linkTrackVars issue or should I say feature.
And here is real code example if you want to really understand how I played with custom
code window:
(Ouh, this is another screenshot and not that s.eVar4=”event.detail.type” example, but at
least you see the s.linkTrackVars which was the biggest learning)
Additional reading:
https://docs.adobelaunch.com/client-side-information/launch-object-reference (grr, why
didn’t this page included information about the %event.detail.yourObject% coding to get
those values that was sent with _satellite.track)
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2451022 other are wondering about this too.

3. Want to add additional information to actions without Adobe specific _satellite.track
calls? Say hello to Custom Events.
Direct call _satellite.track is Adobe (Launch) specific code and I believe you can’t access
that information in DOM. So if you want to use more general coding on your site that other
TMS tools should have the access to then your solution is to use custom events. Basically,
just javascript for the different actions you want to use. I first noticed this option on Jim’s
great blog and scroll down to “custom event” part: https://jimalytics.com/adobe-launch-
guides/adobe-launch-rule-events-guide/ and there it is all explained in detailed way how to
code it and how to access those values inside Launch. The code has to be exactly the right
one with right amounts of “,” and “{}” signs etc. I had some difficulties to understand the
logic, but thanks to Jim, I finally got my test button tracking to work with this kind of code:
Sorry for not showing code in text format. WordPress crashed every time I tried to show it
as text format even with “code” field. And here is Jim’s great example how you get the
access to those values: https://jimalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Custom-
Event.gif using “custom event” in custom event type and give “someClick” as value.
4. Data element change is your new friend to get page tracking to work on SPA site
You have hard-coded Adobe Launch to the site and then added Adobe Analytics. You’ll
start debugging. Adobe Analytics is loaded on the first pageview. You click on the
navigation to move to another page and content changes, but nothing is sent to Adobe
Analytics. What!? Why!? Calm down, just calm down! Year 2018 happened and nowadays
many site is coded as SPA aka “Single Page Application” style. This means content is
updated when users moves to another page, however, the site is not fully loaded again and
that’s the reason why Analytics is not sending the hit. It is still possible to track these
“virtual” pageviews, but in DTM these usually mean lots of custom code and usually
additional hard-coding to the site too. I was about give specs to coder to add _satellite.track
calls on every page to get the hit, but luckily I had heard that Launch should be better with
SPA sites. Little bit of search and oh what a surprise I found myself on Jenn’s blog again
and especially this one caught my
attention https://www.digitaldatatactics.com/index.php/2018/01/30/dtm-launchs-rule-
ordering-is-a-big-deal-for-single-page-apps/. You just have to add another event type for the
rule to be fired and that is “data element change” and boom hits are generating on other
pages too and coder didn’t need to hard-code anything to the sit for this one and I can even
clean variables after the hit -> Awesome! My basic tracking is working even SPA site
directly through Launch and without the need for any javascript hacks.Not so fast! This is a
great example why debug to test is important. Eventhough, the hit was sent I noticed that
pageName value was not changing and it was always the first value. I found out that global
variables are not working for these hits. After directly adding the variable to rule in the “add
variables” part before sending the hit I was able to see values changing.
Btw, here is idea to vote if you agree that this should work
automatically https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10433
5. How to duplicate Launch properties or copy data elements between properties
Sorry, you can’t! This would be the most time-saving feature to have, by far! IMO. I know I
am not the only one missing this feature since there have been lots of discussions about this
and it is on the roadmap but no idea when it will be available, hopefully within few months.
There are different types of levels how this could be done and probably Adobe will start
with the easiest option with ability to copy rules/settings/data elements between different
properties. My ideal solution would be to have some kind of option as in Analytics when

you do new report suite and by this I mean I would like be able to duplicate older property
when I make a new one. This way I would have all the basic stuff ready out of the box and
with just few modifications (e.g. change report suite etc) I would have fully working Launch
property in speed of light.The greatest option would be to have some kind of master
property where you could share all basic stuff to different properties and probably you could
do something like this with API in the future (if not possible now) or build your own Launch
extension for this.
You can vote and comment ideas around this topic in
here https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10320
Oh this post was bit of text vomit, but forgive me, it’s Saturday and no time to check every
spell error and give all the screenshots etc, fail fast and so on, will hit publish button NOW!
Ask if something was unclear. 🙂
Bye Bye Adobe API Explorer and welcome
some new API tools
August 4, 2018 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: api
After summer holidays I decided to fresh my memory how to do Adobe Analytics API calls. And of
course you start testing your codes with old and reliable Adobe API Explorer. “What, why is this
address redirecting me to some other location!?”. Why hasn’t there been any information about
this, why isn’t anyone talking about this!? That was my initial reaction and it took like 24 hours and
I started to see discussions and “RIP” messages about this on different forums, so I guess this was
pretty new thing or then this slide under the radar on holiday season.
I found this forum discussion https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2515834 and there seems to be valid
information what happened and what will come to replace API explorer:
“What’s happening next is Analytics will release the new Analytics Reporting API in October,
2018. The Analytics Reporting API V2 was previewed in an Adobe Summit 2018 lab session. It is
the same reporting API that the Analysis Workspace UI is built on. It will be available via the
Adobe I/O Console and Gateway…”
Sounds good and let’s wait for that. But what if you wanna now test your API calls etc? You can
find all kinds of new information including some tips for different tools to make your API calls.
Here is the link: https://github.com/AdobeDocs/analytics-1.4-apis
Swagger (sounds supercool!) is something totally new for me. Swagger UI looks easy and I thought
I’ll try that, but the authorization didn’t work for me or then I just didn’t understand it all. At this
point I was too lazy to read manuals. I know, typical man… I want plug and play!
Ok, so there is another tip to use some kind of postman. Never heard this too. I know, I am amateur
with API tools. I downloaded it and followed instructions in
here https://github.com/AdobeDocs/analytics-1.4-apis/tree/master/postman (ok, I guess I need to
read if I want to learn) and boom it worked directly. I had my test API calls up and running within
few minutes. Actually, Postman rocks. You can have different projects and all your codes are saved

and it is so easy to come back and continue your API work on another day. That you couldn’t do
with API Explorer.
I thought this was sad news, but happy ending with Postman tool and let’s wait what goodness we
get on October when these new API versions are alive and rocking.
Happy API times after all!
Update:
Found also this article. Exploring Adobe Analytics API 1.4 with POSTMAN
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/exploring-adobe-analytics-api-14-postman-partha-sarma
Edit description for tables in Analysis
Workspace
March 17, 2018 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: workspace
I just have to write a post about this small tip that I noticed on Adobe’s forum:
https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10106 Thanks to Jen!
(Btw, if you haven’t voted that idea… what are you waiting for!? Hit the “vote up” button!)
In Workspace, you can add “text” panel to your project and write detailed descriptions for different
tables and visualizations. Have used a lot this “text” panel. However, this way text is always on a
different “module” and sometimes it might be difficult to align these text panels to the data panels
etc. Thanks to Jen, I realized that you can edit freeform table’s description and this way you get
same kind of text panel injected directly to the same freeform table. How did I have missed this
feature?
Let’s take some screenshots and you’ll surely understand what I’m trying to explain:
1. Right-click in the header of freeform table.
2. Click “edit description” and write your data story or poem or whatever you wan to explain
to CEO.

See the difference (below) between description inside table vs. own text panel. Difference is huge,
almost bigger than what I have ever seen. (Seems somebody is on a Saturday feeling and getting too
excited about this? :D)
Most wanted Analysis Workspace ideas in
2018
March 10, 2018 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: workspace
There has been lots of great new features within in the year. My old wish list is in
here http://www.anttikoski.fi/most-wanted-analysis-workspace-ideas-promote-and-make-
workspace-even-better/, but I thought I should update my list with a new post. Btw, these are just
my picks for the most wanted. You can see all ideas in
here https://forums.adobe.com/community/experience-cloud/analytics-cloud/analytics/analysis-
workspace/content?filterID=contentstatus%5Bpublished%5D~objecttype~objecttype%5Bidea%5D
TOP2
After these two Workspace is going to say “RIP older reporting interface”:
1. Multiple report suites for Analysis Workspace: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/9571
2. Analysis Workspace: Flow visualizations, exclude
reloads: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/9836 I know there could be more simple flow / next
page type of flow reports, but this “indcluding reloads issue” is the main reason why
Workspace users won’t use the current flow version.

