GOV.UK GA4 annotations
The GOV.UK GA4 annotations report provides information on users of GOV.UK GA4 data to SPOCs.
The data provided includes:
- the dates of changes to the GOV.UK GA4 data collection
- the dates of external events which could impact use of GOV.UK
This report was first created in mid 2024 by the GOV.UK Insights and Analytics team to support users of the GOV.UK GA4 data.
Using the GOV.UK GA4 annotations report
Get access to the GOV.UK GA4 annotations report
The report can be viewed by anyone with a GDS email address.
Those in the GOV.UK Insights and Analytics team Google group and in the GDS Performance Analysts Google group are automatically granted ‘Edit’ permissions.
GOV.UK GA4 annotations data definitions
| Field name | Definition | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| start_date | The date the issue happened or started on | |
| end_date | If present, the date the issue was resolved or stopped occuring | Only present for annotations pulled from the data_quality_notes table |
| category | The type of annotation - for example, if the annotation provides ‘Information’ or tells you when something was ‘Changed’, ‘Created’ or ‘Broken’ | Always ‘Information’ for the govuk_timeline table |
| issue_name | The ‘title’ of the issue | Calculated in the custom query for the govuk_timeline table |
| details | A more detailed explanation of the issue | Calculated in the custom query for the govuk_timeline table |
| duration | The difference between the start and end dates | A calculated field added to the data source |
| event_first_recorded_date | The first date on which the event was collected | |
| impacted_event_names | The event_name value for the GOV.UK GA4 events that might be impacted by this issue - ‘null’ if all events or unknown | Always ‘null’ for the govuk_timeline table |
| impacted_event_types | The type value for the GOV.UK GA4 events that might be impacted by this issue - ‘null’ if all events or unknown | Always ‘null’ for the govuk_timeline table |
| Record Count | A count of the records (rows) in the table | Default Looker Studio field |
How the GOV.UK GA4 annotations report works
Data sources
The GOV.UK GA4 annotations reporting Looker Studio report uses the ‘GOV.UK GA4 annotations’ data source.
This is a custom query which pulls together data from a few different data sources in the ga4_annotations dataset:
- the
data_quality_notestable, which pulls information on changes to the GA4 data collection from a Google Sheet - the
govuk_timelinetable, which pulls information on external events from a Google Sheet
The custom query unions each of these tables together after adding in the ‘Category’ and ‘Issue name’ fields and ensuring that only appropriate rows (where events have specific dates) are pulled in.
Date range parameters are enabled and the whole data source (the result of the union of the above tables) is filtered by the Looker Studio date parameters.