Configure Adobe Analytics dashboard to separate comma separated values as separate events

[bluu]

Hi, I'm completely new to Adobe Analytics and its dashboards. I have a dashboard where we're sending comma separated values and I want each value as a separate event. Is that possible?

I read https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/implementation/vars/page-vars/prop#:~:text=List...and https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/admin/admin-tools/manage-report-suites/edit-rep... but I'm failing to understand how I can configure the dashboard to do what I want. 
 

Attached is a screenshot where we can see some individual values, and some rows have comma separated values. Hoping to break up the CSV rows into separate events, if that's possible.

 

[bjoern__koth]

Hi @bluu 

what you are looking for is either enabling list support on your prop or use one of the 3(!) dedicated list vars (s.list1-3).

Props list support has to be set on report suite level and not within your dashboard.

Props have a limitation to 100 Bytes total, whereas list vars support a length of 255 Bytes per value. Also, props are valid for that hit only, whereas list vars can be persisted.

So, it depends on how long your values can become as well as how long you want to store the values.

Example for a list var could be storing individual words of a search query.

Example for a list prop could be tracking tags of a page at page view time

[EurosIMS]

Hi @bluu,

You can use classification rules on the already collected data to split them out, however that would be a separate report. You can't alter the already collected data there in that specific report.

To do that on future data, you can either use a List Var or List Prop as already suggested, or you can alter the implementation of the values via Launch/on-site collection to split them before they are sent to Analytics. 

If that variable is a prop, you can alter it to a List Prop in the admin section & specify the delimiter as a comma, then future data will be split.

If it's an eVar, it'll need implementation work to switch the data over to one of the list vars. 

[Jennifer_Dungan]

@EurosIMS while, yes, you can use classifications... the problem is you need to set up a separate classification for each position (first, second, third, etc and you need to make sure you have a classification to support as many potential items that could be passed)... there is no way to process each comma separated value into the same classification, as each rule to process would overwrite the last value.

This makes using classifications less than ideal.

I agree with @bjoern__koth, using a list enabled Prop (but be careful because the character limit there is 100 characters for the entire value, including the comma delimiters themselves), or using one of the dedicated List dimensions (which allows you to pass as many values as you want, each individual value is limited to 255 characters, but the list as a whole is not limited). I know that Bjoern covered the character limits, but it's good to re-iterate.

One other thing to consider, if you need to do this logic a lot, and the 100 character limit is a problem with the data that needs to be passed; one trick that I do is to use a single List dimension to pass multiple types of data (using a prefix and classification rules to process each use into its own classification).

Example:

My List uses a comma delimiter

My Prefix is added with a colon

s.list1 = "a:1232,a:647657,b:fdfdh,b:sgdf"

In Adobe, the list will be processed into separate rows:

a:1232

a:647657

b:fdfdh

b:sgdf

Then I use classifications for "A" and "B"

I use regex rules to identify values that start with "a:" then only pass the value into the classification, resulting in:

Classification A

1232

647657

and another rule to identify values that start with "b:" passing only the values into that classification, resulting in:

Classification B

fdfdh

sgdf

I make my "a:" and "b:" more meaningful, obviously, but this is the basic idea.