Apologies for the basic question, but I don’t think this is covered by the documentation and Google Analytics is a bit of a labyrinth.
In both the Analytics Collection tutorial and in the Projucer, the field “cid” is passed as POST parameter to the GA API.
Is this field a custom dimension that needs to be added explicitly through the Analytics dashboard, or is it something baked in to GA itself? In the latter case, can anyone tell me how I access this via the GA dashboard??
Thanks!
It’s the client ID, that is used to identify the returning users. You can find it in “Audience”->“User explorer”.
But I struggle with the interface as well, I haven’t been able to add meaningful data like DAW and OS, and find it on the page. I tried custom dimensions (cd1, cd2,…), but somehow I cannot find the values.
I’ve used this link in the past: https://www.monsterinsights.com/how-to-create-custom-dimensions-reports-in-google-analytics/ . Looks like it’s been updated to show the latest process.
That’s what I initially thought, but that ID seems to be generated by GA itself as per here. But maybe I’ve misunderstood?
Fiddling around with custom dimensions now as per @jrlanglois link. Will report back if I can get something working!
OK, I have this pretty much working now.
Setting cid does work, but it is supposed to be a full UUID string as described here. Although, the hex string used in Projucer does also work, I found using a made up email address doesn’t (but then PII is forbidden by the GA T&C anyway, so…)
Also, as described in the above doc, uid can also be used. This should also be an anonymous user id, and I think is actually more appropriate e.g for an app or plugin user being “intended to be a known identifier for a user provided by the site owner/tracking library user”.
In order to actually view tracked uids a User-ID view must be set up as described here. Then the “User Explorer” will show User ID (uid) in the first column rather than Client ID (cid).
Custom dimensions (cd1, cd2 etc) are described here. In order to generate reports based on these, GA needs to be set up as described here.
GA often takes a while to update so often it seems like things aren’t working!
I think it would be useful if either the analytics tutorial and / or one of the analytics class docs linked to the measurement protocol docs as this answered most of my questions.
Ever so slightly off topic, but aren’t the rules for free tier GA properties changing soon? In so much as that application analytics like this will no longer be supported? iirc they will begin “sunsetting” this usage sometime this Autumn.
@richie Interesting! If I understand correctly this only affects the Mobile SDK? Or at least that’s what I’m getting from here but the wording is quite vague.
Thankfully, I think you’re right! If I understand correctly then analytics from JUCE are making use of the Measurement Protocol (“allows developers to make HTTP requests to send raw user interaction data directly to Google Analytics servers”) which along with standard website analytics are exempt according to your link.
