Analysis Workspace Hacks – Next and Previous Page Report
Analysis Workspace is the most capable solution for Web Analysts today. It allows us to switch between building a Dashboard or old-school Report or something in the middle on the fly. It has surpassed the old Reports & Analytics Interface in functionality and workflow effectiveness and leaves you longing for it once you start using different solutions.
But there is one thing that is not that awesome in Analysis Workspace yet: Pathing. Once you activate Pathing for a custom prop, the old interface gives you Next and Previous Reports for that prop, just like with the Page Dimension:
As a result we get a nice table with the Next or Previous Dimension Items for a given Item.
Hacking Analysis Workspace’s Flow Visualizations
The closest thing to that functionality is the Flow Visualization in Analysis Workspace. It allows us to see a Flow of Users between Dimension Items or even across different Dimensions. It is way more flexible than the old interface, since we don’t even need to enable Pathing for props that we want to analyze:
But those Graphs can get really large. And since Workspace is creating those Graphs, it needs to have the information somewhere, right? So, let’s look at that! If we right click on a node in the Graph, we can trend that Connection:
As result, we get a Graph showing us the traffic across that connection:
On that Graph, let’s display the Freeform Table (that is secretly behind every Vis in Workspace):
On the resulting Table, we have a trended view of that Graph. But now we can see the Segment that is responsible for that Graph:
Let’s hack that Segment! In my Case, it looks like this. But what would happen, if we change the third Item to not only include a specific page, but any page? Let’s try that! Change the specific Page to a simple “exists” condition:
Once saved, we now have a few more Occurences for our Table. Since we want to look at the next Page, replace the Time Dimension with the Page Dimension. And there we have it! Now we have a Freeform Table showing us the next Page for our selected Page:
Now we can look at all the next Pages for a given Page within Analysis Workspace. Awesome! But I know: This is a very involved way to achieve this. We can’t really demand this from our non-technical users. If you want an easier way, vote for my idea on the Adobe Analytics Forums!
Frequently asked questions
Super simple! Just create a Flow visualization, right click a next or previous node, and break it down or trend it. The resulting table has a segment that needs to be slightly modified, which will give you a nice table with the next and previous pages!
German Analyst and Data Scientist working in and writing about (Web) Analytics and Online Marketing Tech.