Cross-project events

Cross-project events help you track consistent, program-level events across multiple projects. Usually, an event exists only in the project where you create and track it. Events are actions you track in Optimizely Experimentation to understand how visitors interact with your product. Cross-project events let you do the following:

• Track the same event across all Experimentation projects – Ensure consistency in how key actions are measured.
• Standardize program-level events – Reuse events across your websites and applications.
• Measure shared components – Define events for global components used across multiple properties.

For example, your company has multiple web properties split into separate Optimizely Feature Experimentation and Optimizely Web Experimentation projects. One set of program-level metrics manages all properties, such as a key metric to track engagement with the search bar in the enterprise site and all local store sites. To track this same metric in all properties, you would ordinarily have to configure it in every project. With cross-project events, you can add the predefined event to any Optimizely Experimentation project.

Cross-project events do not affect the Web Experimentation or Performance Edge snippet size. Enable cross-origin tracking to let project snippets sync correctly. If you expect visitors to cross domains or top-level domains, you can use the waitForOriginSync API.

Example scenario

Cross-project events are intended for scenarios such as the following:

You have two projects that target different platforms.

• Project 1 – Web Experimentation– Website.
• Project 2 – Feature Experimentation– iOS application.

You run an A/B test in your iOS application. To measure the performance of this experiment, you want to include an event tracked on the website.

For example, you add a "My Account" section to your iOS application, and you want to measure if this new feature influences the number of page views of your website's "My Account" page. You expect the number of page views on the website to go down because some of your users now use the application's new "My Account" feature.

You can add the "Viewed My Account Page" event from Project 1 as a metric to your experiment in Project 2. This does not cause the event to be added to the datafile for Project 2, because the event is still tracked on the website and in Web Experimentation. That is where the event is defined and tracked.

The cross-project functionality lets you use conversions tracked in Project 1 as metrics in Project 2.. The event cannot be tracked in Project 2. That is only possible using the data from Project 1.

For other scenarios, consider the following suggestions:

• Move to a single project for both the website and the app.
• Use the Event API from the app to track any events that go across. See Track events across platforms for information.

Optimizely Web Experimentation and Performance Edge

Create a cross-project event 

You can create events in any project where you have a collaborator role.

Add a cross-project event 

1. Go to an experiment.
2. Go to Track > Metrics.
3. Click Add Metric.

4. Click All projects to display events from all your Experimentation projects.

   

5. Click the event name.
6. Click Save.

Edit a cross-project event 

1. Find the project where you created the event. The project name is listed following the event name on the Metrics page within an experiment.

   

2. Go to the project where the event lives.
3. Go to Implementation > Events.

4. Select and edit the event.

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Optimizely Feature Experimentation

Create a cross-project event

Cross-project events are automatically enabled. Any event you create is available in all projects you have access to. Create an event as usual, and it is available in projects you can access.

Add a cross-project metric

By default, Metrics displays events in the current project. 

1. Go to Flags and select a flag.
2. Select your environment and experiment rule.
3. Click on the Search to add metrics field.

4. Click All projects. 

   

5. Select the metrics you want to add.
6. Click Save to confirm your changes.

Edit a cross-project event

To edit a cross-project event, go to the project where the event was originally created. Then follow the steps in Create events to edit your event in the original project.

The original project name displays in the Metrics drop-down list when configuring the rule.