CUNY Academic Commons

Just adding some watchers here and Scott, I wanted to see if you could take a look at this in the coming days and offer some initial thoughts. Happy to jump in as needed.

I am trying to understand what needs to be done. Currently, under our Commons account, we have two properties for the Commons, one Universal Analytics (the old one) and one GA4. On the Universal Analytics properties we have 49 "views," each with a unique tracking ID (UA-xxxxxxx-x) which the user has added to the site's setting page.

As I understand it, GA4 has replaced the "view" concept with a "data stream" concept. Best practices seem to indicate one property should have only one data stream. But there are also sub-properties which may relate to our old views. Should I go through each of our 49 views and update them to GA4? That seems to be an easy (though tedious) process. I tried this on one and found that indeed there is one data stream, but it is the Commons Measurement ID (G-EPB5L90TZH). Does this need to be replaced with a data stream to the actual site's subdomain URL?

I also read somewhere that GA4 measurement or tracking IDs will not preserve historical records - that it seems you should not delete the UA view.

Ideally, I guess we need a list that would include the old view name, the new GA4 measurement ID, and the admin of the site's email address?

Ugh, what a headache. Thanks for researching this, Scott.

I guess I was imagining that perhaps we could move away from having data stored under the CUNY Academic Commons property. Users would register for their own GA4 property, and then would enter their GA4 ID into the settings field.

What is the advantage of having them listed as subproperties instead? Or perhaps a different version of the same question: Why did we originally set these up as views, rather than having users get their own UA IDs? Was it just to ease the onboarding process by placing it on you/the CAC team?

Maybe we should say that due to changes in Google Analytics, we are no longer able to support analytic "views" on the Commons. If you need to retain your historical analytics, we recommend that you run reports and export to either pdf or csv files before July 1st. If you want to continue using GA, we encourage you to set up your own account/property/data stream (we provide instructions on how to do this), get your measurement (or tracking) ID, and input into either Settings>>General page of your site, or if you are using the Monster Insights plugin, reconfigure it to use your new measurement ID.

It seems that the Commons itself might need to take steps to retain historical analytics. See https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11894572?hl=en&sjid=15221003422929752530-NA

I hope I am reading their documentation correctly. I could use some other eyes to verify.

Forgot to mention, we have a list of GA users and their gmail addresses. I haven't received any requests to set up reports for over a year, but members with editor roles could have set them up themselves. Requests to have reports emailed expire (I think) after 1 year.

It seems that the Commons itself might need to take steps to retain historical analytics. See https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11894572?hl=en&sjid=15221003422929752530-NA

These migration steps are specific to users, goals, audiences, and ad links. If we're not setting up subproperties, we won't be migrating users. (Even if we are, I'm not sure the migration tool will deal with the View->Subproperty transition, so they'd need to be handled manually anyway.) And I don't think the others are relevant to the Commons. Analytic data, by contrast, cannot be migrated to GA4. See https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ga4-historical-data/447519/.

Maybe we should say that due to changes in Google Analytics, we are no longer able to support analytic "views" on the Commons. If you need to retain your historical analytics, we recommend that you run reports and export to either pdf or csv files before July 1st. If you want to continue using GA, we encourage you to set up your own account/property/data stream (we provide instructions on how to do this), get your measurement (or tracking) ID, and input into either Settings>>General page of your site, or if you are using the Monster Insights plugin, reconfigure it to use your new measurement ID.

This all looks correct to me, and it makes it sound quite reasonable, which is not how I usually feel when I look at GA :-D

Thanks for that list, Scott. I can handle sending the notes out to them since I know you're going on vacation. Here's an updated draft of the email you started, if you or anyone else has thoughts before it goes around. Thanks!

Dear CUNY Academic Commons Site Admin,

Due to changes in Google Analytics, we are no longer able to support their "Views" feature on the Commons. According to our records, your Site xyz.commons.gc.edu has been utilizing this feature for analytics and will lose access to it on Google's July 1st deadline:

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11583528

If you need to retain your historical analytics, we recommend that you run reports and export to either PDF or CSV files before July 1st. Here are instructions from Google for doing this:

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1038573?sjid=10031357731847623533-NA

If you want to continue using GA, we encourage you to set up your own account/property/data stream. Please see our background and instructions on this transition here:

https://help.commons.gc.cuny.edu/universal-analytics-vs-google-analytics-4/

Once you have your measurement (or tracking) ID, you can input it into either the Settings>>General page of your site or, if you are using the Monster Insights plugin, reconfigure it to use your new measurement ID.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions, and thanks for your prompt attention to this matter.

Regards,
The Commons Support Team

This looks great to me except I don't think we have the correlation between the gmail addresses and the particular site(s) or views. So maybe we should be more vague about the xyz.commons.gc.cuny.edu.

this looks great to me, Colin -- thank you.