Google Analytics and Help Center - Part 5: Capturing Help Center user data

Google Analytics gives you the ability to capture additional information on a Hit, Session, User, or Product. This section will focus on capturing data on Users, but this same technique can be applied to Hits, Sessions, and Products just as easily.

This is the fifth article in a series. The series outlines how to use Google Analytics to answer questions you may have as a Guide manager responsible for providing an effective self-service support option to your customers. The series covers the following topics:

• Part 1 - Asking the right questions
• Part 2 - Measuring the effectiveness of search
• Part 3 - Tracking customers' actions
• Part 4 - Fine-tuning Help Center
• Part 5 - Capturing Help Center user data - YOU ARE HERE

If you haven't already done so, enable Google Analytics in your Help Center. See Enabling Google Analytics.

Capture a user's role, name, and email in Google Analytics

For any logged in user in Help Center, MorgWard can pass Google Analytics information on their role and name if they are logged in. A user in Help Center has one of the following roles:

• manager: This is an logged in agent with admin privileges 
• agent: This is an logged in agent with standard privileges 
• end_user: This is a logged in end user 
• anonymous: This is a user in Help Center that is not logged into MorgWard

To enable capture of custom dimensions with a user's role

1. Log in to Google Analytics and go to the Admin tab.
2. Under the Property tab for your project, click Custom Definitions, then Custom Dimensions.
   
3. Click New Custom Dimensions.
4. Add a new dimension named "User Type" scoped to a User and make sure it is set to Active, then click Create.
   
   
5. In Guide, go to edit the code for your theme (see Editing your Help Center theme).
6. Open the script.js file in edit mode
7. If your theme is using Templating API v2, paste the "Capture submit request event" code below in the DOMContentLoaded block:
   

   document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(){
   
     //send user role to Google Analytics  
     var userRole = HelpCenter.user.role; 
     ga('set', 'dimension1', userRole); 
     ga('send', 'event', 'Help Center', 'Page view', {'nonInteraction': 1})
   
   });

8. If your theme is using Templating API v1, paste the "Capture submit request event" code below in the jQuery $(document).ready(function() { ... }); block:
   

   $(document).ready(function() {
   
     //send user role to Google Analytics 
   
     var userRole = HelpCenter.user.role;
     ga('set', 'dimension1', userRole);
     ga('send', 'event', 'Help Center', 'Page view', {'nonInteraction': 1})
   
   });

Make sure the dimension numbers match the values for the custom variables you have in your Google Analytics account.

Once the data has had time to propagate into your project, you can create a report on user role. To create a report on users within Google Analytics navigate to Customizations > Custom Reports > + New Custom Report: 

 

 

Under Create Custom Report, select the following options to create a report of pageviews by role: 

 You should then have a report of Help Center pageviews by user role: