I need to get an event date and a system write date from an event so that I can sync the data with my server. I can see the date dimension but its only one value and I want to confirm is that the event date or the system date and is there maybe a another dimension to be able to access the system date.
Google Analytics contains / records only one date dimension. This is the date and time the hit was recorded.
I am not sure why you would think there would be a difference between event date and a system write date
Related
I'm using the Google Calendar API and I need to understand when the start date of an event has been updated, I want to do this without having to store the original event. Currently the only metadata I can see which might give me this capability is the 'Sequence' as I noticed that whenever I updated the start date of the event the sequence would increment, and it doesn't increment when I tried changing a few other fields. Can anybody confirm whether the sequence only increments when the start date changes?
Background:
I'm having the Firebase analytics data exported to BigQuery. And I'm using cron jobs to crunch data in BigQuery for getting insight.
Problem:
To be able to only crunch delta data i.e. the data that has arrived since last time I ran my cron job I need a way to figure out the time when the data arrived at server, since the event_timestamp is generated at client and can be cached at client before sent.
Insights:
I have laborated with event_server_timestamp_offset (offset) which I thought I could use together with event_timestamp. But I was expecting the offset to only be positive but it can also be negative. And when I look at the MAX and MIN for the offset in the entire exported Firebase analytics dataset and re-calculate it to years instead of microseconds I can get more than 18 years offset.
Query:
SELECT
MAX(event_server_timestamp_offset)/(1000000*60*60*24) max_days,
MIN(event_server_timestamp_offset)/(1000000*60*60*24) min_days
FROM
`analytics_<project_id>.events_*`
Result: max_days=6784.485790436655,
min_days=-106.95833052104166
Question:
How can I figure out the server arrival time for my Firebase exported BigQuery data so I can run cron jobs crunching only delta data?
Can I use event_server_timestamp_offset together with event_timestamp? If so, how?
Best regards,
Daniel
Surprisingly enough, this question not having a clear answer for almost 2 years, I am leaving here the answers I got from the Firebase support team. The format is - question asked followed by the answer of the support staff.
Q1. event_date - The date on which the event was logged (YYYYMMDD format in the registered timezone of your app). Does it mean that the event occurred on that date, or that it was actually collected on that date?
A1. Per documentation, event_date refers to the date on which the event is logged/occurred. Note that event_date is based on the Analytics timezone setting of your Firebase Project.
Q2. event_timestamp - The time (in microseconds, UTC) at which the event was logged on the client. Is it safe to assume that this is the exact timestamp the event occurred on client side (in the app timezone of course)?
A2. Yes, this is based on the device timezone setting. However, event_timestamp may be skewed if the device time is incorrect.
Q3. event_server_timestamp_offset - Timestamp offset between collection time and upload time in micros. This is the main field that causes all the misunderstandings - in our BigQuery table for the year 2020 this field takes values in a range between 5 days and -2 days. I mean how can the colleciton time be 2 days ahead?
A3. The event_server_timestamp_offset field in the export schema is the time difference between when the event took place and the app uploaded it to our server. In other words, this is the estimated difference between the client's local time and the actual time, according to our servers. The values of this field are usually positive, but can be negative as well if the device time setting is incorrect.
Q4. One last question is very important - can we ignore the
event_server_timestamp_offset field and just rely on event_timestamp -
as the exact date and time the event occurred on the clientside (not
collected, not uplaoded, etc). If not- please explain how we can get
the exact datetime of the event occuring on the clientside. But if yes
please let me know why do we need the event_server_timestamp_offset field?
A4. Yes, you may actually ignore it and use event_timestamp alone. However, as mentioned earlier, event_timestamp could be off if the device time setting incorrect, but it shouldn't really affect the bigger picture of your analytics data as cases like this are usually one-off.
We use the event_date as the indicator and load the data once a day.
I am using the following URL to generate an item for the transaction.
http://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=someID&cid=someID&ti=126540&ta=Another%20type&tr=400.00&tt=0&ea=Purchase&pa=purchase&ec=Enhanced%20Ecommerce&ts=0&cu=UAH&t=event&pr1id=cha803478-WTC%2FNBK&pr1nm=foo%202PP%20crew%20socks&pr1ca=foo&pr1pr=199.00&pr1br=foo&pr1qt=1
After a few days I will need to change it, because any data in it will be not correct. Is there a way to specify date on this URL so that the modification of the transaction was the day it was created?
No. While there is the queue time parameter that allows for a few hours offset there is not way to specify a date in a hit (that would force Google to reprocess a lot of data to integrate hits for previous dates in the reports).
I wish to extract (via the Analytics Core Reporting API) all the transactions made TODAY by users that had a specific ga:eventCategory few weeks ago.
I'm looking to see the date of a transaction and all dated of event that are related to that transaction.
If GA was sql I would join by the ga user and take in the dimension both his transactions date and his dimension update date...
Thanks.
Noam.
Like I have indicated in my comment you can segment the data to include only those users who have the specific event. Segmentation works fine with the core reporting API.
Your segment defintion would look like this:
users::condition::ga:eventCategory==[myEventCategory]
(where obviously the thing in [brackets] is a placeholder that needs to be substituted for the event category name). The "users::" prefix means you are segmenting by user scope (as opposed to sessions), so this will include all sessions in the selected timeframe for users who had the event at least in one of their session (even if the event was outside the selected timeframe).
Select transactionId as dimension and some metric (revenue) and todays date and you are done. Or you would be done if this was actually going to work, but there are at least two caveats:
Google Analytics does not work in realtime, so it's unlikely that TODAYs transactions are fully available (Google says it's 24 hours until the data is processed - actually it might happen faster, but you cannot rely on it).
If a user has deleted his or her cookie she won't be recognized as a recurring user and GA will be unable to segment her out. The longer the interval between the event and the transaction the less likey it is that the GA cookie is still present.
So even with a technically correct query it might be that you won't get the data you need.
I would like to obtain data via the Google analytics api (Java). Every half an hour once I would be running a script which needs to get me the required variables over the previous half an hour, that is details of the person who has used my site over the last half hour. I do not know if this is possible since the start date and end date parameters can be used only in date format and not in datetime format. How should I proceed with this? Thanks in advance
Google Analytics core reporting API provides 2 dimensions which are the hour and the minute. This should allow you to accomplish what you want, just make sure to wait till the hour and minute you are querying are updated.
Check
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/dimsmets#view=detail&group=time&jump=ga_hour