Cross-project events

Events are the verbs of Optimizely Feature Experimentation experiments that let you track a visitor's actions. Cross-project events help you track key events across all your Optimizely Feature Experimentation and Optimizely Web Experimentation projects.

With cross-project events, you can:

• Use the event as a metric in other projects.
• 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.

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Note

Cross-project events require Optimizely Feature Experimentation SDKs released after February 2021. See SDK compatibility matrix.

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 set it up in every project. With cross-project events, you can add the predefined event to any Optimizely Experimentation project.

Scenario

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

You have two projects:

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

You run an experiment 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 will 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. That is where the event lives and is tracked.

The cross-project part is that the conversions tracked in Project 1 can be added as a metric 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.

Create a cross-project event

If you have cross-project events, they are automatically enabled in your projects. All your events are cross-project events. Create an event as usual, and it is available in projects you can access.

Add a cross-project metric

By default, the metric configuration on the rule shows events in the current project. To include cross-project events:

1. Go to Flags and select a flag.

2. Under Rules, select your environment and experiment rule.

3. Under Metrics, click on the Search to add metrics drop-down list.

4. Click All projects.

   

5. Select your metrics to add them. Click Save to confirm your changes.

Edit a cross-project event

To edit a cross-project event, you will need to go to the project where it was originally created. To find the project name where it was created, look under the event name in the Metrics drop-down list in the rule. Then, follow the steps in Create events to edit your event in the original project.