Issues with Adobe Analytics integration with PDF Embed API

[shawncreed_baici]

Hey all! I'm working to integrate analytics tracking for PDFs for one of my clients, and am having some difficulties with the Adobe Analytics integration that's part of the view-sdk module.

• First issue: I often see multiple calls getting sent for the same thing (e.g. "viewed page 1 of the doc") even when I haven't scrolled or moved my position in the doc at all.
• Second (and much bigger) issue: The ViewSDKInterface.js code (where the Analytics integration actually lives) is hardcoded to use s.t(), which is an Analytics-specific call to send data and mark it as a page view. This is problematic, because these are non-page-view events, and so using a page view call to track them (especially with the API being as verbose as it is with its tracking) will cause some pretty bad inflation of page view metrics in Adobe Analytics. There needs to, at the very least, be an option to use an s.tl() call instead (and this should probably be the default).

I would be happy to submit a pull request to resolve the above concerns, but I couldn't find the ViewSDK module anywhere in Github. Is this available in Github or anywhere else publicly at the moment where I could submit a pull request? Alternatively, who can I perhaps work with at Adobe to get this resolved? In its current state it's virtually unusable for any Analytics tracking in a production environment.

Thanks in advance for your help!

-Shawn

[jenn.kunz@33Sticks]

Yes, we're seeing this too. Not only can we not control whether the beacons are s.t or s.tl, I can't seem to turn off any of the events we aren't interested in (like zoom level). Since we pay Adobe by the beacon, this could quicly become very expensive, not to mention the influx of data in our reports that we don't want. 
The analytics/embed API integration has a lot of potential, but it's nearly unusable as-is. 😞

[Sumona Ghosh]

Thank you Shawn for reporting this issue. We are looking into it and will try to resolve it soon. Please keep watching this space for updates.

[seattleruzek]

We saw this too! Our solution was to rip out the ViewSDKIterface.js code from a custom HTML component in AEM.

Not only was it firing page views on non-page-view events, but the calls were going off like crazy when we saw this issue (as mentioned). ~50+ calls per 1 view of a PDF, depending on how long you could manage to stay on the site. We caught it early and it was enabled in custom HTML, it wasn't enabled through Launch/any type of tag manager, otherwise, yeah, billing would rapidly become an issue

We also saw an entirely different Launch library, and a call to Audience Manager, where we don't have a subscription. 

Please fix, Adobe! This would be a super awesome feature to use if it worked! Work your magic. 

[Sumona Ghosh · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Please try out the following steps:

1. Set the configuration variable sendAutoPDFAnalytics to false and pass it in the AdobeDC.View instance. This will disable the default workflow of sending analytics data to Adobe Analytics.

var adobeDCView = new AdobeDC.View({
    clientId: "<YOUR_CLIENT_ID>",
    divId: "adobe-dc-view",
    reportSuiteId: <Your_Adobe_Analytics_REPORT_SUITE ID>,
    sendAutoPDFAnalytics: false
    ...
})

2. Register the events callback and subscribe to the PDF analytics events. Use the listenOn option to subscribe to the events you would like to track and send the relevant data to Adobe Analytics.

const eventOptions = {
   //Pass the PDF analytics events to receive.
   //If no event is passed in listenOn, then all PDF analytics events will be received.
   listenOn: [ AdobeDC.View.Enum.PDFAnalyticsEvents.PAGE_VIEW, AdobeDC.View.Enum.PDFAnalyticsEvents.DOCUMENT_DOWNLOAD],
   enablePDFAnalytics: true
 }

 adobeDCView.registerCallback(
   AdobeDC.View.Enum.CallbackType.EVENT_LISTENER,
   function(event) {
     console.log("Event type " + event.type);
     console.log("Event data " + event.data);
     // Write the logic to send the relevant data to Adobe Analytics corresponding to this event
   }, eventOptions
 );

PDF Embed API supports 9 different PDF analytics events. To see the complete list, please see the section Default Analytics under Analytics in the documentation.

This approach will give you the flexibility to control the data you would like to send to Adobe Analytics and also turn off analytics you aren't interested in tracking.

Please try it out and let us know if you run into any issue. Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Sumona