How do you tell if Unity analytics is working now?

[aaronflippo]

TLDR; How do you actually verify that the connection between your game and the Unity analytics backend is actually working?

This has been my experience trying to get Unity analytics working in my project this week.

For a little background, I have used Unity analytics before, and with the delay in processing for the events to start coming through (sometimes up to 24 hours), it was always crucial that I could validate that the connection was actually working after I turned on the feature.

I’m using Unity 2020.1.4f1. When I open the services tab and turn on analytics, the editor panel allows me to turn on the analytics service, and then it says to hit the “play” button. It also says “Pressing play will send test data to validate the connection with analytics servers”.

Pressing play doesn’t seem to do anything, and when I visit the dashboard through the link in that editor panel, it takes me to a page that provides no feedback on whether the connection is working - all it says is “Go to the editor to enable analytics for your project”. There is no link to further documentation on this page.

Then after an hour or so of trying, I finally stumbled upon this form post from a year ago:

Removal of Validator and Livestream features on January 16th

The Unity Analytics team is planning to remove the Validator and Livestream functionality from the Unity dashboard tomorrow. The Validator in the Services Window within the Unity Editor has already been removed. There will be no data lost and all data processing for the Data Explorer and other reporting tools will continue without issue. The primary use of the Validator was to confirm that Analytics events were sent and received correctly. We recommend using the AnalyticsResult from the method…

This forum post points to this API documentation page for a data type, and as far as I can tell, none of the other documentation pages for analytics describe how this result should be used in practice:

Unity - Scripting API: AnalyticsResult

Looking at this in the code though, it seems that this data type is a return type for every form of Unity analytics event call - but it’s not an asynchronous, which makes me think it’s not actually useful for determining whether the events are actually being received successfully on the server.

And indeed, two days after turning analytics on in my project, the dashboard is still showing no data and acting as if I haven’t enabled analytics.

It’s incredible to me that for a service that doesn’t actually “turn on” for up to 24 hours after its enabled, Unity has apparently removed the one tool that made it possible to ensure it was working.

This makes me wonder whether Unity analytics is a feature that Unity actually intends to support going forward, because frankly this whole UX is incredibly frustrating.

[JeffDUnity3D]

Please try with Unity 20201.1.15f1 and more recent and create a new project, or relink your current project. This should enable the Analytics Dashboard.

[rzubek]

I have to agree with the previous poster - trying to set up analytics on a new project is incredibly frustrating, since there is no way to tell whether data is making it over to the server (and whether it’s the correct data), there is just vague guidance to wait and see. And also, setup documentation is out of date.

Right now I’m in the middle of analytics setup, and I’m waiting for something to show up on the server, and it’s not clear how long it’s going to take. Since the old verification and live view pages have been removed, there’s no feedback to the developer whether the setup is actually working.

[JeffDUnity3D]

@rzubek

I have to agree with the previous poster - trying to set up analytics on a new project is incredibly frustrating, since there is no way to tell whether data is making it over to the server (and whether it’s the correct data), there is just vague guidance to wait and see. And also, setup documentation is out of date.

Right now I’m in the middle of analytics setup, and I’m waiting for something to show up on the server, and it’s not clear how long it’s going to take. Since the old verification and live view pages have been removed, there’s no feedback to the developer whether the setup is actually working.

It typically take 8-16 hours for new events to show in your Dashboard. We are aware there is currently no feedback in the Editor that Analytics is properly enabled, we are working on that.

[rzubek]

@JeffDUnity3D

It typically take 8-16 hours for new events to show in your Dashboard. We are aware there is currently no feedback in the Editor that Analytics is properly enabled, we are working on that.

Thank you! A processing delay sounds very reasonable.

It’s the combination of that, plus lack of user feedback, plus missing documentation, that adds up to a frustrating experience.

Speaking of which, can I suggest updating both the setup page in the manual (https://docs.unity3d.com/2021.1/Documentation/Manual/UnityAnalyticsSetup.html) and the text in the Services > Analytics settings panel? The current instructions in both are not accurate.

[aaronflippo]

@JeffDUnity3D

It typically take 8-16 hours for new events to show in your Dashboard. We are aware there is currently no feedback in the Editor that Analytics is properly enabled, we are working on that.

I guess what I’m trying to understand is - given that there WAS a tool to verify in real-time that this was working, why was it removed?

I haven’t had a chance to upgrade my Unity project to 20201.1.15f1 yet, but I’ll give it a try soon.

[JeffDUnity3D]

@aaronflippo

I guess what I’m trying to understand is - given that there WAS a tool to verify in real-time that this was working, why was it removed?

I haven’t had a chance to upgrade my Unity project to 20201.1.15f1 yet, but I’ll give it a try soon.

Oh I see. Yes, the validator was difficult to support and was often delayed. It also required a round-trip to our servers instead of monitoring outgoing client requests only