“I told them eVar7 no longer works!” [VIDEO]

How to replace components everywhere and harmonize your duplicate segments & metrics along the way

How to harmonize duplicate segments or metrics and retire deprecated dimensions for good by replacing Adobe Analytics components in any workspace, segment or calculated metric definition — with a few clicks.

We have all been there. You have a training session with your Adobe Analytics users. You tell them things like:

“You may still see eVar7/segment S/metric M/prop10/etc. in some reports, but please ignore it. It is from an old implementation/got corrupted/does not work anymore. Instead, use eVar11/segment T/metric N/prop66.”

They are too busy with their phones. Two weeks later, you open a new workspace someone from that training created. Of course, it contains eVar7. And you are like:

Better should have replaced it everywhere.

Humans are humans. If you don’t curate Adobe Analytics well for them, they will keep creating false reports, they will struggle with similar component names.

Duplicate Segments and Calculated Metrics all over

And when a definition of that “Liechtenstein Traffic” segment changes, you hope everybody is working with the updated definition, right? Of course not. Users will have created their own segments called “Hits from Liechtenstein” “Traffic from Liechtenstein”, “Liechtenstein (Hits)”, “Liechtenstein [Hits]” , ”LI”, etc… A.k.a. duplicates.

Luckily, you can easily do better.

The Adobe Analytics Component Manager for Google Sheets (by Datacroft) has a “Replacer” to help you which is now out of beta. It does what its name says: It replaces a component by another one. It scans through all Workspaces, Segments and Calculated Metrics to find where the component is used (also used for the “Component Usage” tab), and then replaces it by your “target” component.

Example 1: eVar128 is replaced by eVar4 in all workspaces and segments.

This is great for retiring deprecated components for good. Simply replace that eVar7 everywhere with your desired eVar11, then disable eVar7 in the Admin interface. Or simply remove it from the Virtual Report Suites in which your users are doing their analyses. If you don’t use Component-Curation-enabled Virtual Report Suites btw, it is high time to start with them. They are the best way to make Adobe Analytics digestable for non-Admin users, as they will not get swamped with thousands of components in the component rail.

Harmonize Duplicates based on popularity

With the new “Suggest Duplicates for Harmonization” function, the Component Manager finds all your duplicate components and suggests how to replace them based on their usage, i.e., the most popular Liechtenstein segment will be suggested as the survivor. Check out the second video on how that works:

Example 2: Having the Component Manager suggest replacements for all your duplicates. Duplicates without any usage are suggested for deletion (which you can also then do in bulk)

The Replacer takes care of the little unexpected pitfalls and has been robustly tested at many Adobe Analytics clients. For example, it makes sure you do not accidentally replace a segment by a calculated metric. It also allows you fine-grained control, e.g.:

• you can select the (Virtual) Report Suites in which the replacements should take place. This is important if you want to replace eVar7 by eVar11, but only in Report Suites A and B, because in Report Suite C eVar7 means something different.
• you can limit the replacements to only components found in Workspaces or Segments or Calculated Metrics.

There are some more things to know before you get started with the Replacer, so make sure you check out the step-by-step guide here.

Want to try yourself?

Feel free to contact me personally or via the Component Manager website for a free demo & 14-day trial!