Settings
Luckily this “add support to change settings with one click to all columns” feature is already
possible, but few tweaks:
• Header text wrapping should be turned on by default: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10106
• Breakdown by position is available nowadays (https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/8224),
however, can’t believe it is not turned on by default. Again, setting that should be turned on
as default. IMO. I guess I should do new idea for this one or consider to make an idea where
we could wish option to adjust all the default settings?
• Make some settings (icons) visible in Analysis Workspace or option to adjust visibility of
those:
https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/9120
Search
• Adjust search relevance or make exact match also
available: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10108
• Add option to filter search results alphabetically: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10109
• Add option to filter search results with only custom variables or default
variables: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10110
Cleaning & tagging
• Understand where segments and calculated metrics are used – to clean up without breaking
anything: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/8927
• Find Calculated Metrics/Segments by Variable: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10039
(Almost same as above, but little different focus and maybe this could be easier to do first?)
• Protect tags: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/9161
Sharing
• Possibility to make workspace project as public dashboard:
https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10107
Attribution
• Attribution modeling: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/5888 Will see if this is ever going to
be available for all or is this going to be only paid add-on…
Something else
• Hide total of column: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/9858
• Sorting by dimensions: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/9840
• Allow Filtering report columns/metrics for Limits &
Ranges: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/7146
• And for Adobe Analytics make description fields longer for dimensions in admin
section: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/10032

Adobe Analytics component curation gives you
meaningful data
October 30, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: curation
Adobe added new feature called “component curation” in the fall 2017 release for Adobe Analytics.
Oh boy, I have waited this since I saw curation feature for Workspace projects. I really like the
concept of curation which to me means something like “you get only data that matters”.
Want to see how it really works? Here is Adobe’s short video about this cool new feature:
component curation in virtual report suites and there you can get the idea how it works. You can
also read other details through Adobe’s help section for virtual report suite components. Anyway, I
want to write own blog post just for this feature and share few of my thoughts why this is so
meaningful feature.
Project curation vs. component curation in virtual report
suites
What is the difference between component curation and this new way of doing curation? I guess
project curation was the MVP of curation, however, it didn’t really work in a real life. It was really
time-consuming to do inside a project and I never had patience to do it to the end and that’s why we
have never used curated project. Second problem was that curation was just for one Workspace
project and that’s why it wasn’t scalable for many users.
Component curation in virtual report suites tackles both of these problems and now we have a really
working version of curation. BOOM! Let’s recap:
1) It is easy to set-up and manageable.
2) It is on a report suite level and can be easily used by many users with different projects.
But why?
Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics and other analytics tools are designed for about 9,352,458
different businesses. That number is actually stolen from Simo’s presentation where he talks about
meaningful data. I would have said over billion, but lets use Simo’s prediction. Anyway, you
got the point? There is nothing wrong about this from Adobe’s or Google’s perspective, because
they can’t personalize tools for different companies. However, they should offer features and
options to companies to make the personalization by themselves. There are segmentation, naming
process, tags and many other small options to get meaningful data and of course companies can
control custom tagging process to get custom data that matters.
I believe those basic features aren’t enough. You can’t easily control out of the box data that comes
through basic script / data collection. There might be dozens of variables that doesn’t matter to your
business, but you still get that data to your analytics account and then you have to sort out all the
data that matters. This is why curation is the real solution to get meaningful data to your company’s
users. Sure, curation is still a manual process, but now this is million times easier to do than before.

I believe this curation concept is a real game-changer for Adobe Analytics or maybe even
“industry-changer” or does other tools have something similar?
Lets take solid examples:
1) There are out of the box metrics that you can hide and this way you get only meaningful data to
make your analysis.
2) Curation is especially useful for non-analysts / hardcore users. We analysts like to implement all
kind of variables and maybe collect 4 kind of versions for pagenames and use different kind of
variables (props, eVars etc). This is the number one problem for normal users when they want to
use Adobe and they start to search data:
pageName (prop1), pageName (eVar1), pages, pageName (list1), channel+pageName etc.
Might be useful for analysts but very confusing for marketers and users that are not part of the
implementation process. Now we could curate virtual report suite for marketers and give only one
pageName variable that matters -> More users will use data. This was just a small example, but you
got the idea of this concept?
But to whom?
Are you “one man army” for analytics and this way you know everything and control data by
yourself? Ok, maybe in this kind of curation is not needed if you don’t mind having so much “nice
to know” dimensions on your data set.
This is especially great for companies that can’t change their analytics implementation very often
and with the help of curation they could hide dimensions and metrics that are not valid anymore.
You could disable custom dimensions, but you can’t disable out of the box components and that’s
why curation rocks.
This is also great for companies that need to grant access to multiple people to use Adobe Analytics,
but there might be users that aren’t so into analytics and they might have difficulties to understand
and find dimensions and metrics that matters. You as a hardcore analyst can make their life so much
easier by curation report suite and leave only meaningful data. You can even rename components
for better understanding.
Or you might have some analytics users that are developing just one section of the site or are IT
people working on a site speed etc, you could curate different virtual report suites for different
projects and give them meaningful data.
Summary
Nothing to add at this point. Excellent work Adobe Analytics team, bravo!
Summary for Adobe Analytics Fall 2017
Update
October 28, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics

Adobe released big update for Adobe Analytics including some superior new features. This was not
normal monthly update, because it was called fall 2017 update. Usually there are monthly updates
and at least 2 bigger updates within one year. There are lots of new options, fixes and features
which you can see in here, but please note that this link will always include latest updates so content
will change after month. Let’s make a small summary for the biggest and coolest updates:
Virtual report suites for mobile applications
To be honest, did’t even realize that you couldn’t use virtual report suites for Adobe’s mobile
services which is totally separate reporting UI for mobile application (SDK) tracking. Good to have
it available and I’m sure I’m going to use it. There are some things to notice when using these, but
better to read directly from Adobe’s own documentation.
Learn more:
Read more from Adobe’s help section.
Enhanced integration between Audience Manager (AAM) and
Analytics
It is the first productized integration between a Data Management Platform (DMP) and an analytics
engine in the marketplace. Segments are shared from AAM to Analytics in real time, to inform
audience discovery, segmentation, and optimization. Sounds great for Audience Manager users.
Learn more:
Read more from Adobe’s help section. Watch Adobe’s video about this feature.
Server-Side Forwarding Improvements
Server-side forwarding is designed for customers who want to share data from Analytics to other
Experience Cloud Solutions in real time and you no longer need to call Adobe Customer Care to set
it up.
Learn more:
Report Time Processing
Report Time Processing in virtual report suites provides contextual sessionization by changing how
Adobe Analytics calculates mobile visits. Talking about “hacking your data”, another powerful
feature to influence on your analysis.
Learn more:
Component Curation

Virtual Report Suites can be curated to include and exclude components in Workspace. I wasn’t
sure before the video was this the thing I had hoped so much, and yes it is! Bravo! This is a real
game-changer and you can give people “data that matters”. I’m going to write own blog post about
this feature in the near future.
Learn more:
Contribution Analysis Tokens
All customers with Analysis Workspace entitlement can now run full Contribution Analysis a
limited number of times per month. This is a great feature and you can automate your analysis and
“error hunting” etc. However, this was useless if you didn’t have the full access, now let the
analyzing begin! Of course you have limited amounts of tokens to use, so be careful when you want
to use this “little” virtual helper.
Learn more:
Map Visualization
You can visualize location data via IP address (for non-mobile data sets) or you can bring latitude
and longitude data (for customers using the Mobile SDK) to life in Analysis Workspace. Oh the eye
candy, but still very insightful. Works or should I say gives more insights if you are a global
company/brand. Anyway, probably the first feature to show your boss “look at this heat map!”.
Learn more:
Granularity selector for trended visualizations
You can now easily toggle between time granularities when the dimension in the data source is a
time dimension. You can switch granularities from a drop-down in the visualization settings. I
know very basic stuff to be included on analytics tool, but somehow this was the missing part for
the line visualizations and very important one.
Learn more:
Full dimensions & events in segment drop zone
You can now drop a full dimension or event into the segment drop zone. In both cases, Analysis
Workspace will create “exists” hit segments. Bravo, again great feature to make your analysis much
faster without the need to a separate segment
Learn more:

