How to get Device type in Adobe Analytics?

[Kshg7030]

How to track different device types ( tab, desktop, mobile) in Adobe analytics for a setup if not using a web sdk setup.

I am using data collection to implement the setup. 

[DanIMS1 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kshg7030,

If you are using AppMeasurement.js to track Adobe Analytics, then this is automatically set for you with the out of the box tracking. Each hit collects the user agent and that is then used to decipher the device type when the hits reach the Adobe servers and are processed.

Thanks,
Dan

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Seconding @DanIMS1's answer. Adobe collects a lot of information automatically, and a lot of that information is pulled from the User Agent (so you won't see it specifically tracked in your tracking calls).

Things like:

• Device
• Device Type
• Operating System
• Operating System Type
• etc

You shouldn't need to do anything special. Now, in addition to this, we have a responsive website, and I also track the "breakpoint", since we know that computers with smaller resolution will get a "tablet" experience, or people can re-size their browsers for split screen and get the "mobile" experience... or people on Android devices using Chrome can use the "show desktop" option, and get the full resolution of their phone so that they see the desktop experience...

I find the breakpoint tracking is more helpful in determine how features are being used, since the display and the usability of those features is driven by the breakpoint and not the actual devices... 

I normally just use JS to get the window.innerWidth and check it against the known widths used by our developers... and if you have multiple breakpoints, like mobile portrait, mobile landscape, tablet portrait, tablet landscape, desktop, large desktop, etc... you can account for all these variations.

[Kshg7030]

yes, I m already using breakpoint to segregate different device types but I believe this can be manipulated by users by changing the screen/window size. I think we can also tackle this by using only the First Hit as a value to consider for a session. But just wanted to check if there is any other way to track this. Thanks

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Ok, and as I said, I specifically call my custom tracking "Breakpoint" and not "Device Type".

When I want to see actual device types, I will use the out-of-the-box Mobile Device Types dimension:

"Other" is essentially desktop here.