Tracking "Progressive Web Apps"

[Urs_Boller]

I have a request to track "progressive web apps" but have no clue how to do it.

I found the following information: Progressive Web Apps  |  Web  |  Google Developers

regarding to this doc there are 3 things to track (or might be considered):

1) installation - maybe by website dcr?

2) how to track pwa? launch?

3) how to track offline use? how do I timestamp the hits?

thanks in advance for any help!

[Gigazelle · Accepted solution]

Reading through progressive web apps, it might be a good idea to explore using the Experience Cloud Platform SDK. Looking through progressive web apps and use cases for the Platform SDK, they seem to align the closest.

[Urs_Boller]

Hi Gigazelle​

We made some testing with developers and figured out a way to solve it.

You can't use "SDK" since PWA are just a "copy" of the website (or part of it, defined by website) and they run on local device in a "browser".

Solution right now:

we added some javascript to the website which gets triggered when a user "installs" the app (using _satellite.track and a DCR). works quite good on Android, no chance on iPhone. the reason for iPhone is that you do not "download" the app, you use the "add to homescreen" in the browser. we didn't find a way to track this action with javascript (since it is the same as you would add a URL as shortcut to the homescreen).

not working (yet)

1. tracking usage of PWA: there should be a environment variable in the window object who holds information if it is a PWA, but doesn't work right now
2. tracking "offline browing" since this is not yet implemented. butI think we just write the calls in cache and send it with timestamp to analytics as soon as user is online again...

If anybody has more information hwo to get the missing triggers, I would love to hear!

thanks