Connected visualizations listed in Data Source Settings
If there are visualizations connected to a freeform or cohort table, the top left dot (Data Source
Settings) will now list the connected visualizations. Hovering will highlight the linked visualization,
and clicking it will take you to it.
Learn more:
Event# added to left-rail event names
Finally! Not a real feature, I would say a bug that is now fixed. If you searched “eVar2” or “prop5”
you got search results including those variables, but you if you searched events as “event1” you
didn’t get any results. Anyway, now fixed and hopefully I don’t get questions anymore about why
there aren’t any events.
Learn more:
Reserved dimensions sorted in logical order by default
The default sort order for some out-of-the-box dimensions has been updated.
Learn more:
Option to allow confidence interval from re-scaling a chart
The Anomaly Detection Confidence interval does not automatically scale the y-axis of a
visualization to potentially make the chart more legible. You now have the option to allow the
confidence interval to scale the chart.
Learn more:
UI Improvements
Lots of small, however, super useful improvements for the user interface in Workspace. Workspace
is powerful tool when you learn to use it and start to understand drag and drop logic, however, for
new users this so called “zero state” aka blank interface might be weird and not sure where to start.
With the help of these new highlights and gif animated guidance Workspace makes much more
sense for new users too. We hardcore users are always shouting “we want more cool features”, but
luckily Adobe is not forgetting new users and this way we get more users to work with Workspace.
Awesome!
Learn more:
Watch Adobe’s video about this feature.

Summary
Absolutely great features to speed up your analysis and important improvements for the usability,
something for all types of users. I have had several ideas how to improve Workspace and this year
many of those ideas and wishes have came true. If I try to think features that I’m still missing, there
are 4 that comes to my mind:
1) Option to add data from multiple report suites to same Workspace project
2) Make search relevance (exact results etc) better when searching components (dimensions, events
etc).
3) Option to exclude reloads from flow report (I believe this is still an issue)
4) Option to share Workspace projects/dashboards publicly -> Users without AA account would be
able to see data on a specific url, this would be a bit different than sending email reports.
Ps. I haven’t used older reports and analytics interface for looooong time, to me Workspace is
nowadays same thing as Adobe Analytics. I just love the idea of Workspace, analysis with full
speed.
Adobe Analytics Update – September 2017
September 24, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: columns, flow, histogram, time-parting,
workspace
Adobe Analytics is getting updates monthly. There are always some minor changes, bug fixes and
usually couple of totally new features or options to play with. Not going to share useful tips and
tricks, hopefully later, but just want write small summary for the biggest new features/options and
share few comments. I write this blog mainly for myself as I have said many times… when you
write things down, you will remember those so much better and that is the reason to write these “not
so insightful” status updates.
Time-parting dimensions in Analysis Workspace
Bye bye getTimeParting plugin and custom hacks, we welcome “out of the box” time-parting
dimensions. I know, not a final death for getTimeParting plugin and other custom hacks, because
these new dimensions are currently working only in Analysis Workspace. I’m confident that Adobe
will make these available for data warehouse (and raw data) feeds and it will save work for data
scientists who are getting these data feeds to play around and the first thing to do is to filter data by
day/date/hour etc.
I’m so happy about this feature. There have been millions of times when I have got questions could
we get to see how are visits divided by hours or weekdays etc. I know, pretty basic stuff, but will
make life so much easier and don’t need to hazzle with plugins and custom codes, at least after
dimensions are available for data feeds too.
Learn more:
My wish list:
– Make dimensions available for the whole AA product (data feeds, report builder…).

– We could make this ourselves using tags (in Workspace search field), but would be great to have
out of the box filter for time-parting dimensions for the search.
Manage multiple columns at once (in freeform tables)
Antti makes a wish, Adobe delivers… New slogan for Adobe Analytics? Well, in my dreams at
least. Anyway, this was one of my most wanted features so big shout out for AA product developer
team for making this available! When you have lots of metrics in the same freeform table it was
very time-consuming to change settings for every metric/column. Now you can choose multiple
columns at once and change settings. Wonderful, one new option to make your analysis and reports
even quicker. Sweeeeet!
Discussions about this: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/8369
Learn more:
My wish list:
– When you add new metric to the table it should have automatically same settings as other
metrics/columns already have.
– Or even better would be to have editable default setting for whole Workspace or for Workspace
project and this way users or at least admins could change default settings, usually I don’t use
percentages etc.
Flow: inter-dimensional labeling
An inter-dimensional flow lets you examine user paths across various dimensions and will give
your flow some additional understanding.
Learn more:
My wish list:
– I believe flow visualizations are still containing all the hits aka reloads and that’s why it is
frustrating that it shows flows like this “homepage” -> “homepage”. Give us option to exclude
browser reloads.
In idea exchange: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/5710
Histogram hit counting method
You can now use a third counting method, “Hit”, as a segment container. “Occurrences” is used as
the y-axis metric in the freeform table.
Learn more:
My wish list:
Damn, I can’t think anything… It’s a wrap!

Workspace – Getting better every month, but “few” more
wishes…
I still have few more “most wanted” ideas on my list, but I guess one by one my wishes comes true.
I would want to have ability to add data from different report suites to the same Workspace
project, Workspace search could have more options and better logic and curation is great idea but
execution is too difficult time-consuming. Anyway, Workspace is still a young product so lets give
it a time to grow and love it that Adobe’s product team is definitely hearing us hardcore users when
making decisions for Workspace features. You can read all my feature wishes in here, but please
note that links might not work since Adobe made a new forum for ideas too.
Ps. you can read all the updated and fixes in here for September 2017.
New data storytelling features in Analysis
Workspace
September 4, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: adobe analytics, data storytelling,
visualizations, workspace
Have been extremely busy after changing my job 5 months ago, but still (in my new job) getting to
play around with sites using Adobe Analytics. I had a few months gap using Workspace, but now
trying to take some time to learn and investigate what kind of updates Workspace has gotten on
Summer. I’m in a new role in my new job and responsibility is the whole digital analytics field in a
very big company going through it’s digital transformation. Anyway, I need to understand how
tools are working when making decisions and best practices to data collection and that’s why I want
play around with Workspace too as much as possible. Boooooriiinggg, ok, sorry, lets move on to
wonderful world of data storytelling in Analysis Workspace.
There hasn’t been big updates but very important small ones. I believe many updates has one
common theme and that is “data storytelling”. Workspace itself is a great template to share analytics
insights and make a story about the project through data. Now these kind of data storytelling
features have gotten some nice updates and those will make sure you get to shine your stories in
Workspace.
Rich Text Editor
There has been “text” visualization for a long time and you have been able to add text to your
project. Why text? Shouldn’t we just report numbers? Surely, the main character is Mr. Number,
but without a good story line it’s hard to understand Mr. Number. There are so many ways to
interpret numbers and when product owner / marketing manager / CEO gets your report they might
be overwhelmed about the data… is this metric populated every time or only once per visit? How
are conversion percentages counted, by visits or visitos or ID numbers? With text you can add
detailed descriptions about your dimensions and metrics. This way you make sure your report and

data story is interpret correctly. You can even add disclaimers if you know that for some reason data
isn’t valid for X period or whatever.
Anyway, before the text format had always been the same and it didn’t look very good or was bit
hard to read and understand what was the most important explanation etc. Now, with the help of
rich text editor we can shine and add some “effects” to our story line. You can even add links and
that way you could point the exact location/page where this data is collected. Detailed video about
this feature on Youtube: Rich Text Editor in Analysis Workspace
Next step could be to add color customatization and give options to make reports for your
company’s own brand etc. There are already some discussions and here is one to
follow https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/9592
Intra-linking
Talking about linking, how about intra-linking aka in-project linking. *Say LINKING one more time
and I swear I’m going to…* Sorry, got your point, just can’t help myself, I used to be SEO
consultant. This feature gives you an option to directly link to certain panel or visualization. For
example, you could create tables of contents and make sure people are finding the data they are
looking for. You can also do cross-project linking meaning you could add link to another
Workspace project. This is great, because you shouldn’t do too long movie Workspace projects.
Perfect, now you can skip some scenes and go directly to parts you want to see. And the Oscar goes
to…. Mr. Number!
Detailed video about this feature on Youtube: Intra-linking in Analysis Workspace
Managing Visualization Data Sources
I have always loved Workspace and have learned it quite easily, but there was one exception that I
struggled with some time, and that was managing data sources with different visualizations. After
all, when I learned how it worked, it still felt bit (ok, way too) complicated. I’m sure Adobe has got
some feedback about it and now it’s updated and works totally differently. To be honest, I haven’t
play around with it much, but seems like the update is good based on the video. Now so much
easier to understand and manageable. Now there are also detailed explanations about different
settings. Looks great and see the video to learn more. Detailed video about this feature on Youtube:
Managing Visualization Data Sources in Analysis Workspace
Series Label Editing
Small, but nice to have feature which you can use to edit labels on any visualization. Give your
story a detailed meaning with labels everyone can understand.
Detailed video about this feature on Youtube: Series Label Editing in Analysis Workspace
Additional information
Did you know, nowadays, you can also rename metrics/dimensions on the fallout visualizations too
and you can now disable truncation (of the names) on flow report. All good features to make your
data stories better.

