Track ESS Usage with Google Analytics

Overview

With EchoSystem 5.1, Echo360 began using Google Analytics (GA) to identify browser composition and usage across deployed EchoSystems.  You, as the System Administrator, can also use a GA Tracking ID to generate reports about your school's ESS usage.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics (GA) is a service that allows you to track views of web pages through embedded JavaScript calls. As each page is rendered in a browser, a call is made to GA.  The system correlates the views and inspects the browser user agent string to determine browser characteristics (see http://www.useragentstring.com  for details on the user agent string contents).

GA also provides analytic tools for aggregating and inspecting the data.  The current GA dashboard, which gives an overview of the data collected, is shown below.

Example - GA at Echo360

At Echo360 we need to know the specific browsers that customers prefer.  We drilled into the Technology  parameter (marked with a red arrow in the figure above) and got the analysis shown below. We saw that Firefox had the greatest penetration and were able to drill down further to see which versions of Firefox were used.

For further details on GA, see http://www.google.com/analytics or follow the blog at http://analytics.blogspot.com/.

Get Started with Google Analytics

Using GA to track ESS page usage requires these phases:

1. Get the GA Tracking ID
2. Tell the EchoSystem Server (ESS) to include the Tracking ID on each ESS page

Phase 1 - Get the Tracking ID

If you already have a GA account and a Tracking ID, skip this phase.

1. Create a Google account. Visit http://www.google.com  and  https://accounts.google.com.
2. Visit  http://www.google.com/analytics  and log in.
3. Click Admin.
4. Click + New Account.

5. Complete the Account Administration page.

   1. Under “What would you like to track?” select Web Site. This means that all your pages will be tracked, even if your content is hosted separately.

   2. Complete the rest of the fields.

   3. Disable both sharing settings.

      

6. Click Get Tracking ID.
7. Look for the Tracking ID in the format UA-########-# at the top of the page.

   

8. Make a note of the Tracking ID. You will use it soon.
9. Navigate back to your account home page. Notice that the new account is listed.

    

Phase 2 - Include the Tracking ID on Each ESS Page

Follow these steps.

1. In {ESS_HOME}/etc/analytics/, create a file called push-customer.js.

2. Include this exact call. This is the code that will be called to the GA service.

   _gaq.push(
      ['b._setAccount', 'UA-########-#'],
      ['b._setDomainName', 'none'],
      ['b._setAllowLinker', true],
      ['b._trackPageview']
   );

3. Replace UA-########-# with your GA Tracking ID.

4. Restart the ESS.

5. Visit http://www.google.com/analytics to see the results.

   • Results are not immediately posted.

   • Allow some time.

Turn Off Google Analytics

The ESS uses a series of script files to control GA . If you do not want GA to collect data, you can prevent that script from running.

Follow these steps:

1. Create an empty file: {ESS_HOME}/etc/analytics/declare-queue.js.
2. Restart the ESS.