Ordering Google Analytics events

Question

I have an Android App which sends custom dimensions and metric to Google Analytics.

I use HitBuilders.EventBuilder in order to create and send the event entry in the report.

In addition, I have multiple devices report simultaneously to Analytics. The events triggered by these devices are codependent. This is why I need to have some way of knowing the order in which the events were triggered.

Possible solutions

1. I can add Date and Minute fields to the report, but not only does it consume field space in the report, it is not accurate enough if the events are triggered within seconds from each other.
2. I can add timestamp custom dimension to the event. Same as previous, it takes up place of another custom dimension. Also, I may not have all devices synced so sorting by timestamp my be inaccurate.

Answer 1

There's an Events Flow report that you can use to visualise event data, crucially it will order them by interaction. It's Behavior > Events > Events Flow.

If there's too much noise in there, you could create a set of Goals corresponding to each event, and look at the Goal Flow report Conversions > Goals > Goal Flow.

Since Goals are set at the View level, if your preexisting goals are stopping you from getting anything meaningful out of the report, you can just set up the Goals on a new View instead.

The final two options would be to replace the events with Virtual Page Views (with spoofed Page fields and attached Custom Dimensions). This is an extreme option, but it would give you much more powerful tools to define the funnels that you'd like people to follow using the Goal Destination/Funnel settings.

Alternatively, you coudl set up some custom segments that allow you to look at only Sessions that have passed the first event, etc. It would be a bit of a hack, but you'd be able to get legacy data without changing your reporting setup at all.