You should also check Eric’s video about data visualization with Analysis Workspace and you can
learn what kind of visualizations you can add to your data story at the moment. I’m sure there will
be new visualizations added in the future and hopefully static funnel (nowadays just fallout) is
going to be one of those.
Brent Dykes had interesting talk about data storytelling on Adobe Summit few years ago. Check his
old but still valid site/book about this topic.
Adobe Analytics calculated metrics just got
even better with dimensions aka internal
segments
August 20, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: adobe analytics
Segmentation and calculated metrics are two most powerful features in Adobe Analytics. I thought
Adobe can’t make calculated metrics any better, but I was wrong. There actually have been one
minor irritating thing when you have to use segmentation in calculated metrics. This kind of
possibility (using segment in calculated metric) is of course superior feature which is lacking from
many other analytics tool (at least back in the days).
However, when you have to build segment and only purpose is to use it on calculated metric – this
is just ok, but the irritating part is that this segment is automatically also new individual segment on
your segmentation list. This way you get bunch new segments without any purpose, because you
just want to use these segments “inside” calculated metrics. I have so many duplicated segments
because of this. Well, those days are over thanks to this week’s Adobe Analytics release which
added this and few other cool small features.
And talking about the workflow how you do it. You don’t have to go to another page to make
segments, you can do these on the fly when creating new calculated metric, sweet! If we want to be
precise these aren’t really segments at the moment, these are more like adding dimension with some
value to calculated metric, but I assume adding one dimension is going to cover your needs about
95% times.
Too lazy to start taking any screenshots and show the detailed way how to use these, because easier
way to learn is to just watch Adobe’s own video about this: Using Dimensions in Calculated
Metrics
Other details about calculated metrics in Adobe’s help section:
https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/analytics/calcmetrics/cm_build_metrics.html
We have talked lots about how we could clean unnecessary segments from Adobe Analytics. This
feature is not about cleaning, but helps a lot that we don’t get unnecessary segments anymore when
building calculated metrics with dimension/segment.
Just can’t decide good name for this one… just dimension in calculated metrics? Internal segments?
In-house segments? In-person segments? Insider dimensions? Well, lovely baby feature have many

names! How can such a small feature make me so happy, hopefully we share the exciment with this
new “small category” feature. Happy calculating time!
Approximate count distinct function in Adobe
Analytics calculated metrics
August 20, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: adobe analytics
How many unique values is included in one dimension? If you have possibility to collect data for
e.g. unique logged-in visitors with anonymous ID, you might want to see how many different ID
numbers you had last week aka how many real visitors you had logged-in. Out ouf the box metric
“unique visitors” is really just “unique browsers” and nothing more. Nowadays, when there are so
many browsers and devices available should we try to change that metric to “unique browsers”?
Well, that’s another story. Back to this new count function in Adobe Analytics.
Before this new function you could check unique values by just going to the last page of the ID
report and see how many rows there is. You could also use “row count” function and get unique
values reported in the first page of ID report. So there has been many ways to find out unique values
before, so what is this new “approximate count distinct function”? With this one you can add this as
a new metric to any other (dimension) report, this wasn’t possible before. Let’s take example and
you will get the idea:
Image source:
https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/analytics/calcmetrics/count-distinct-metric.html
Oh yes, now you get the idea. You can really start to investigate by real customers or logged-in
users or whatever you want to measure based on different values. Again, there is great detailed
video by Adobe and you can see how exactly you can build this kind of calculated metric. There is
also offical help documentation available for approximate count distinct (dimension).
Note: Like Count() and RowCount(), Approximate Count Distinct() is subject to “uniques
exceeded” limits. If the “uniques exceeded” limit is reached within a particular month for a
dimension, the value is counted as 1 dimension item.
Oh wait, that’s not all folks!
This is like a TV Shop, you get lots more with count distinct function.

How about doing some quality checking with this one? Let’s say you have eVar1 variable for
different sections on your site. You have stated for coders that this value should be only “home”,
“search” or “profile”. Somebody makes a mistake and you get 4 different values for this eVar1
variable. With the help of this function you could do some kind of quality report and see are there
unexpected amount of values for different custom variables and you could fix those ASAP. (Thanks
for this idea to Urs!) Btw, it would be great if you could do alert for this one e.g. “if eVar1 is lower
or higher than 3 then send email alert”. And I guess we can, since you can use calculated metrics (or
segments with functions) in alerts too. However, this isn’t so easy as it sounds. Will have to
investigate more and will give some examples later on if I find the time…
With older row count it was hard or probably impossible to do trended view for unique values, but
now with this new magical calculated metric function even that is possible now. Bada boom!
I’m sure there are some other cool calculations you could do, share if you know.
Most wanted Analysis Workspace ideas –
Promote and make Workspace even better!
March 28, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: feature request, idea exchange
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2017: please note that links might not work since Adobe made a new
forum for ideas.
Most wanted? Ok, let’s be honest, I meant my favorite ones.
I went through dozens of ideas for Adobe Analytics in Adobe’s idea exchange, the place where you
can do feature requests for Adobe Analytics and others can promote (and comment) your ideas. You
have to login to idea exchange. Adobe’s product owners are very closely monitoring ideas, so
please promote and/or comment if you want to contribute and make new features happen. YES, WE
CAN, PROMOTE! Here are my favorite ideas from idea exchange. Very strange, those tend to be
my own ideas, no wonder those are so good!? Well, there are other good ideas too. Please
promote these or do your own ideas. Nowadays, pretty much every idea is for Analysis Workspace,
because it is the future of Adobe Analytics.
These aren’t in no particular order, tried to filter these to different sections based on the “main
feature”. And I know, surely there are some ideas for totally new features how we would want to
explore data and do all kinds new ways to visualize data. However, I would hope that Adobe would
focus to make every single feature perfect that exists now and give more options to change some
settings, before they try to push more totally new features… but there are few important expections.
Comparison
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2017: please note that links might not work since Adobe made a new
forum for ideas.

Workspace: Comparison column for metrics with time range
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspace-Comparison-column-for-
metrics-with-time-range/idi-p/16371
Workspace: Comparison column with difference of numbers
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspace-Comparison-column-with-
difference-of-numbers/idi-p/16372
UPDATE: NOT DONE 4.3.2018
Settings
Make some settings (icons) visible in Analysis Workspace or option to adjust visibility of those
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Make-some-settings-icons-visible-in-
Analysis-Workspace-or-option/idi-p/16336
NEW URL: https://forums.adobe.com/ideas/9120
Workspace: Add support to change settings with one click to all columns and panels
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspace-Add-support-to-change-
settings-with-one-click-to-all/idi-p/15448
My additional comment: HOT! MOST WANTED! WE NEED THIS ASAP! 🙂
Workspace: Breakdown by position should be turned on as default
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspace-breakdown-by-position-should-
be-turned-on-as-default/idc-p/16370
My additional comments: If true, then this is a real problem. IMHO.
Visualizations
Analysis Workspace: Multiple visualizations, lock selected positions, same source table
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Analysis-Workspace-Multiple-
visualizations-lock-selected/idi-p/15143
Ability to change view from Instances to Page Views in Workspace Flow
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Ability-to-change-view-from-Instances-to-
Page-Views-in-Workspace/idi-p/15922
UPDATE: NOT DONE 4.3.2018 ?
Analysis Workspace: Flow visualizations, exclude reloads
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Analysis-Workspace-Flow-visualizations-
exclude-reloads/idi-p/15936
Analysis Workspace: Text Expansion/ Text Wrapping for Flow reports
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Analysis-Workspace-Text-Expansion-Text-
Wrapping-for-Flow-reports/idc-p/16271
Workspace trend lines should be build based on panel’s date range
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspace-trend-lines-should-be-build-

