GOV.UK GA4 usage report
The GOV.UK GA4 usage report shows access to our GOV.UK GA4 Production data and the tokens consumed per user. Access and tokens can be split out by access mechanism and report type.
The report is split into several pages, which can be accessed from the menu on the left hand side. The pages share the same data source and split the data by various dimensions.
By using this report we can monitor how frequently users are accessing GOV.UK GA4 data, and also how many API tokens they are consuming.
Using the GOV.UK GA4 usage report
Get access to the GOV.UK GA4 usage report
The report can be edited by anyone in the GDS performance analysts Google group. It can also be viewed by both those in the analytics team and data services Google groups. There are also a number of individuals who have been granted view or edit access to the dashboard when they have required access to this data.
If you sit outside of these groups but wish to have access to this dashboard, please get in touch with the Analytics team to make this request.
GOV.UK GA4 usage data definitions
| Field name | Definition | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| access_count | The number of times GA reporting data was accessed. Note that every report viewed can result in one or more data access events | |
| access_mechanism | The mechanism through which a user accessed GA reporting data, for example ‘Google Analytics User Interface’ or ‘Google Analytics API’ | |
| accessor_app_name | The name of the application that accessed Google Analytics reporting data, for example ‘Looker Studio’ or ‘Power BI’ | |
| api_quota_category | The quota category for the Data API request, for example ‘Core’ or ‘Realtime’ | |
| api_tokens_consumed | The number of property quota tokens consumed for Data API requests | |
| domain | The email domain, taken from the user’s email address | |
| epoch_time_micros | The unix microseconds since the epoch that the GA user accessed GA reporting data | |
| report_type | The type of reporting data that the GA user accessed, for example ‘Realtime’ or ‘Free form exploration’ | |
| user_email | The user’s email address | |
| Record Count | A count of the records (rows) in the table | Default Looker Studio field |
How the GOV.UK GA4 usage report works
Data sources
The GA4 usage report uses the ga4_logs table in the ga4_logs dataset as its data source.
This can be found in the ga4-analytics-352613 project within BigQuery.
Cloud function
The GOV.UK GA4 access logs data is generated by querying the Google Analytics Admin API - it is this data which populates the ga4_logs table.
The cloud function is triggered from cloud scheduler and retrieves data once a day, getting fields such as the timestamp and user email, along with metrics for the access count and api tokens consumed, both of which are used in the dashboard’s charts to calculate the number of times a user has accessed GOV.UK GA4 data. Alongside this, the access mechanism is also returned which allows us to report on which method the user used to access the data, e.g. the GA4 interface, Looker Studio etc.
More information about how the ga4_logs table is populated using cloud functions can be found on the [data source page]](/data-sources/ga/ga4-logs/#ga4-access-logs).