Tagging and viewing Pages in Adopt

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Pages are managed in the Analytics page, which you can find in the left-side navigation.

Tag Pages to track how many people are using your workplace software, where they spend most of their time, and how they navigate within and across applications to complete business processes. Tagging Pages is also important for tagging Features in Pendo and creating guides. Specifically, tag Pages to:

  • See how your end-users are completing business processes. 
  • Monitor the traffic on Pages. 
  • Set a guide to only display on a certain Page.
  • Drive adoption of new Pages that are introduced to support new process flows.
  • Drive adoption of functionality that has been purchased but is experiencing low use.

Page tagging overview

To create Page tags in Pendo (also known as "tagging Pages"), you provide the URL you want to tag, which you can then edit to capture or filter out variations by creating Page rules as appropriate. For more information about creating Page rules, see URLs for Page tagging in Adopt.

There isn't a right or wrong way to tag a Page. Sometimes, you might want to group all usage in an area of your app into a single tagged Page. Other times, you might want to see usage for a single Page. You can tag both to see the data you want. Overlapping or duplicate tags don't compete. Rather, overlapping and duplicate tags both tag (identify) and count the same event.

For example, we have Pendo installed over our Help Center. The base domain, support.pendo.io, is tagged to track usage of the entire website as a single Page. Being able to target a single Page that represents usage of the entire app is a Pendo shorthand that's helpful in segments and reports. Each article is also tagged as a Page to track usage of a single article.

Page tagging rules

Pendo tags Pages based on rules. Page rules define the content and structure of the URLs that Pendo interprets to tag your Pages. At the top of every hour, Pendo matches raw events generated by end-user actions against your rules for tagging a Page.

Page tagging rules match the structure of a website URL, but they cut out the parts you don't need and identify the parts you do. Page rules rely on standard URL syntax, such as wildcards (*) to make substitutions and contains to look for specific strings. For guidance on how to edit these rules, including examples, see URLs for Page tagging in Adopt.

Note: Pendo defaults to hiding your domain with a wildcard (*). This is because you might have Pendo installed in multiple environments (staging, testing, and production) and the wildcard helps you avoid tagging everything again in each environment.

Tag Pages

There are two ways to tag Pages in Adopt:

Suggested Pages

In Adopt, navigate to Analytics and select the Pages tab at the top to see untagged URLs that appeared in your events in the last six days. For instructions on how to tag these URLs, and how to activate or deactivate the Suggested Pages feature, see the Suggested Pages article.

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With the Visual Design Studio

You can tag a URL within the application itself with the Visual Design Studio. In Pendo, navigate to Analytics > Pages and then: 

  1. In the top-right corner of the page, select Tag Pages.
  2. Enter the URL of the target page of your application into the text field.

    Adopt_VDS_EnterURL.png
  3. Select Launch Visual Design Studio. This loads the Visual Design Studio over the page in your application.
  4. In the Page tab of the Visual Design Studio, select Tag Page.

    Adopt_VDS_Pages_TagPage.png
  5. Choose the Create New Page option at the top, under PAGE SETUP.
  6. Enter a descriptive name that’s in line with your company naming convention so that others will know what you're referring to.
  7. Create "include rules". Choose one of the following methods for creating include rules: Suggested Match, Exact Match, Rule Builder, or Custom URL. For guidance, see Include Rules in this article. A Page must consist of at least one include rule.
  8. [Optional] Create "exclude rules". Choose from Rule Builder or Custom URL to create rules that exclude URLs from the Page you're creating. For guidance, see Exclude Rules in this article.
  9. [Optional] Add more rules if required using the + New Include Rule and + New Exclude Rule buttons. You can also add additional rules after you’ve created the Page by following the instructions under Edit tagged Pages.
  10. Select Save to add the Page to your Pages list.
  11. Close the Visual Design Studio using the Exit button in the top-right of the page you're on.

Page rule options

Page rules allow you to edit what Pendo counts towards a Page view, such as variations of the same URL. For example, you might want Pendo to treat multiple URLs in your application as the same Page for analytics and guide targeting. You can use multiple rules to do this.

You can create both include and exclude rules. Include Rules filter URLs to include only those that match the URL patterns you define for the Page you're creating. Exclude Rules prevent URLs that match the URL patterns you define from being included in the Page you're creating.

If a Page tag consists of both Include Rules and Exclude Rules, Pendo first checks whether a URL matches any Exclude Rules, preventing any views of that URL from being counted towards the Page view data. Pendo then checks for matches against Include Rules, counting any remaining URLs that match any of the Include Rules towards the Page view data.

Include Rules

You must create at least one Include Rule to tag a Page. Include rules define what URL patterns to capture in a Page. When tagging a Page in the Visual Design Studio, you have the following options for creating an Include Rule:

  • Suggested Match. This is the automatic rule created by Pendo. Sometimes, this doesn’t ideally capture what you need it to, which is why we’ve created the following additional options for creating rules.
  • Exact Match. This gives you the most control over what’s included in the Page tag, but covers fewer variations, such as different sections in the same page as indicated by a hashtag symbol (#) at the end of the URL.
  • Rule Builder. This helps you create a rule by giving you the option to apply <Ignore>, <Ignore after>, or <Contains> statements to elements of the URL you provided for tagging. For an explanation of what these options are, including examples, see URLs for Page tagging in Adopt.
  • Custom URL. This allows you to create a rule using standard URL syntax. For more information, including examples, see URLs for Page tagging in Adopt.