based-on-panel-s-date/idi-p/15346
Analysis Workspace – Save Visualization to reuse
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Analysis-Workspace-Save-Visualization-to-
reuse/idc-p/16272
My additional comment: or just the ability to copy/transfer panels between workspaces would be
useful!
Search
Allow “event” filters in Metrics menus
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Allow-quot-event-quot-filters-in-Metrics-
menus/idi-p/14568
Workspace: Add option to filter search results by eVar/prop/event numbers
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspace-Add-option-to-filter-search-
results-by-eVar-prop-event/idi-p/16342
Workspace: Add option to search only from one report suite
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspace-Add-option-to-search-only-
from-one-report-suite/idi-p/16343
Workspace: Add option to filter search results alphabetically
results-alphabetically/idi-p/16341
Workspace: Add option to filter search results with only custom variables vs. default variables
results-with-only-custom/idi-p/16340
Workspace: adjust search relevance or make exact match also available
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspace-adjust-search-relevance-or-
make-exact-match-also/idi-p/16339
Adobe Analytics: Give option to hide eVar and prop related instances metrics
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Adobe-Analytics-Give-option-to-hide-eVar-
and-prop-related/idi-p/16338
Curation, cleaning & tagging
Understand where segments and calculated metrics are used – to clean up without breaking
anything

http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Understand-where-segments-and-
calculated-metrics-are-used-to/idi-p/10579
Workspace: protect tags
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspace-protect-tags/idi-p/16360
Workspace: Give admins better options to manage different tags
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspace-Give-admins-better-options-to-
manage-different-tags/idi-p/16337
Analysis Workspace: Curate report suites
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Analysis-Workspace-Curate-report-
suites/idi-p/15812
My additional comment: Curation is great feature, but way too time-consuming to do at the
moment, maybe curation of report suites could be the answer and not curation of projects? No
matter, can we curate projects or report suites -> This needs to be possible to do much easier and
faster then nowadays, although, tagging is some kind of answer for this one… but even tagging
process could be better as you can see from the above idea.
Styles
Analysis Workspace: Compact Report Stylesheet
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Analysis-Workspace-Compact-Report-
Stylesheet/idi-p/16249
Totally new features
Multiple report suites for Analysis Workspace
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Multiple-report-suites-for-Analysis-
Workspace/idi-p/14301
http://ideas.omniture.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-for-Adobe/Workspaces-Publish-to-web-or-embed-
option/idi-p/16179
Workspaces: Publish to web or embed option
Adobe Analytics cheat sheet – Best resources
to master Adobe Analytics, including
Workspace & DTM
March 2, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics

Spoiler alert: There is no magical shortcut key, however, I’m going to reveal all my top resources I
have used in my over 5 year Adobe Analytics journey.
Intro
On January 2012, after changing from SEO consulting job to new company as in-house Web
Analyst I started using Adobe Analytics. To be honest, at first I didn’t like the tool, but loved the
opportunity to learn something new after using Google Analytics many years. At first, it felt like I
was always just pulling data from data warehouse and tried to do everything on Excel and so on.
Soon I started to understand power and flexibility of custom dashboards and pulling data from
different report suites was cool. Struggled with only one breakdown and 5 trended line limitations,
but loved marketing channels, segmentations and calculated metrics.
Nowadays, the real game-changer for Adobe has been Workspace “interface” which gives you
ability to do analysis with full speed and reporting limitations are gone, I mean Gone Baby Gone.
There you have it, my over 5 year journey with Adobe Analytics with less than 5 sentences and
small introduction for this Adobe Analytics cheat sheet.
After using Adobe Analytics almost two years I decided to share my best resources (links, tips,
tricks, videos, books, forums etc) and I wrote a blog post “new to Adobe Analytics aka
SiteCatalyst? The ultimate (cheat) list of resources, help and people to follow”. It has been my most
read blog post and I’m sure new Adobe Analytics users have searched information from search
engines how to learn to use Adobe’s tool and where to find more insightful Adobe tips. Since then,
lots of has changed and new resources are available.
That’s why I decided to make totally new cheat sheet to master Adobe Analytics. Includes
something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. You are also welcome
to comment and share good resources you have found useful. Thanks.
Contributors & sources for Adobe Analytics
My favorite places to get valuable Adobe Analytics information. You can surely use Google to find
out Adobe Analytics blogs and contributors, but want to share my favorite blogs/sites that are
containing more than one article about Adobe Analytics. If you really want to master Adobe
Analytics you need to follow these. Bookmark to your browser.
I’m sure you already know Adobe’s official help documentation where you can find all Adobe
related documentations, starting from training programs to release notes, including links to Youtube
videos, developer connection and to idea exchange where you can make feature requests to Adobe’s
tools. There is also API Explorer available to learn API magic. However, everyone can easily find
Adobe’s links, so in my cheat sheet I’m going to focus to contributors and sources outside of
Adobe.
Adam Greco at Web Analytics Demystified is amazing. Every single article about Adobe Analytics
by Adam is so useful, advanced level tricks and tips how can make the most out of AA.
Jan Exner is sharing very advanced technical tips at his blog web analytics for developers,
especially good stuff from technical perspective to AA and DTM users.

Lukas Oldenburg at Webanalyticsworld.net is very experienced with AA, one of my favorite post is
Marketing Cost per Channel is Harder Than You Think (Google and Adobe Analytics)
You should follow Jenn’s blog if you are DTM enthusiast, detailed tips and tricks for DTM.
Randy Floyd Jr is starting to blog again and I’m sure he will also share some nice Adobe Analytics
learnings, no pressure.
33 Sticks analytics boutique is blogging quite often about Adobe Analytics and DTM.
Digital Balance is another great agency source that shares AA wisdom every now and then.
Observepoint is well-know Adobe partner and they are doing tag auditions and sometimes blogging
about Adobe Analytics and DTM.
Stack Overflow is a community of 6.7 million programmers, just like you, helping each other. I
was amazed how much discussions and help is available also for Adobe Analytics implementations.
DAA’s Digital Analytics Cookbook is source for good analytics recipes.
Analytics Playbook is yet another “sharing platform” for analytics related stuff, includes good tips
especially for R language and DTM.
Analysis Workspace
Workspace is so cool, that have to give own section to it. My favorite blog posts about Analysis
Workspace. Read these and you understand what is all the buzz around Workspace, and why you
should stop using the older interface and move to Workspace.
Analysis Workspace – The future is here by Adam Greco
10 Reasons to Adopt Adobe Analytics Analysis Workspace by Brad Millett
What is Analysis Workspace inside Adobe Analytics? by Antti Koski
There surely are other good posts available that are sharing Workspace tips and tricks, however, I
wanted to focus to WHY you should start using Workspace.
Best place to really learn every detail of Workspace is Adobe’s Youtube channel just for
Workspace videos. Have to give direct link to one of my favorite video that was recently added, it is
using cross-tab analysis to explore basic marketing attribution by Jen Lasser. You should also
follow Adobe’s official Adobe Analysis Workspace Product Documentation to learn all the features
and get latest updates for the tool.
Bonus video: Become an Adobe Analytics Master from Analytics Summit 2016 by Eric Matisoff
DTM aka Dynamic Tag Management

