SWC & Implementation updates out today

Today we have released a new version of the appAnalytics SWC – version 0.04.0. You will need to
login to download it. If you have registered but not be activated this will happen today as well. While this update has been a long-time coming we hope that it has been worth the wait.

Before we get into what the changes are, a note to current users. The current tracking domain – my.appanalyticshq.com – will be decommissioned shortly. You will have a week to update your existing applications with the new SWC if you want to continue live tracking. Applications that are unable to reach this subdomain should continue to track locally, but their apps will need to be updated to get access to this locally stored data and send it on to the new tracking domains.

The goods news is that this should be the last time you will need to incorporate an updated SWC for some time. The solution has been re-architected to abstract much of the functionality into an encrypted payload which is able to be updated by us and pulled into your development environment. This process has been automated, meaning you won’t have to worry about whether you are working with the latest classes, appAnalytics now checks it’s version number and updates if required.

This allows us to rollout new functionality or bug fixes to the SWC without any end user involvement. All the developer has to do is keep abreast of the new functionality being delivered by the whole solution and take advantage of it. This means that we have to worry less about managing a release cycle in terms of the SWC and can now concentrate on updating the payload to quickly improve or fix issues in a way that is non-intrusive for everyone.

The new SWC is stripped down compared to previous versions, with almost all of the complexity now residing in the payload. The only real change that devs need to be aware of is that we have taken a decision to extend the parameters that can be passed through to the payload, and a small update to the tracking code used in your apps will be required.

The parameter set has previously been restricted to action, type, description but we have had a long discussion about including additional parameters such as “group” to allow for greater segmentation as we work through reporting suite enhancements. As we couldn’t forsee all such additions we have decided to allow for an array to be passed instead. Obviously anything can now be passed through, but only those parameters being expected by the tracking engine will be recorded – anything else will be discarded.

So, the new tracking code needs to follow this format:

AppAnalytics.track(["action", "type", "description"]);

Please note the inclusion of square brackets [ ] around the parameter group signifying that it is in fact an array. This is the only change you will need to make to use the new SWC and the functionality coming down the line.