DocumentationAnalyticsImplementation Guide

Event ID serialization

Last update: Thu Feb 29 2024 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

CREATED FOR:

  • Admin
  • Developer

Event serialization is the process of implementing measures to prevent duplicate events from entering Analytics reporting. De-duplicating events is important in cases where you don’t want metrics inflated by visitors refreshing the page.

NOTE
Data Sources does not support event serialization or de-duplication.

Set up event serialization

You must first set an event’s Unique Event Recording to Use Event ID in report suite settings. See Success Events in the Admin user guide.

When using event IDs, de-duplication happens on the following levels:

  • Each variable uses their own table for de-duplication. For example, event1:ABC and event2:ABC are both counted in reporting.
  • De-duplication happens globally across all visitors. If visitor A sends event1:ABC then visitor B also sends event1:ABC, Adobe ignores the second instance from visitor B.
  • De-duplication does not expire. If a visitor sends event1:ABC then comes back 2 years later and sends event1:ABC again, Adobe ignores the second instance.
TIP
If you want to de-duplicate the purchase event, use the purchaseID variable instead.

Use event IDs using the Web SDK

If using the XDM object, event serialization uses the desired event’s XDM field id. The full XDM path depends on which event that you want to serialize.

For example, if you wanted to serialize the Cart Additions metric, set xdm.commerce.productListAdds.id to the desired serialization value. If you wanted to serialize Custom event 20, set xdm._experience.analytics.event1to100.event20 to the desired serialization value.

If using the data object, event serialization uses data.__adobe.analytics.events, following AppMeasurement string syntax.

Use event IDs using the Adobe Analytics extension

You can set the event ID field either while configuring the Analytics extension (global variables) or as an action in a rule.

  1. Log in to Adobe Experience Platform Data Collection using your AdobeID credentials.
  2. Click the desired tag property.
  3. Go to the Rules tab, then click the desired rule (or create a rule).
  4. Under Actions, click an existing Adobe Analytics - Set Variables action or click the ‘+’ icon.
  5. Set the Extension drop-down list to Adobe Analytics, and the Action Type to Set Variables.
  6. Locate the Events section, where each event contains an Event ID field.

Valid values are alpha-numeric characters up to 20 bytes in length. If you enter a value that is longer than 20 bytes, then the system truncates it to the first 20 bytes.

Use event IDs in AppMeasurement and the Analytics extension custom code editor

Event serialization is part of the s.events variable. Assign an ID to each event using a colon in the string.

// Assign custom ID serialization to a single value
s.events = "event1:ABC123";

// Assign custom ID serialization to multiple values
s.events = "event1:ABC123,event2:ABC123";

If an event has serialization enabled but does not contain a serialization ID, the event is always counted.

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