Every blog about Adobe Analytics is usually including also posts about Dynamic Tag Management,
and that’s why read and bookmark all possible AA blogs. Anyway, I want to share few specific
DTM resources that are going to help you a lot… talking about cheat sheets, these are so great.
Dynamic Tag Manager (DTM) cheat sheet by Jim Gordon
DTM refence tools by Jenn Kunz. You should follow Jenn’s blog if you are DTM enthusiast.
Not just for DTM, but DTM related and other good stuff for debugging:
Inofficial Adobe Marketing Cloud Debugging cheat sheet by Jan Exner and related post. Jan is also
blogging lots about DTM.
Digital Balance has some nice DTM posts, one of my favorite one is page path rule conditions.
Search Discovery, creators of Satellite TMS (now Adobe DTM), are sharing some basic knowledge
how DTM works, look Q&A section especially.
If you are using DTM, you just can’t use it without Tagtician, test it and you surely are going to
love it. Makes your DTM debugging etc so much easier. Perfect companion for Adobe’s Dynamic
Tag Management. You can also find valuable information about Tagtician and DTM directly from
Jim’s blog.
You can find more DTM tools and beguggers below.
Your toolbox for testing & debugging
You can test and debug without any additional tools by using browser’s developer tools or
something similar. However, testing is easier with different plugins and I will list the one I know
and have used. Test and choose the one you like.
• Adobe Experience Cloud Debugger by Adobe
• Adobe Analytics Debugger by Tomas Balciunas
• Official Adobe Marketing Cloud Pulse
• Tagtician to debug even rules and view/export entire tracking libraries by Tagtician.com
(Wow!)
• Observepoint Tag Debugger adds a new tab in the Chrome developer tools to enable quick
finding and detailed viewing of analytics tags
• Debug DTM easily on console and switch between production and staging libraries with
DTM Switch plugin for Chrome & DTM Switch add-on for Firefox by Search Discovery.
Jan has great detailed post about debugging if you want to learn more.
With Firefox I love to use Httpfox add-on, which is just showing all http(s) calls and you have to
filter to only see Adobe’s hit, so will need some manual work, but still loving the simplified
interface to look what data is sent, I can also easily check other analytics hits for other tools.
If you are not using DTM and maybe hosting Adobe’s script on a server where you have access to
edit the file any time, then I would suggest to use Charles Proxy Tool and with the help of that you
could e.g. map your script to your own computer and test your new scripts like it was on a site, and

only when you are sure that your new edits/scripts are working then you could update the script
changes to server without need to worry if something goes wrong.
Adobe Analytics in social media
On Twitter follow hashtags #AdobeAnalytics, #AnalysisWorkspace and #AdobeDTM and you
should get about 99% coverage on all that matters. There are of course different variations people
like to use, and some might even use older #SiteCatalyst hashtag. You can also find Adobe related
stuff with #Measure hashtag, but there will be lots of other topics, but I guess every Analyst should
also follow that one too.
There are lots of people sharing Adobe releated tweets, you surely are going to find them by
following those hashtags, but still I want to share few people/sources to follow:
• Adobe Marketing Cloud
• Adobe Analytics
• Adobe MarketingCare
• Ben Gaines
• Jen Lasser
• Jacob Brewer
• Rudi Shumpert
• Adam Greco
• Jennifer Kunz
• Jan Exner
• Lukas Oldenburg
• Till Buettner
• Brandon George
Ok, I’ll stop before it goes too long, but wanted to share few accounts from my “stalker list”.
Nothing much happening on other social media platforms, but you should continue to read and look
the tips for discussion forums etc.
Forums – Q&A, or chat with other users
Naturally, Adobe’s own forums are good places to ask help and share your own knowledge. There
are three different sections you can use for Analytics stuff:
• General Adobe Analytics
• Workspace
• DTM
Slack is discussion application and there you can also find measure community with multiple
channels, there is also very active channels for #adobe-analytics and #adobe-dtm. Highly
recommend to join. Slack is maybe more for networking, changing ideas and good channel to give
direct feedback to even Adobe’s product managers. However, you might also get very detailed help
from other Adobe users if you are having specific Adobe problem or want other opinions what you
could do on different situations. Sometimes discussions move fast and you can’t get detailed answer
always, so maybe better to start with forums if you want to “spam” detailed questions including

codes all the time. Adam wrote more detailed post about #measure Slack community if you want to
know more before joining.
There have been some Google+ and LinkedIn groups, but with very few people and far from active
discussions.
Additional tools
Additional tools to consider on your path to master Adobe Marketing Cloud and especally taking
the next steps with Adobe Analytics. Will try not to spam millions of links from the same topic, but
want to share few of my favorite resources that are somehow related to my analytics career with
Adobe.
Want to share Adobe data on office screens or make independent dashboad tool? Klipfolio is my
choice and of course includes support for Adobe API connection. Btw, this is cool video how to
learn to do API requests with the help of Report Builder.
Say “arrrrrr” if you want to bit show off and do something cool with Adobe data without Adobe’s
own tool. Nowadays, R language is hot topic among Analysts. Again, with the help of Jan post I did
my first setup to pull some data with R packages, yes, there is even packet available to pull Adobe
data, thanks to Randy. You should also check fantastic dartistics.com. If you want to learn more,
join Slack Measure and to channel #r-and-statistics where you can find R superstars.
I’m not using, but if you are in a big organization and doing lots of campaign tracking then you
should check trackingfirst.com and investigate would that be helpful tool to manage and test
campaign codes.
Outro
Did my list include every single source, no and that was not the point, but if you are quite new with
Adobe Analytics or DTM and you want to learn more and know the best sources and people to
follow then my Adobe Analytics cheat sheet should be great source of information and I probably
saved you lots of Googling and headache to search topnotch Adobe Analytics information. Again, I
wrote this mainly to myself, I’m sure in the future I’m go look this post many times when I wonder
where was the DTM cheat sheet or whatever. Will see if I’m going to update this post or maybe do
another new cheat sheet when new sources arise from the dust. You are welcome to comment and
share if I missed some good sources, or hit the happy face below if this post was helpful for you.
Cheers.
Analysis Workspace: How to use breakdown
by position feature
February 18, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: breakdown, workspace
I feel so stupid that I had to make a blog post about this small new feature. There was update on
Thursday for Adobe Marketing Cloud and release notes said that we are going to be able to

breakdown by position. Directly from Adobes notes: You can perform breakdowns based on a fixed
location in a Freeform table. Somehow I was able to understand that totally wrong.
Without any testing I started a discussion on Slack:
Glad to see we can now do breakdowns by position in Workspace. To be honest, I probably
assumed that breakdowns were always automatically breakdown by position when time moved on,
but that was not the case. This setting is disabled by default and we have to remember to click it
every time. I don’t understand why this isn’t enabled by default. Aren’t we “always” trying to
breakdown by position, to me it sounds it should be the default way. If I want to breakdown by e.g.
certain page I can always then filter that. What do you think about this? I guess this goes again to
discussion about should every user have the option to change DEFAULT settings for whole project.
Any comments?
Do you know what was the common response to my question? It was silence, it was like Depeche
Mode song “Enjoy the silence”. No comments, none, njet, zero… Luckily, it was Friday so
probably everyone I assumed I was drunk at work or something like that and no one wanted to start
a fight.
The *light bulb* moment
Thanks to Ben Gaines and his great Workspace videos, see the “breakdown by position feature”
video in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DPY__RMnvc and with the help of that I
realized “AH! It meant that and now I get it why it is disabled by default, makes totally sense!”
Seek and destroy choose the right setting icon
Even after watching Ben’s video and testing it myself, I though there was something wrong because
it didn’t work as expected. Soon I realized I was clicking wrong icon. I’ll share screenshot and this
way it is easier to explain.

I always wanted to breakdown by position 8 for page name variable. At first I tried to enable this
setting in the row 8 and using that last touch channel dimension, but it would work only for that
dimension. If I wanted the breakdown for page name to work, then I had to click the setting icon at
the top. So be accurate what dimension you need to enable and choose the right setting icon.
At first, I thought this new feature would somehow affect (in my example) to that last touch channel
dimension and that wouldn’t automatically update when date is changed, but that surely was not the
case and thank God for that. So, also in the future every breakdown ITSELF is always automatically
updated based on the (top) data. Just a stupid user mistake, well not a mistake, just can’t read?
Nothing new, let’s move on and fail fast in the future too…
Adobe offers more detailed information about this feature, just read properly.
https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/analytics/analysis-workspace/table-settings.html
Hopefylly this blog post gets lots of “Amused” clicks on the below.
Adobe Analytics custom link tracking (by
default with some browsers) is not counting all
the hits when moving to another page on same
tab
February 1, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: link tracking, linkTrackVars
First of all, I know you hardcore users already know this old issue, but there might be new Analysts
and since we did a little experiment, I want to share the results by writing a small blog post about
this.
We wanted to investigate is every single hit sent to Adobe’s server when visitors click on a link that
forwards to another page on the same browser tab. Originally this idea came from coder who
wasn’t too happy what he saw when debugging some custom link tracking. I knew already that
there have been some discussions around this topic for many years that sometimes the analytics hit
doesn’t have enough time to populate because browser moves user to another page on the same tab.
I assumed this data loss would be very minimum and also I wasn’t really concerned because all of
these hits were “nice to know” metrics.
How to investigate the data loss and/or get a detour for this problem? You can make a segment
where visits goes from page X to page Y and that way you can compare the results with that
segment using page views vs link clicks with default link tracking. I’m sure you get the idea? Of
course if user clicks on a link and then immediately closes browser or clicks back button etc then
you might get link click but that wouldn’t be counted on the segment because page Y never loaded.
I know, data is never 100% accurate, we all have to deal with it.
What is causing this link tracking problem? Maybe slow internet connection or is it a browser
issue? We wanted to test this and that’s why we hardcoded two different tracking methods for
custom link tracking.

