This is a work in progress. Hopefully one day it can be made to be more globally useful.
General Resources
- /wiki/spaces/AN/overview (wealth of knowledge)
- Mobile Analytics
Analytics Events in edx-platform
Designing new events
When designing new events, see the /wiki/spaces/AN/pages/13205895.
Determine if your new event should make it into the publicly documented data package, or if it will only be used for internal purposes. For internal-only events, you use the special prefix 'edx.bi.' for your event name.
Choose between server-side and client-side implementation of the event, and consider whether or not Mobile Analytics events need to be implemented separately for a native client-side feature.
Implementing in edx-platform
Implementing events in edx-platform is documented in Read the Docs, but this section provides some additional clarity and examples.
Server-side events (includes celery)
- Rule of thumb: Use server-side events where possible. More context is available. Less likely to have false duplicate events.
- tracker.emit
- Emits to Tracking Log and downstream tools (e.g. Vertica/Tableau, edX Research Package, etc.)
- Emits to Segment.
- In turn, based on whitelist, events are sent to Google Analytics (GA)
Client-side events
- Client-side events can easily have bad duplicates. Use server-side events when and where possible.
- Logger.log
- Note: Should be renamed to Tracker.emit, but requires a deprecation strategy including telling course teams.
- By default, emits to Tracking Log and downstream tools only.
- If you want to emit to segment as well, use this call and add the events to a whitelist that the Tracking Log will emit to segment.
- analytics.track
- Emits to Segment.
- In turn, emits to other tools (GA, Google Tag Manager, Optimizely, Qualaroo, Crazy Egg, Marketing tools.
- Use this if you want Segment only. If you want Tracking Log or both, use the other call (with or without the whitelist).
- Emits to Segment.
Tools
Analytics Tools:
- Google Analytics (GA)
- Google Tag Manager
- Firebase Analytics
- Fabric (Gabe said ?)
- Segment (a.k.a. Segment.io)
- Tracking Log
- Splunk4Tracking
- Vertica (Data Warehouse)
- Tableau (Visualization using Data Warehouse)
- edX Insights
- edX Research Packages
- Optimizely (A/B Testing)
- Qualaroo (survey tool)
- Crazy Egg (screen recording/heat mapping, may or may not be used)
- Marketing
- Sailthru (email marketing)
- Facebook ad reporting
Diagnostic Tools (includes Performance):
- CourseGraph (query course content usage)
- Splunk (logs)
- NewRelic (errors, usage, health)
- Datadog (deprecated)
Other Concerns
- Data storage
- Limits (e.g. Splunk Logs)
- Privacy (who has access?)
- How long does data live?