Cross-project events

  • Updated

Relevant products:

  • Optimizely Web Experimentation
  • Optimizely Performance Edge
This topic describes how to:
  • Decide whether to implement cross-project events
  • Find and edit cross-project events

Optimizely Web Experimentation's and Optimizely Performance Edge's cross-project events help large optimization teams track consistent, program-level metrics across multiple properties.

Usually, an event exists and is tracked only in the project where it was created. Cross-project events help you track key events across all Optimizely Web Experimentation and Optimizely Performance Edge projects.

With cross-project events, you can:

  • Track the same event across different projects to ensure consistency

  • Create a set of program-level metrics and reuse them for all your sites

  • Define metrics for a global component that crosses into property-specific events

Imagine that your company has multiple web properties that are split into separate Optimizely Web Experimentation and Optimizely Performance Edge projects. One set of program-level metrics are used to manage all the properties. For example, a key metric tracks engagement with the search bar in the enterprise site and all local store sites. In order to track this same metric in all properties, you'd ordinarily have to set it up in every project. With cross-project events, you can add the pre-defined event to any Optimizely Web Experimentation or Optimizely Performance Edge project.

If you use Optimizely Performance Edge, certain features described in this article are not available to you. Optimizely Performance Edge is a lightweight experimentation product that delivers significantly faster performance than previous versions of Optimizely Web Experimentation. It does this by relying on a streamlined "microsnippet" which limits the range of available features.

You see this notation edge-info.jpg whenever the text describes a feature that is available in Optimizely Performance Edge.

Cross-project events do not affect snippet size. Just enable cross-origin tracking so project snippets can synchronize. If you expect visitors to cross domains or top-level domains, you can use the waitForOriginSync API.

Optimizely Performance Edge does not support the waitForOriginSync API, so cross-domain projects are not supported in Optimizely Performance Edge. 

If you have impressions-based billing, cross-project events are only available for Optimizely Web Experimentation Enterprise plans.

However, if you have the updated MAU-based billing, cross-project events are available for all plan levels (Grow, Accelerate, and Scale), so all your events will be cross-project events.

Create a cross-project event edge-info.jpg

Create an event as usual, and it will be available in projects for which you have a collaborator role.

Add a cross-project metric

  1. By default, the Metrics flow shows events in the current project. To include cross-project events, select All projects.
    metrics-all.png

  2. The All projects view shows events that are shared across all Optimizely Web Experimentation or Optimizely Performance Edge projects where you are a collaborator. Click the event to add it as a metric.
    cross-project-events.png

  3. Click Save to confirm your changes. 

Edit a cross-project event edge-info.jpg

  1. Go to the project where it was originally created. The project name is listed below the event name.

    event-project-name.png

  2. Switch to the project where the event lives.

    event-select-project.png

  3. Under Implementation > Events, select and edit the event.

    edit-event.png