Tracking metrics in CloudFiles
There are various file engagement metrics available in the CloudFiles tracking section. In this article we discuss each of these metrics in detail. The metrics available in the CloudFiles analytics section are: Total Views, Unique Views, Downloads, Total Time & Page-wise time spent etc...
Total Views shows the total number of views, including multiple views by the same contact. So every time a view session takes place on your document, the total views counter increases by 1. Note that we start tracking the view only after the file has finished rendering in the browser. Thus false clicks are automatically filtered out by CloudFiles.
Unique views are those views accessed through different email/device but counted once. When the document is viewed for the first time on a device it's unique count would increase. After that,
- If the document is opened again using the same email/device, the unique views would not increase.
- If the document is opened using a different email/device, the unique view would increase.
This is useful in tracking the revisits on your document.
This tracks the total number of times your document has been downloaded. This is incremented when someone specifically clicks on the download button in the top navbar of the viewer. This is automatically increased for direct downloads or non-rendered links since such files are set to auto-download.
Additionally, if you have shared your files by using the CloudFiles folder or dataroom sharing feature, you can still track the downloads of your files in the analytics section.
If you are seeing zero downloads, it could be because you have disabled downloads in the security settings of the link or may not have shared the links on the right channels, which should prompt you to recreate your content sharing policy.
CloudFiles associates activity of every session with the location where the file was viewed. This location may not be exact since we rely on the viewer's internet provider for the location. Thus, the location is naturally coarse. False locations may be reported when accessing through private or company VPNs as well.
If you have enabled email required, your file viewers will have to enter their email ID and this will show up in the analytics. This also helps club multiple visits from the same email under the same viewer. Email can also be visible here if you provided it to CloudFiles using an alternate way such as by using the email parameter feature or through CRM integrations.
This is the aggregate of all the individual "time spent" on your document. This includes all pages, views, sessions etc... This time keeps increasing for your document as more people view it.
CloudFiles tracks the time spent on every page of the pdf / file by the user. This page-by-page analytics can be seen as a column chart on top of the Analytics Modal. This is shown in the illustration below. You can also check the page by viewing the thumbnail. This makes gauging interesting pages quick.
By default, the modal shows the total time spent by every user in all their sessions. However, you can drill this down further and draw some great insights. The next section talks about this.
CloudFiles also shows the thumbnails of all the pages of the document in the page-wise analytics graph. These thumbnails might sometimes not be available when using certain mirror storages or replacing the file. These thumbnails can be used to quickly see which pages are getting the most views.
Sometimes you may want to delete spurious views from your analytics so you can get a nice clean graph. CloudFiles provides an easy way to delete and clean certain tiles from your analytics. Simply head over to the main analytics tab and hover over the analytics tile. On the right side, the delete icon should occur. Click on this to delete the tile from analytics.
Deleting analytics will permanently remove the time / view / download data. This is an irrecoverable operation so use this with caution.
When you open the analytics section of any link, you get the aggregate views number. However, if you click on any email account in the analytics section you will get the views (both total & Unique Views) only from that specific account. This is called drilling down. You can drill down into the analytics using various things such as users, sessions, details etc...
You can find detailed documentation about the app's drilldown capability in Drilldown into users, sessions & devices.
