Google Data Layer extension

The Google Data Layer extension allows you to use a Google data layer in your tags implementation. The extension can be used independently or simultaneously with Google solutions and with Google’s open source Data Layer Helper Library.

The Helper Library provides similar event-driven functionality to the Adobe Client Data Dayer (ACDL). The data elements, rules and actions of the Google Data Layer extension provide similar functionality to those in the ACDL extension.

Maturity

Version 1.2.x is a late beta which is in production use.

Installation

To install the extension, navigate to the extension catalog in the Data Collection UI and select Google Data Layer.

Once installed, the extension creates or accesses a data layer on every load of the Adobe Experience Platform Tags library.

Extension view

The extension configuration can be used to define the name of the data layer that the extension consumes. If no data layer with the configured name is present when Adobe Experience Platform Tags is loaded, the extension creates one.

The data layer name default is the Google default name dataLayer.

NOTE

It does not matter whether Google or Adobe code loads first and creates the data layer. Both systems behave the same - create the data layer if it is not present or use the existing data layer.

Events

NOTE

The word event is overloaded when an event-driven data layer is used in Adobe Experience Platform Tags. Events can be:

  • Adobe Experience Platform Tags events (Library Loaded and so on).
  • JavaScript events.
  • Data pushed to the data layer with the event keyword.

The extension provides you with the possibility to listen for changes on the data layer.

NOTE

It is important to understand the use of the event keyword when data is pushed to a Google data layer, similarly to the Adobe Client Data Layer. The event keyword changes the behavior of the Google data layer and therefore this extension.
Please read the Google documentation or do research if you are unsure on this point.

Listen for all pushes to the data layer

If you select this option, your event listener listens to any change made to the data layer.

Listen for pushes excluding events

If you select this option, your event listener listens to any push of data to the data layer, excluding events.

The following example push events would be tracked by the listener:

dataLayer.push({"data":"something"})

The following example push events would not be tracked by the listener:

dataLayer.push({"event":"myevent"})
dataLayer.push({"event":"myevent","data":"something"})

Listen for all events

If you select this option, your event listener listens to any event pushed to the data layer.

The following example push events would be tracked by the listener:

dataLayer.push({"event":"myevent"})
dataLayer.push({"event":"myevent","data":"something"})

The following example push event would not be tracked by the listener:

dataLayer.push({"data":"something"})

Listen for specific event

In the case that you specify an event, then the event listener tracks any events that match a specific string.

For example, setting myEvent when using this configuration results in the listener only tracking the following push event:

dataLayer.push({"event":"myEvent"})

A (ECMAScript / JavaScript) regex can be used to match event names.

For example, setting ‘myEvent\d’ would track myEvent with a digit (\d):

dataLayer.push({"event":"myEvent1"})
dataLayer.push({"event":"myEvent2"})

Actions

Push to Data Layer

The extension provides you with two actions to push JSON to the data layer; a free text field to manually create the JSON to be pushed, and from version 1.2.0, a key-value multifield dialog.

Free text JSON

The free text action makes it possible to use data elements directly in the JSON. Within the JSON editor, data elements should be referenced using percent notation. For example, %dataElementName%.

{
    "page": {
        "url": "%url%",
        "previous_url": "%previous_url%",
        "concatenated_values": "static string %dataElement%"
    }
}

Key-Value multifield

The newer key-value multifield dialog is a more user-friendly interface that allows a push to be configured without manually writing JSON.

Google DL Reset to Computed State

The extension provides you with an action to reset the data layer. If used in a rule which processes a Google data layer change, the data layer is reset to the computed state of the data layer at the time the rule was triggered. If the action is used in a rule which does not process a Google data layer change, the action empties the data layer.

Data elements

The provided data element can be used during the execution of a rule triggered by a Google data layer change (push event) or in an unrelated rule such as Library Loaded. In the former case, the data element returns a value taken from the computed state at the time of the data layer change. In the latter case, the computed state at the time of rule execution is used.

A toggle switch allows you to select whether the data element should return values from the entire computed state, or only from event information (if used in a rule triggered by a data layer change).

The data element can therefore return:

  • Empty field: data layer computed state.
  • Field with key (such as page.previous_url in the example above): value of the key in the event object or computed state.

Additional Information

The extension’s data element and event dialogs contain detailed usage information and examples.

Additional general information is in the project README

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