Properties

Properties (parameters in GA4) are the metadata or the dimensions of an event. In other words, properties are the insights of each event and provide relevant information such as the time, the user, the place, or the device with which the action was performed.

Properties help you organize and analyze your data more efficiently by clearly stating what type of data is. This is why Trackingplan automatically monitors them to notify you whenever your properties don’t conform to the values inferred by our algorithm or the ones you have specified.

Property Type Monitoring

In this regard, while Trackingplan can automatically interpret which property type is being tracked, you can make as many manual adjustments as necessary and choose between boolean, number, string, array, object, regex, enum, or keep it unconstrained with any. If Trackingplan detects that the events sent do not conform to these specifications, a warning will be generated.

Property Presence Monitoring

Moreover, Trackingplan will also interpret which property presence is being tracked, but you can easily make manual adjustments between required, nullable, optional, and conditional as shown below. Let’s see this in more detail:

Required: If required properties are not being tracked in each of your event hits, as we see in the example below, Trackingplan will automatically send you a warning.

Nullable: If you set a property as “Nullable”, this means that emitting a property without value will not be considered a missing property in warnings and statistics. However, Trackingplan will send you a warning in case there are missing hits.
Optional: Setting a property as “optional” means there may be events where these are present and others that are not. In that case, Trackingplan won’t send you a warning in case no hits are tracked in the properties you’ve marked as optional.
Conditional: Setting a property as “conditional” can be very useful for events that occur on many different pages. In this sense, adding a conditional could allow us to differentiate between required or nullable within the very same property, depending on its value. Let’s think about an example to illustrate it.

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For it, we’ll use the event page_view, which is usually triggered on many different pages. By using a conditional, we can modify the property page_type and only set the ‘home page’ and the ‘checkout page’ as required, while leaving the rest as nullable. That way, Trackingplan will notify us only if there are missing hits on those pages you’ve marked as required, allowing you to be much more precise on your requirements.

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Pro tip: To help you stay compliant with Google’s Consent Mode, you can also use conditionals to ensure your properties are always required as long as their consent is granted. Learn more about Google’s Consent Mode & Trackingplan here.

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Events

User Attributes