Get started for administrators, analysts, end users, and developers

There are 4 types of Adobe Analytics users in a typical organization:

  • Administrators: Implement and configure Adobe Analytics.

  • Analysts: Set up projects and create analyses using Analysis Workspace

  • End users: Gain actionable insights about their customers, either by creating their own analyses or working with analysts to create them

  • Developers: Use the Adobe Analytics 2.0 APIs to directly call Adobe’s servers to perform almost any action that can be performed in the user interface, such as creating reports to explore, getting insights, or answering important questions about data.

The information below outlines how each of these users can get started with Adobe Analytics.

Get started for administrators

Analytics administrators are responsible for choosing the implementation method most appropriate for their organization.

After Adobe Analytics is implemented, administrators need to perform various configuration tasks to ensure that analysts and end users are getting the full value from Adobe Analytics. Administrators should also regularly monitor their Analytics environment to ensure the system is running efficiently.

Determine the types of data that should be gathered

Adobe Analytics lets you gather data from multiple channels types and bring it together to deliver meaningful, real-time customer insights.

Following are some of the supported channels where data can be gathered:

  • Mobile phones

  • The Internet of Things

  • TV

  • Voice assistants

  • Connected cars

  • And more (new supported channels are added regularly)

The implementation method you choose determines the type of data that can be gathered.

Implement Adobe Analytics

Various implementation methods are available when implementing Adobe Analytics on your website or mobile app.

For information about each available method, see Implement Adobe Analytics.

Implementation methods
Websites
  • Web SDK extension (recommended)
  • Web SDK
  • Analytics extension
  • Legacy JavaScript
Mobile apps
  • Mobile SDK extension (recommended)
  • Analytics extension

Configure Adobe Analytics

Analytics administrators should complete the following tasks before making Adobe Analytics available to users in the organization:

Task
Intended use
More information
Define administrator roles
Adobe Analytics supports various types of administrators
Administrator roles in Adobe Analytics
Define permissions
Analytics administrators need to assign product profiles in the Admin Console for Adobe Analytics, Report Suite Tools, and Analytics Tools.
Analytics Permissions in the Admin Console
Set up report suites and define settings for your company

A report suite is a silo of data that Adobe Analytics uses to generate reports.

Administrators can also set up virtual report suites to further segment data.

Import data
Adobe Analytics data sources let you import additional online or offline data for reporting.
Data sources overview
Classify data with Classifications
Classifications allow you to classify data to make better use of variables, allowing you to include more content into a single variable.
Classifications overview
Manage components

Use the Data Dictionary and the management areas for each component type to define which components are available in your Analytics implementation, as well as which are approved for your organization.

This should be an ongoing activity to ensure that components are being used effectively in your organization.

Anomaly detection
Anomaly Detection provides a statistical method to determine how a given metric has changed in relation to previous data.
Anomaly Detection overview
Contribution analysis
Contribution Analysis discovers hidden patterns within your data to explain statistical anomalies and identify correlations behind unexpected customer actions, out-of-bound values, and sudden spikes or dips for selected metrics across convergent audience segments.
Contribution Analysis overview
Analytics segmentation
Lets you build, manage, share, and apply powerful, focused audience segments to your reports using Analytics capabilities, the Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Target, and other integrated Adobe products.
Analytics segmentation
Publish audiences to Audience Manager
Adobe Audience Manager is a powerful data management platform that helps you build unique audience profiles from first-party, second-party (partner), and third-party data integrations.
Audience Analytics overview
Integrations

You can surface information from other applications in Adobe Analytics.

Following are some common integrations:

Analytics Integration

Monitor Adobe Analytics

Various features are available to help you monitor your Adobe Analytics environment.

Analytics administrators should be aware of the following features available to help monitor important aspects of your Analytics environment:

Task
Intended use
More information
Reporting Activity Manager
The Reporting Activity Manager lets you see the reporting capacity for each report suite in your organization. It provides detailed visibility into reporting consumption and helps you easily diagnose and fix capacity issues during peak reporting times.
Reporting Activity Manager
Server call usage
A server call, also known as a “hit” or an “image request”, is an instance in which data is sent to Adobe servers to process. A Server Call Usage dashboard is available that tracks your server call consumption data and compares it to your contractual limit. You can set up alerts to prevent overages.
Server Call Usage overview
Log files
Log files to help you see when users log in, their usage, access, report suites, and Admin changes.
Logs

Get started for Analysts

While anyone in an organization can use Adobe Analytics to gain actionable insights about customer behavior across websites and apps, Adobe Analytics is designed with data analysts in mind.