1) Default link tracking by Adobe, populated asap when link is clicked.
2) Default link tracking by Adobe, but hit information is saved to browser’s local storage and
populated on the next page view. This way hit isn’t terminated when browser is moved to another
page, because hit is populated after page Y is loaded. This way we get all the hits counted! Note:
Information is saved for long period of times and if user terminates browser after the link hit and
page is not loaded then this hit is populated next time user comes to the site, so we surely will get
the hit if user returns. However, if you look pages where this hit has been populated then you might
get some strange pages that are not including the link itself. I know, every time there is a detour,
there is also new thing to pay attention.
Our results for the test
Data for 1 month.
58,000 hits with default tracking and with our “local storage” method we got 69,000 hits. Yep, the
difference was much bigger than I assumed. Any test is not 100% perfect, there are many things
that can affect starting from where the coding is done (hardcoded to site, on s_code script, using
DTM etc). Anyway, with these results there is surely some data loss if using default tracking
methods. But what is the reason, is it on all browsers or what?
If we look results with different browsers:
Now it goes interesting. Amount of hits is pretty much same with browsers from Google, Microsoft,
Samsung and Opera. There are two top manufactures that are showing this tracking issue. Mozilla
(Firefox) and Apple (Safari). Both are losing almost half of the clicks with default tracking method.
I guess those two browsers are handling http(s) request differently when moving to another page or
something like that.
Adobe’s solution
Surely Adobe has something to offer for this problem? Yes, looks like so. Although, I haven’t still
got results is this 100% perfect. I guess it should be, but of course there is a fine line to balance with
analytics tracking and making visitors to wait link to work etc. Every millisecond is important as
Adobe stated on one Summit.
Read more from Adobe’s help documentations:
Manual Link Tracking Using Custom Link Code
The s.tl() Function – Link Tracking
So what?
To be honest, again blog post or should I say memo is just for myself. After writing this, I’m sure I
will never forget this one either. For you, my fellow Analyst, if these kind of custom hits are
important KPI metrics for you then please make sure you are tracking those correctly, no matter
what your solution to the problem might be. And again great reminder why data is never ever 100%
accurate, keep calm and carry on.
Please share if you know something about this issue that I didn’t, but I believe Adobe’s help
documentation makes sense and will help to fight this issue.

How to use Analysis Workspace projects with
full speed without slowness
January 21, 2017 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: projects, speed, workspace
Workspace is superfast to pull data, but maybe your browser (or internet connection) is not fast.
Workspace is awesome because you can continue to analyze without the need from moving to
another report etc in the middle of your thinking process. However, if you have dozens of tables and
visualizations on your Workspace project then it can get pretty slow due to
browser/connection/memory limitations. I would also like to challenge you that your not doing right
things if you have that kind of “data vomit”. Of course I can understand that from ad hoc
perspective you can have big projects, but here are my tips to make project sizes reasonable. This
should be quite no-brainer, but these ideas got likes on other discussion and that’s why I want to
share.
1. Make KPI project for all your most important metrics (scheduled)
2. Make Deep project for all your “nice to know” metrics (scheduled)
3. Make third project just for ad hoc stuff that you are not going to schedule, and when you start to
have too much stuff on one project, make a new one if you don’t want to delete ad hoc stuff.
4. Maybe fourth just to test new Workspace features
This way it is also easy to search projects by “kpi” or “deep” words etc, if you also name projects
like that, e.g. “Anttikoski.fi – Weekly KPI” or something.
Well, you get the idea. Don’t try to put too much data and visualizations on to same project. With
old dashboards I usually did separate weekly and monthly dashboards, but now with Workspace it
is so easy to use just one dashboard/project with different time dimensions. But again, don’t make
too big projects and even from reporting point of view, no one has time to read long reports.
5. Use workspace in browser that is free from all other important stuff as Twitter and Slack etc.
I use chrome just for Workspace and firefox for normal browsing etc. This way other content/tabs
won’t strain your “Workspace browser”.
Bonus tip: Remember that you can collapse your Workspace panels (right-click on panel’s header).
This way you can focus with speed just on the panel you are analyzing, especially good tip with
bigger ad hoc projects.
Tip in plain simple sentence: limit the size of your Workspace projects!
How to step up your game to learn analytics
implementations and debugging
January 10, 2017 Categories: Analytics Tags: dom, implemantation, javascript

One question I get asked time to time goes something like this “I’m Web Analyst and good doing
lots of things with collected data, but I lack the skill for implementing and debugging analytics
codes on the site, how could I take the next step to learn more about technical analytics stuff?”. I
have been in this situation (and still learning all the time!), so I might have some tips and tricks to
share. I have always given some short answer, but promised to write a blog post about this topic
with more detailed tips, here we go.
Nowadays, my experience is that it would be difficult to make reports and give insights with
analytics codes that you haven’t implemented yourself or at least haven’t done some debugging and
find out can you trust the collected data. When you can trust your implementation process and data,
after that you can have the right confidence to make insights based on data. Real audition for data
would include much more steps, starting from cleaning your data from bots etc, but let’s not focus
on that at this post.
I have some common tips, but some are only Adobe Analytics related, because usually analyst who
have asked this question are using Adobe Analytics. Since you are Analyst, I assume you have basic
knowledge of html coding and css styles.
1) Learn to make tagging map aka solution design requirements for analytics tool
I’m lucky and I have very experienced coders hardcoding analytics variables to the site, but they
might have very little experience how and what to track for Adobe Analytics. It is my responsibility
to do and manage tagging documentation that I give to coders and they implement the things I need.
This is probably the best first step to master analytics implementations, because you have to learn
and understand how to collect data for the tool you are using, but without need to worry about the
complexity of your site how to really implement the codes on the site that could be full of javascript
codes etc. Read more how to do “tagging documentation“.
2) Learn to validate analytics codes on your site or as we analyst like to call it, it’s time for
debugging.
Even if you have superior coders implementing your analytics codes, don’t believe when they say
“done”. It is your responsibility to make sure that everything is implemented correctly. Your
superior coders are human and they make mistakes, or maybe they didn’t understand your tagging
instructions or they might interprut something totally wrong because they might not have the basic
understanding of your analytics tools. And no matter who makes implementation, even if it is
already you, then you still need to double-check everything with debugging process. Even if you
don’t have coding skills at all, you can still use easy browser tools to validate your analytics codes.
Usually every browser has “developer tools” or you can download some plugin to help with
debugging process. I personally use Firebug for finding errors and httpfox for checking what is sent
to my analytics tool. If something is wrong and you are not getting the data you wanted, then
discuss with your coders about the issues you found. If you are chrome lover, then you could do
everything with Chrome’s default developers tools. Again, I’m not going to write too detailed
process for debugging, but hopefully you get started with these tips.
If you are old school like me and using e.g. Adobe Analytics s_code script on your own server and
not using any TMS tools, then your favorite tool could be Charles Proxy Tool. Charles is an HTTP
proxy / HTTP monitor / Reverse Proxy that enables a developer to view all of the HTTP and SSL /
HTTPS traffic between their machine and the Internet. Using Charles you could “map” your s_code