Include_Page_Rules-1.png

If standard URL syntax is insufficient, you can add multiple selection rules for tagging a Page. When a tagged Page has multiple rules, Pendo interprets them as a series of OR statements. The URL must match at least one of the rules. If the page URL matches multiple rules on the Page tag, it only counts as one view.

Tip: Use parameters in your Page tagging rules. A parameter allows you to ignore specific values and to view what those values are in the Page tag data. For example, if you want to see what channels are most popular even though there are too many to tag, you can implement a parameter rule for channels. A parameter rule in your Page tag might look like appname.com/channel/*parameter*/. To learn more, see the Parameterized URLs section in Understanding URLs for page tagging.

Exclude Rules

Exclude rules are optional, and are additional to include rules. Exclude rules filter out URLs so that the Page doesn't include any URLs that match the patterns defined by the rules. When tagging a Page in the Visual Design Studio, you have the following options for creating an Exclude Rule

  • Rule Builder. This helps you create a rule by giving you the option to apply <Ignore>, <Ignore after>, or <Contains> statements to elements of the URL you provided for tagging. For an explanation of what these options are, including examples, see URLs for Page tagging in Adopt.
  • Custom URL. This allows you to create a rule using standard URL syntax. For more information, including examples, see URLs for Page tagging in Adopt.

Exclude_Page_Rules-1.png

If standard URL syntax is insufficient, you can add multiple exclude rules, which Pendo interprets as a series of OR statements. A URL that matches any of the exclude rules isn't included in the Page you create.

View tagged Pages

To view tagged Pages, navigate to Analytics and open the Pages tab at the top.

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There are four filters at the top of the page. These filters modify the list of Pages in the table view:

Filter Description
Segment

The default is Everyone. Use the dropdown to select either a predefined segment or a Custom Segment. To create a new custom segment, select + Custom Segment at the bottom of the dropdown menu.

Date range Use the dropdown to choose from predefined values, or choose a Custom Range for a specific time period.
Application Use the dropdown to choose to view all your Pages regardless of application, or choose to view Pages by application.
Page Type Use the dropdown to choose to view all your Pages, or custom Pages only.

 

The Page list provides an overview of your tagged Pages in a table view. If you've not yet tagged any Pages, you instead see an empty table with a "No data found" message.

The table includes the following information about these Pages depending on the columns you choose for the table. 

Column Description
Name

The Page name. This can be edited when you select the Page name.

Type

The type of Page. This can be Custom (created by you or your team), Inherited (from Pendo or from a parent account), or Inactive (inherited with some analytics not being collected but the Page can still be used for guides).

Application

The application that the Page is assigned to.

Rules

The rules behind the Page tag.

Number of Visitors

The number of unique visitors that have visited the Page within the segment and date range specified at the top of the page.

Page Views

The total number of views of the Page from all visitors within the segment and date range specified at the top of the page.

Average Time on Page

The average time (in minutes) that visitors spend on the page.

 

To customize columns, select the Manage Columns icon in the top-right corner of the list. In the window that opens, you can add, remove, and move columns in the table.

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View and edit Page details

There are two ways to view and edit the details of a Page:

Details sidebar

You can view and edit basic information about Pages from the details sidebar, without having to open the Visual Design Studio. Navigate to Analytics > Pages and then select the Page you want to view or edit. This opens the sidebar, where you can:

  • Update the name of the Page.
  • View, edit, add, and remove Page rules. A Page must have at least one Include Rule.
  • Test individual Page rules.
  • See who created a rule or recently updated it, and when.
  • Delete the Page.

AdoptPageDetails.png

Visual Design Studio

To edit the name and rules of a Page from the Visual Design Studio, navigate to Analytics > Pages and then: 

  1. In the top-right corner of the page, select Tag Pages.
  2. Enter the URL of the target page of your application into the text field.
  3. Select Launch Visual Design Studio. This loads the Visual Design Studio over the page in your application.
  4. In the Pages tab, select the Page you want to edit and then Edit Page in the bottom-right corner.
  5. Edit the Page name and rules as required, and then select Save Changes in the bottom-right corner.

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Delete a tagged Page

Warning: We don't recommend that you remove a Page, which might have guides associated with it or segments using the Page analytics. We recommend starting small and adding more pages as needed.

To remove a tagged Page, hover over the row of the Page you'd like to delete and select the trash icon at the end of the row. You can also delete a page using the Details sidebar.

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Download a CSV file of Pages

To download a comma-separated values (CSV) file of the data in your table of Pages, navigate to Analytics > Pages, and select the Download icon in the top-right corner of the list, next to the Manage Columns icon. This automatically downloads a CSV file of your Pages.

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