Download link dimension

[kdussel]

Dear collegues, 

Im working in proyects of analitycs on the websites i have, and when a try to use the dimension "Download Links" on the dashboard, the results that gives me, aren't complete. the urls links are cuted, so we never know which is the link downloaded.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

If you feel comfortable with doing some extra JS, you can add some props/evars to the download calls... so if the urls are too long (truncated as 255 characters), you could create one or more Data Elements to hold additional information about files (file name, type, category, whatever you need).

Then in your Adobe Analytics Extension Custom Code, you can add some code:

s.usePlugins = true;
function s_doPlugins(s) {
      if (s.linkType === 'd') {
            s.prop1 = _satellite.getVar('download file type');
            s.prop2 = _satellite.getVar('download category');
            s.eVar1 = _satellite.getVar('download file name');
            s.eVar2 = _satellite.getVar('other info');
            s.linkTrackVars = "prop1,prop2,eVar1,eVar2";
      }
}
s.doPlugins = s_doPlugins;

Change prop1,prop2,eVar1,eVar2 to the items you want to track and your specific Data Elements.

If you also want to trigger a custom event on a download:

s.usePlugins = true;
function s_doPlugins(s) {
      if (s.linkType === 'd') {
            s.prop1 = _satellite.getVar('download file type');
            s.prop2 = _satellite.getVar('download category');
            s.eVar1 = _satellite.getVar('download file name');
            s.eVar2 = _satellite.getVar('other info');
            s.events = "event1";
            s.linkTrackEvents = "event1";
            s.linkTrackVars = "prop1,prop2,eVar1,eVar2";
      }
}
s.doPlugins = s_doPlugins;

You may already have some custom code using s.doPlugins, if so, you can just add the code looking for "download" links to your existing code.

[VaniBhemarasetty · Accepted solution]

@kdussel That is because of the characters limit in Adobe Analytics. It supports only 100 bytes for the "Download links" dimension.As @Jennifer_Dungan suggested try to capture the value in an Evar which supports up to 255 characters

Alternatively, you can use data warehouse and use "File Downloads" dimension and get the report you will not see any issue in reporting complete URLs of your download links

Here is the documentation on getting a Datawarehouse report 

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/export/data-warehouse/data-warehouse.html?lang=en