file to our own computer and safefully test different javascript hacks or whatever before updating
changes to your real site. This goes bit off-topic, but you should check this tool.
3) Explore Document Objet Model – and learn to save data to analytics variables using DOM
on the browser
DOM, say what? Read more on Wikipedia.
If you are not comfortable enough to dive directly to the world of hardcore javascript, then DOM is
easy place to start. I guess the line between DOM and javascript is quite thin, because you can use
DOM in javascript to capture different data to your analytics variables. Anyway, it is much easier to
just open firebug or dev tools and start to investigate and play around with different DOM “objects”
on your page. This way you get the simplest ideas how to collect data to your analytics tool just
using DOM, e.g. small example would be to type “document.location.href” on to console and it
gives you url-address and you could save that to your page name variable.
Web is full of information about DOM, but one of my favorite one is DOM Enlightenment.
4) Not about money, but it’s all about JavaScript
Variables, data layers, objects, and don’t get me started about tag management systems! Somehow
everything seems to be releated to javascript. If you really want to master analytics debuggins and
implementations, you need start to learn javascript. The rise of TMS tools have given more
possibilities to us analysts to get involved more on implementing analytics taggings on our site and
always better to code everything yourself and not to wait when the hardcoder coders have the time.
I’m not going to start discussion about the responsibility you also have when you have got more
rights to do pretty much anything on your site, that would be another post.
Thanks to Simo Ahava, I don’t have to write too detailed stuff about javascript. Here is a link to
very good post written by Simo: 10 JavaScript Concepts For Web Analytics Implementation. I
prefer codecademy.com which is awesome place to start to learn javascript, I have also bought few
books, but at least me, I learn by doing and that’s why these free online courses are awesome!
If you are using Adobe’s tools and want to learn more technical stuff related to Adobe dynamic tag
management and Adobe Analytics then Jan’s website webanalyticsfordevelopers.com is your new
favorite blog.
There are other good niche blogs about javascript, but if you just want to use one website to ask and
learn, Stack Overflow is the place to be. Stack Overflow is a community of 6.5 million
programmers, just like you, helping each other. There is even lots of available for Adobe related
products, which was nice surprise.
Want to get famialiar with other analysts? Measure Slack has different channels where you can
discuss almost about anything related to analytics, join in here: http://join.measure.chat/
5) Sounds good, but how to really get started?
The first step is always the hardest one. You can’t take any risks with your company site, so best tip
I can share is to start your own blog/site. You don’t have to really write anything, except few silly
articles or pages and there you have it, your own playground to test your tools and new
implementation and debugging skills. With company sites it is risky to start testing your first

javascript codings etc, but with your own site you can do anything without any risks. The next step
would be to implement your learnings to small company site which doesn’t have much real business
impact and this way you can build your skills before you have the confidence to raise your hand
when boss asks “who wants to make javascript changes to our bank’s website?”.
Find a mentor, maybe some colleague/boss/coder who has better technical knowledge. If this is not
possible, then start to follow and discuss with people that has the right knowledge you want to
learn.
Just do it. I and I’m sure you will also learn just by doing. If you don’t want to ask any help, go to
codeacademy.com and start to learn.
Are you feeling that this sounds bit too much? Let me tell you, I’m far from excellent when it
comes to javascript coding or anything API related or any technical stuff, however, I’m damn
curious and I hate if I don’t know or understand something. With the power of passion towards
analytics, I have learned a lot, just by investigating, testing stuff myself and always asking and
searching answers to questions that I don’t know the asnwer. Be passionate whatever you doing,
you will learn, even to manipulate DOM and coding javascript.
My blog in year 2016
December 29, 2016 Categories: General Tags: 2016, analytics, blog
Small review about my blog for the year 2016. Thanks Jan for this idea.
TRAFFIC
10700 page views, 7800 visits and 5700 unique visitors.
I tend to test all kinds of analytics hacks with my blog, so there might be days when tracking hasn’t
been working properly or at all.
TRAFFIC SOURCES
79% of traffic comes search engines, mainly from Google.
17% comes from direct traffic, thank you my loyal fans.
7% comes from referring domains, thank you other blogs for linking and sharing that sweet link
juicy.
3% finds my blog post through social media, mainly twitter… wow, this is very low, I guess I
should spam more to social media and not just add one twitter link for every post.
DEVICES
This is a surprise, 91,5% of visitors are using desktop, only 7,5% reads my blog using mobile phone
and 1% using tablet. Desktop is new mobile, or something…
COUNTRIES
Where are you visitors coming from, maybe from Mars?
39% United States

12% India
8% United Kingdom
4% Australia
4% Canada
4% Germany
3% Brazil
3% Finland
2% Spain
2% Netherlands
1,5% France
…almost 90 different countries, but many with only 1 visits (Damn you bots!)
…and now you understand why I write in English and not in Finnish.
BLOG POSTS
I wrote 12 new blog post this year, and most popular one was “5 key learnings & tips for Adobe’s
Analysis Workspace”.
But bit funny, it was only number 5 on most read blog post this year. I have some old ones that are
getting quite good traffic from Google and I guess people are searching information about these
topics, here are top viewed blog post in year 2016:
How to make Adobe Analytics tagging map aka solution design requirements for SiteCatalyst
implementation
New to Adobe Analytics aka SiteCatalyst? The ultimate (cheat) list of resources, help and people to
follow
Getting started with Adobe Analytics mobile application tracking & (Android) tagging
Useful tips to exclude test and other unwanted data from your Adobe Analytics report suite
TO POST OR NOT TO POST?
Why I write blog posts? Mainly just for myself, I learn by doing and writing stuff. There have been
many times while writing blog posts I get these “aha!” moments and realize the answer I’m about to
ask or understand much better the things I’m writing. Of course, I also enjoy sharing tips and love
to discuss about different solutions etc. On October we got our third baby girl and that’s why there
is not much free time to write posts, but surely will continue to share some tips in the year 2017 too,
maybe with shorter posts.
Thank you for reading my blog, hopefully you’ll find my tips, tricks and learnings valuable.
Happy new year and have a great year 2017.
Testing new flow pathing report and repeat
instances settings in Adobe Analysis
Workspace

October 27, 2016 Categories: Adobe Analytics Tags: flow, pathing, workspace
Bada boom! That was my feeling after hearing flow reports coming to Analysis Workspace. Fallout
and flow reports were the two visualizations that I waited so eagerly, and now those are alive and
kicking in Workspace. I already tested and played around with fallout and now it was time for flow
report testing. Btw, is it a flow or pathing, maybe flow pathing? Anyway, it shows very visually
how users moves on your site or application.
Sometimes all features are not so simple or you might want to test with your data that you fully
understood how new reporting models work. You can do this with your data, but it is difficult to see
with 100% confidency that is everything as expected and that’s why I like to make test visits and
make sure I can segment to only my test visit. I did this again. Here we go.
User had this kind of flow on my site
homepage & and did 1 refresh.
/category/ab-testing/ & and did 1 refresh.
/category/adobe-analytics/ & and did 1 refresh.
homepage & and did again 1 refresh.
Variables based on different settings and metrics
Before we jump to flow reporting I want to check my data for the test is solid and also want to
understand how some metrics change based on different segments and settings. Might be little
offtopic, but I believe important to understand how these might affect to flow and other reportings
too. You can click my images and see those on full size.
I took different metrics and I can confirm data is right for my test visitor. Yes, I used tracking code
when I landed to my homepage. Events and page views are populated on every hit.
I also use s.products variable with “12345” value on my homepage and data for that one looks ok
too.
If you go to Workspace project navigation: Project -> “Project info & settings” and you will see
some setting including this new one:

Sounds good, always good to get new options to easily choose how you like to handle your data.
Wait a minute, what is actually instance or hit? How does it really affect to our data? Are only page
views excluded or every single metric that was included on that reload? I removed the checkbox
and now my data for test user looks like this:
Breaking news; only page views has changed, so this affects to only those and not e.g. events that
happened on the second page view (= reload!). Could be something you already knew, but I have to
admit, I wasn’t 100% sure. Have to ask, when do you want to use this feature? If you have good
example then please share, I mean I never use page views to measure anything… maybe I could use
those to count internal campaign impression, but usually I use just events or something else. This
would be great feature on flow reports, but as you saw from my screenshot, this is not working with
flow report… oh dear, why oh why? Have to ask from Adobe people.
No worries, I have ace on my sleeve. Hopefully, you don’t have Smith and Swesson, because it
beats always even four aces. You can easily build “hit” level segment and choose “reloads” as
metric and choose “exclude” from container settings. If I enable this kind of “exclude reloads”
segment, here is how my data would look. I also enabled to count all instances from project settings.

All my old anttikoski.fi blog posts about Adobe Analytics and Adobe Launch from 2013 to 2019 - PDF file summary

All my old anttikoski.fi blog posts about Adobe Analytics and Adobe Launch from 2013 to 2019 - PDF file summary

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