I mentioned in my previous post that one of the reason I’m going “independent” is to have more time to work on products and pet projects. One of those ongoing projects of mine has been a mobile app you can use to keep your Adobe Analytics SDR/Variable Map easily accessible on your phone.
The first release of this actually went out in August 2016, but I didn’t let anyone know because I felt it was still too “beta” and I wanted to clean it up before making it more publicly known. A year and a half later (and various framework upgrades that required redoing the whole thing… each time learning and applying those learnings), I got it to a point where I don’t feel ashamed to share it, though of course there is always room for more improvement.
To use the app, you will need your Adobe Analytics Web Services API key. And since no one wants to enter their 32-digit API Key into their mobile device, this newest version of the app allows you to enter your API key on the web (meaning you can copy-and-paste on your desktop machine) then get a link that will allow your mobile device to open the app with those credentials already entered. I highly recommend using that API Shortcut tool before diving into the app.
I created the app for a few reasons:
- As with the beacon parser, the main reason was because I wished a tool like this existed and figured if I was going to make it for myself, I may as well let other people use it too.
- I have a web development background, and wanted to learn more about developing for Mobile Apps. I’ll admit on this front, I cheated a bit: rather than learning multiple native app languages (like Swift or C++), I used the Ionic Framework, which let me program the app using Angular (which fits with my JS/HTML background better than native languages), then use Cordova to turn it into a Mobile App. Still, I did get to learn a lot about mobile development in general, analytics options within mobile, and the release cycle for mobile development (I can’t just save a file and FTP it to my server), not to mention Angular 1/2 and typescript.
- I needed a situation in which I could test out analytics tracking in various Single-Page App scenarios (yay Angular).
- Because at heart, I am a developer. While I enjoy helping clients sort out governance and documentation issues, sometimes I just want to retreat to my basement and do some coding, for that straight-forward validation of seeing your code work in real-time. It’s good to keep those skills alive.
All in all, I learned so much. And I’ve already used the app quite a bit to keep track of my client’s Variable Maps (“what did we use event40 for? Oh yeah!”) However, I’m not a professional mobile developer, and this project was done entirely in my evenings/PTO as a learning exercise that happened to create a useable product. So please be forgiving of any thing in the app that is less-than-ideal; there is a reason I’m not charging for the app at all. I will continue working on improvements, particularly with an eye for performance (I’m looking at you, Android….) and I’m already aware of potential aesthetic issues on iPhone X. Please let me know of any other feedback or suggestions- I’d love to hear what you think!
P.S. Before anyone asks why I didn’t use the Adobe API OAuth2 Authentication, I thought about it, and may yet move to using that, but have concerns about how that works for marketing cloud AND non-marketing cloud logins. That, and the API documentation is… lacking… so I decided for now to stick with what I know. If anyone has experience with OAuth2 authentication and wants to discuss, please reach out.
P.P.S. A special thanks to my beta testers!
Amazing work ??
Very cool. TYTY for all your hard work on it. I manage multiple report suites and this has already proven to be useful in meetings. Love the search feature! Would it take much work to add in the description?
I think that addition would take the app from a nice to have to a must have.
Thanks for the feedback, I’m so glad it has been helpful! And good for your org, using the descriptions properly- too many folks don’t take advantage of that functionality.
Are you saying it’d be helpful to have the variable description on the variable list page? That should definitely be doable, perhaps as something you can toggle on and off. I’ll look into it!
This is great Jenn. Finally a step closer to having an app version of Adobe Analytics. Now I don’t need to log into my laptop every time I have to see the variable mappings in a meeting or any discussion.