Annotate Google Analytics when you publish a new Tag Manager container with a single click
Now you can easily annotate Google Analytics each time you publish a new Tag Manager container version.
Bear in mind that at the moment, this feature is only available for people participating in our private beta.
If you are not participating in the beta and you'd like to give it a try, feel free to request early access here ;)
If you are participating in the beta, follow these steps to see GTM new versions as new annotations right in your Google Analytics reports.
Of course, you will also have these notes available in your Data Studio dashboards, taking advantage of Context connector for Data Studio.
Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nznq3qsmzUU
How does Context integration with Google Tag Manager work
Install Enhanced Google Analytics Browser Extension
Go to the Chrome Store and install Enhanced Google Analytics Annotations.
Once you install the browser plugin, remember to log in:
Activate Google Tag Manager as an event source within Context
Just as any other event source in Context, you can activate GTM with a single click.
Capture new versions of your GTM containers as annotations in Context
After you publish a new container version, an "Add Context annotation" call-to-action will appear at the bottom of the version summary:
After clicking on it, the CTA will disappear and a Context icon with the name of the version and the publishing time will appear:
That means that the annotation has been successfully saved within your Context account:
Can I also capture previous Tag Manager versions with a single click?
It's perfectly possible to add your old Google Tag Manager versions to Context.
You only need to open each of your versions in a new tab, instead of in the popup, and you will see the "Add Context annotation" CTA as part of the version summary.
One single click on the magic button and you're done :)
Visualize your annotations in Google Analytics
Now that your annotation has been saved, you can see it while browsing your Google Analytics reports, as long as you have the Google Tag Manager event source activated within the extension:
Just as with any other event source, all your GTM activity will be available in your reports:
Why the process is not fully automated?
You may be wondering why we the process of sending new versions of Tag Manager to Context is not fully automated...
Well... we tried to integrate with Google Tag Manager API, but it doesn't expose container version publication date :/
As Simo Ahava explains in this Tag Manager official forum thread "the fingerprint is when the container was last modified, which for published versions is TYPICALLY the publish time but not necessarily so".
As we aim to be able to track all events that may potentially affect our KPIs, we decided to go with this option.