Activity Map Link Persistent Metric

[Sav23]

Hi I'm using an Activity Map Link report in Workspace. 

I'm trying to see clicks on 1 specific page. 

However is it true that Activity Map Link are eVars which mean they persist? If so some of the clicks picked up in the report might be from other pages?

Thanks

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Activity Map variables are "hit" level... but the issue with this correlation is that Activity Map values are tracked on the "next page", so you aren't seeing clicks on the page indicated, you are seeing the clicks that brought you to the specified page.

Let's look at an example:

• Page 1
  • No Activity Map sent to Adobe, it's the first page in the visit
• Click to Page 2
  • Activity Map will store link 1, region 1 and page 1 (for the link on Page 1)
• Page 2
  • Activity Map sends link 1, region 1 and page 1 on the Page 2 page view request
• Click to Page 3
  • Activity Map will store link 2, region 2 and page 2 (for the link on Page 1)
• Page 3
  • Activity Map sends link 2, region 2 and page 2 on the Page 3 page view request

So when you are looking at Canonical URL" of Page 2, all the Activity Map data is from Page 1 (and every other page that linked to Page 2).

This is why there is Activity Map Page value, if you want to see links from a specific page, then you should look at Activity Map Page (Page 1) > Activity Map Link

Now, if you have tracked Actions on a page, such as "Accept Cookies" (which doesn't navigate), then the Activity Map data is connected to the current page action tracking, so your Canonical URL does correlate.

However, there are also some caveats to Activity Map... hitting back on your browser often causes some issues with the data.. no value is set in the Activity Map data, so info from the last clicked (s.tl) call could be carried back to the previous page (I am still trying to figure out an override for this, I have some ideas, but no time to test it out).

Also, if the "link" to the page isn't a proper HTML element (i.e. the developers used JS on a div to make it clickable), the Activity Map won't register that.... I also have no solution for that..  (I usually just chew out our developers for doing such a **bleep** thing as its also horrible for SEO and Accessibility   - and make them change it)

[jeff_bloomer]

Hi @Sav23!

I believe we're mixing apples with oranges here a little bit.

By default, an eVar's behavior will persist to the end of a user's visit, which is why you will see activity (not to be confused with Activity Map) beyond a single page, because a user will hit multiple pages before ending their visit.

You're matching up an eVar the Canonical URL against ALL of the Activity Map links the user may have clicked during their visit.  Even though you're filtering for one page, you could still get extra Activity Map clicks because of the behavior of eVar that is the URL you chose that is governing your behavior.

Does that make sense?  It's not Activity Map driving your data, it's the eVar that that is your URL.

Jeff

[SoumyaMi1]

Hi @jeff_bloomer/@Jennifer_Dungan 
Can you please let me know if this evar persistence feature for Activity map shown above is also the same with AEP Web SDK setup as shown here for Appmeasurement.js?
Also wanted to understand a little bit about the documentation from Adobe where it is mentioned that "Activity Map data collection requires the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK extension v2.23 or later. Extension versions down to v2.16 have limited support."
Do we have any idea what this limited support means and how v2.23 differs from v2.16 in terms of Activity Map?

Regards,

Soumya

[Jennifer_Dungan]

There is no logical need for any persistence beyond "hit" for something like Activity Map... they aren't even eVars, in AppMeasurement they are passed as reserved context data... In WebSDK they have a specific schema to send the values... but the result should be the same... 

User clicks on link X, in Region Y, on Page Z

The next page view (wherever Link X lead to), will contain the information for Activity Map X, Y and Z. Then that info has no more relevance... there is no need to maintain those values any farther, as the next click will be a different link, in a different region, on a different page.

Activity Map wasn't included in initial versions of the WebSDK... it's only recently been added. I believe that 2.16 would have been the initial beta release... newer versions will have made improvements on the collection of the data... you would be best to use the newest version given how new Activity Map is on the WebSDK.

[SoumyaMi1]

Thank you! @Jennifer_Dungan  
This helps!