Analytics app

The Analytics app provides a user-friendly interface for marketers and editors to create their dashboards and add widgets showing the analytics data and metrics they need to see.

Your administrator must configure the connection to your third-party analytics data supplier.

Working with dashboards

In the Analytics app, you can add new dashboards or edit existing dashboards to display the metrics you need.

Magnolia provides a demo dashboard to give you an example of what you can display. The demo dashboard displays four sample widgets (charts) drawing analytics data from different data suppliers.

Demo dashboard

The sample charts in the demo dashboard have been enhanced using light development. For example, not all chart types or customization in terms of chart colors or labeling are available using the Analytics app UI alone. See the Analytics module for light development configuration details.

The dashboard dropdown in the top-left corner is where you select the dashboard you want to view.

The dashboard toolbar is located in the top-right corner. From there, click the icons to:

  • Edit icon Rename or Edit the dashboard layout

  • Delete icon Delete the dashboard

  • Add icon Add a new dashboard

  • Refresh icon Refresh the display

  • Filter icon Open the filter bar

Once you have added a new dashboard, you add widgets to display your analytics data.

If no dashboards are available, a blank canvas is displayed. In this case click add icon to add a new dashboard and start creating widgets.

Dashboard name and layouts

Click the Pencil icon icon to:

  • Rename your dashboard.

  • Choose different dashboard layouts to display your widgets.

Edit dashboard dialog

The default layout is a two-column display. Rows are added as necessary to the dashboard to accommodate the widgets you create.

For example, if you have four widgets, and a three-column display, the last widget spans the entire second row; a fifth and sixth widget would be added to the same second row whereas a seventh would start a new row.

Three column dashboard layout

You can drag and drop widgets around the dashboard. When you mouse over a chart, the drag and drop handle icon appears: icon drag and drop

Filtering data displayed in charts

Developers can define filters to drill down into the data displayed in the widgets you configure.

When set, each filter is applied to all the charts in the dashboard simultaneously. For example, if you set a filter to display a given time range, all the charts display data for that time range if applicable.

Dashboard filters

Filters are cleared when you navigate away from the dashboard.

Working with widgets

Widgets are charts you configure to display analytics data. Magnolia provides some default widgets in the demo dashboard to illustrate what is possible. For example, this widget displays a word cloud of content tags used in Magnolia. It is based on dummy data.

Word cloud chart

To help you get started, Magnolia also provides some preconfigured commonly used metrics for each third-party data supplier we provide an out-of-the-box connection to.

These commonly used metrics are a good way of getting to know what you can do with widgets and metrics, even if you don’t know your analytics data well.

We provide universal metrics such as Users (Visitors), Sessions (Visits) and Bounce Rate out-of-the-box with friendly labels. See the Commonly used metrics section to see what Magnolia provides for each connector.

For each widget, you can:

  • icon drag and drop Drag and drop it to change its position in the dashboard

  • Edit icon Edit the widget layout

  • Delete icon Delete the widget

  • Expand icon Expand the widget display.

  • Set the % of screen width it should take up (30, 50, 70 or 100%).

Mouse over the widgets to see these icons appear.

You can also configure advanced widgets — we recommend you do this only if you know and understand your analytics data well.

About dimensions and metrics

In analytics, charts consist of dimensions and metrics.

  • Dimensions are characteristics of your data. They are typically non-numerical values. For example, the dimension City indicates the city, for example, "Brisbane" or "Berlin", from which a visit originates.

  • Metrics are quantitative measurements. They are typically numerical values. The metric Visits is the total number of visits. The metric city/visits is the number of visits per city.

The following two charts show:

  • The metric Visits alone as a timeline chart.

  • The same metric with the dimension City applied, displayed as a bar chart.

Visits timeline widget

Visits per city widget

In general, analytics reports organize dimension data into rows and metric values into columns.

In Magnolia Analytics, you can display a commonly used metric or you can go further and change or add more metrics and dimensions to your widget.

For example, here you see the dimension City and two metrics: Visits and Actions.

City (Dimension) Visits (Metric) Actions (Metric)

Brisbane

54

87

Berlin

39

109

Surabaya

33

54

Adding widgets

To add a widget:

  1. Click the Add widget button in the top left-hand corner. A dialog opens:

    Add widget

  2. Choose the data supplier for the analytics data you want to display.

  3. Enter a name for your widget. Special characters are not allowed.

    Make sure you use a meaningful and descriptive name for your chart that explains the data shown. For example "Number of sessions by date".

  4. Select a commonly used metric.

    Note that Magnolia provides Commonly used metrics for out-of-the-box data suppliers.

Adding advanced widgets

To add an advanced widget:

  1. Click the Add widget button in the top left-hand corner.

    A dialog opens:

    Add widget

  2. Click Add more metrics.

    The dialog expands to show additional chart type and data selection fields:

    Add more metrics

  3. Choose the data supplier for the analytics data you want to display.

  4. Enter a name for your widget. Special characters are not allowed.

    Make sure you use a meaningful and descriptive name for your chart that explains the data shown. For example "Number of sessions by date".

  5. Select the chart type you want to display. The chart types available by default are:

    1. Bar

    2. Metric number

    3. Pie

    4. Timeline

  6. Select the data for your chart. A preview is displayed at the bottom of the dialog.

  7. Use the > button to view the JSON data for the value you selected.

  8. Click Add series to add more data combinations to your widget as required.

  9. Repeat the previous step to add more series if required.

    Note that any additional series can also be deleted from the widget.

Incompatible dimension-metric combinations

Some metrics and dimensions can’t be queried together because there isn’t a proper data relation between them.

When you select an incompatible dimension-metric combination you may get an error message in Magnolia, such as "Selected dimensions and metrics cannot be queried together".

In this situation, you have two options:

  • Enter the combination and see if the error message appears. If it does, select a different combination.

  • Use the third-party tool documentation to check which dimensions and metrics can be used together. We provide a list of useful links for each out-of-the-box connector in the Further reading section below.

Commonly used metrics

Magnolia provides commonly used metrics for Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics and Matomo. They are all displayed as line charts in the widgets.

Adobe Analytics

Metric ID

Visits

metrics/visits

Unique Visitors

metrics/visitors

Page Views

metrics/pageviews

Time Spent per Visit

metrics/timespentvisit

Bounce Rate

metrics/bouncerate
Dimension ID

Date

variables/daterangeday

Google Analytics 4

Label ID

Users

activeUsers

Sessions

sessions

Items viewed

itemsViewed

Avg. Session Duration

averageSessionDuration

Bounce Rate

bounceRate
Dimension ID

Date

date

Matomo

Label ID

Unique Visitors

nb_uniq_visitors

Visits

nb_visits

Actions

nb_actions

Total time spent

sum_visit_length

Bounce Rate

bounce_rate
Dimension ID

Date

API.get

Further reading

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