- [Dana] In my experience,

I find that custom dimensions and metrics

are one of the most underused features of Universal,

and they can be incredibly useful

for your analytics deployments.

For example, in a lot of our analytics deployments,

we'll set the Google Tag Manager container ID

as a custom dimension,

which means that we know exactly how that data

got into Google Analytics in the first place.

Simo Ahava has an excellent post

on useful custom dimensions for Universal

that you can check out at this link.

We've used many of these dimensions

for our client's analytics implementations over the years,

but now with GA4, we, of course, need to rethink

how we are using custom dimensions and metrics.

These custom definitions have been overhauled in GA4,

which means you can't just take what you had at Universal

and move it over to GA4.

In Universal, there were four possible scopes

of custom dimensions:

hit, session, user, and product.

But in GA4, the custom dimensions

only have the scope options of user or event,

nothing in between.

If you had session

or product custom dimensions at Universal,

you'll have to do a bit of thinking to see

how you can move them over to GA4.

As for custom metrics, you had the scopes

of hit or product, and the metric could be formatted

as integer, currency, or time.

In GA4, you don't have the product scope any longer,

but you do have a lot more options

for the unit of measurement.

One great new feature is that

unlike the previous limit of 20 dimensions in 20 metrics,

you can now create

100 event scope custom dimensions or metrics

and 25 user-scoped.

And unlike Universal,

you can archive definitions that you are no longer using.

But note that if you do this, you cannot recover it.

For product scope dimensions and metrics,

Google would like you to use their recommended events,

which you can find here at this link.

As for session-scoped dimensions,

in a lot of cases, you can probably just turn these

into hit or user scope dimensions without any issues.

For example, a common session-scoped custom dimension

I would see is if the user is logged in or not.

I would suggest that you could either make that user-scoped

and use the User-ID feature,

or make it event-scoped just to record the fact

that someone did actually sign in.

User-scoped dimensions can be remade in GA4,

but there is one important change.

In Universal, if a user-scoped dimension

was set in the middle of the session,

the dimension was applied

to every event of the same session,

even for things that happened

before the user dimension was set.

In GA4, user-scoped dimensions are set for all the events,

but only for the moment it set onwards.

Past events are not modified.

To create a user-scope custom dimension in GA4,

you can use the GA4 configuration tag in Google Tag Manager

and then add the information in the User Property section.

If your user property won't be set right away at page load,

but perhaps with a different trigger,

you can create additional GA4 configuration tags,

specifically to set that user-scoped custom dimension.

Just make sure to uncheck the

Send a page view event when this configuration loads

checkbox, or else you could end up

double counting page views.

The most common use of a custom dimension

is along with an event.

Let's say, for example, you want to track

specific elements that are clicked on on a page.

In this example, I'll be using the Kick Point website

and we have a rocket ship of the bottom of each page

that we track clicks or taps on.

This is what the event looks like

when it goes off to GA4

with an event name of ui_engagement

and the element name of rocketship.

Now, the element name parameter isn't in the list

of automatically collected information.

It's something new that we made up.

So in order for this to show up in reports,

we need to add it as a custom dimension.

Obviously, this is very different

from how custom dimensions worked in Universal.

To add a new dimension,

go to configure custom definitions,

and then click Create custom dimensions.

Then enter your dimension name

and which event parameter corresponds to.

You don't need to name the dimension

the same as the event parameter,

but I have been in order to keep things simple.

Custom metrics are set up in exactly the same way,

just under the Custom metrics section instead.

You can see here how many more options we have

for the unit of measurement,

lots of interesting possibilities.

Now that you've registered

your custom dimensions and metrics,

within 24 hours, you should see them in the various reports

as you use GA4,

and of course, don't forget to record these

on your tracking sheet.

(casual music)