Following are key tasks and features that analysts should be familiar with in order to leverage the full power of Adobe Analytics and Analysis Workspace.

Feature
Intended use
More information
Build and share projects in Analysis Workspace

Analysis Workspace is a flexible browser tool that allows you to quickly build analyses and share insights. Using the drag-and-drop interface, you can craft your analysis, add visualizations to bring data to life, curate a dataset, share and schedule projects with anyone in your organization.

Data analysts are often responsible for creating projects in Analysis Workspace for users within their organization.

After projects are created, analysts share those projects with the end users(non-analysts) in their organizations who requested the data and help them understand how to interpret it.

Attribution

Analysts can customize how dimension items get credit for success events by employing various attribution models and lookback windows in Analysis Workspace.

Linear attribution models gives equal credit to every touch point leading up to a conversion, while First Touch gives full credit to the first touch point. Many other attribution models are available, including the Algorithmic model, which uses statistical techniques to dynamically determine the optimal allocation of credit.

Attribution models and lookback windows
Anomaly detection
Statistical modeling in Analysis Workspace automatically finds unexpected trends in your data by analyzing metrics and determining a lower bound, upper bound, and expected range of values. When an unexpected spike or drop occurs, the system alerts you in the report.
Anomaly Detection overview
Contribution analysis
Use Analysis Workspace to discover hidden patterns within your data to explain statistical anomalies and identify correlations behind unexpected customer actions, out-of-bound values, and sudden spikes or dips for metrics across audience segments.
Contribution Analysis in Anomaly Detection overview
Intelligent alerts
Create and manage alerts based on data anomalies and “stacked” alerts that capture multiple metrics in a single alert.
Intelligent Alerts overview
Data export
Data Warehouse and Data Feeds allow you to export data to various cloud destinations, such as Google Cloud Platform, Azure RBAC, Azure SAS, and Amazon S3.
Analytics Export Guide
Activity map

Activity Map is an Adobe Analytics application that is designed to rank link activity using visual overlays and provide a dashboard of real-time analytics to monitor audience engagement of your web pages.

Activity Map lets you set up different views to visually identify the acceleration of customer activity, quantify marketing initiatives, and act on audience needs and behaviors.

Activity Map
Report Builder
Report Builder is an add-in for Microsoft Excel. Report Builder lets you build customized requests from Adobe Analytics data that are inserted into your Excel worksheets. Requests can dynamically reference cells within your worksheet, and you can update and customize how Report Builder presents the data.
Report Builder

Get started for end users

End users who are not professional analysts can either work with analysts in their organization to leverage the full power of Adobe Analytics and Analysis Workspace, or they can learn the basics of Analysis Workspace in order to start gaining actionable insights about their customers.

Work with analysts

Typically, users in an organization who are interested in learning more about customer behavior across their various sites are not professional analysts.

Ideally, these users should work with analysts within an organization to:

  1. Define requirements for the analyses by explaining to the analyst what they hope to learn about customers.

  2. Review the analyses to ensure they meet the objectives.

  3. Discuss the data gained from the analyses.

  4. Modify the analyses as needed over time.

Create analyses in Analysis Workspace

You don’t have to be a data analyst to gain actionable insights from Adobe Analytics.

Some users might find it helpful to work with a data analyst to set up a project in Analysis Workspace and explain how to interpret the data, as described in Work with analysts; other users might be comfortable building the project and interpreting the data themselves.

Analysis Workspace allows you to quickly build analyses to gather insights and then share those insights with others. Using the drag-and-drop browser interface, you can craft your analysis, add visualizations to bring data to life, curate a dataset, and share and schedule projects with anyone you choose.

For information about how to create analyses in Analysis Workspace, see Analysis Workspace overview.

Get started for developers

Analytics APIs allow you to directly call Adobe’s servers to perform almost any action that you can perform in the user interface.

You can create reports to explore, get insights, or answer important questions about your data. You can also manage components of Adobe Analytics, such as the creation of segments or calculated metrics.

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