I recently posted about some of the implications and use cases of using Linear Allocation (on eVars) and participation (props/events) and in my research, I thought I had encountered a bug in Analysis Workspace. After all, for this flow:
Page A | Page B | Page C | Page D | Newstletter Signup event (s.tl) | |
prop1 eVar1 events |
“Page A” “Page A” “event1” |
“Page B” “Page B” “event1” |
“Page C” “Page C” “event1” |
“Page D” “Page D” “event1” |
“” “” “event2” |
I saw this in Reports and Analytics (so far, so good):
But then in Analysis Workspace for that prop, trying to recreate the same report, I saw this, where the props were only getting credited for events that happened on their beacon (none got credit for the newsletter signup):
Basically, I lost that participation magic.
Similarly, for the eVar, I saw this report in Reports and Analytics:
And in Workspace, it behaved exactly like a “Most Recent” eVar:
Again, it lost that linear magic.
Calculated Metrics to the Rescue
With the help of some industry friends (thanks, Jim Kultgen at Kohler and Seth Burke at Adobe) I learned that this is not a bug, necessarily- it’s the future! Analysis Workspace has a different way of getting at that data (one that doesn’t require changing the backend settings for your variables and metrics).
In Analysis Workspace reports, allocation can be decided by a Calculated Metric, instead of the variable’s settings. In the calculated metric builder, you can specify an allocation by clicking the gear box next to the metric in the Calculated Metric Definition:
A Note On “Default” Allocation here
On further testing, in Analysis Workspace, it seems that eVars with the back-end settings of either “Most Recent” and “Linear” allocation are treated the same: both will act like “Most Recent” with a metric brought in, and both will act like “Linear” when you bring in a calculated metric where you specified to have Linear Allocation. One might say, if you use Analysis Workspace exclusively, you no longer would need to ever set an eVar to “Linear”.
“Default” does still seem to defer to the eVar settings when it comes to Most Recent or Original (just not Linear). So in an eVar report where the eVar’s backend setting is “Original”, whether I used my “normal” Newsletter Signups event (column 2), or my Calculated one with Linear Allocation (column 3), credit went to the first page:
So, the Calculated Metric allocation did NOT overwrite my eVar setting of “Original”.
So how do I replicate my Linear eVar report?
To get back that Linear Allocation magic, I would create a new Calculated Metric, but I would specify “Linear Allocation” for it in the Calculated Metric Definitions. Then I can see that linear metric applied to that eVar (the original metric in blue, the new calculated one with linear allocation in purple) :
Note that it’s 40-20-20-20, rather than 25-25-25-25. I’ll admit, this isn’t what I expected and makes me want to do more testing. I suspect that it’s looking at my FIVE beacons (four page views, one success event) and giving that Page D double credit- one for its page view beacon, and one for the success event beacon (even though it wasn’t set on that beacon, it WAS still persisting). So it isn’t perfectly replicating my R&A version of the report, but it is helping me spread credit out between my four values.
And my participation prop?
Similarly, with the prop, when I bring in my new “Linear Allocation” calculated metrics I just set up for my eVar (in blue), I now see it behave like participation for my Newsletter Signup metric, unlike the original non-calculated metrics (in green):
…but those Page View numbers look just like linear allocation in an eVar would (2.08, 1.08, .58, .25), not the nice clean numbers (4, 3, 2, 1) I’d get for a prop with participation. At this point, I still don’t have my Content Velocity prop report, but I’m getting closer.
So how do I get my Content Velocity?
Analysis Workspace has a “Page Velocity” Calculated metric built into its Content Consumption template, which reports the same data as my Content Velocity (participation-enabled) prop did in Reports & Analytics.
If I want to recreate this calculated metric for myself, I use the formula “Page Views (with Visit Participation)/Page Views”:
Though my friend Jim Kultgen suggested a metric he prefers:
((Page Views 'Visit Participation')/(Visits))-1
This shows you how a page contributed to later page views, discounting how it contributed to itself (because obviously it did that much- every page does), and looking at visits to that page (so repeat content views don’t count for much).
These two calculated metrics would show in an AW report like this:
Conclusion
If I use Analysis Workspace exclusively, I may no longer need to enable participation on metrics or props- I could just build a Calculated Metric off of existing metrics, and change their allocation accordingly, and that would work the same with either my eVars or my Props.
Knowing a few of these quirks and implications, I can see a future with simpler variable maps (no more need for multiple eVars receiving the same values but with different allocation settings) and the ability to change allocation without tweaking the original data set (my “Newsletter Signups” metric retains its original reporting abilities, AND I can build as many Calculated Metrics off of it as I want). I’m excited to see how Adobe will keep building more power/flexibility into Workspace!
Awesome post! Thanks for the heads-up!
Well explained on how allocation work in AA and Analysis Workspace.