3. Download logged values

About this task

After the time period passed, you must download the logged values to a file and review them locally.

Note: The downloaded file contains all values that are currently stored in the database. The log values are not trimmed based on downloading values or on the presence of values in any list. It contains all values that were detected for the dimension over the preceding two weeks while logging was enabled.

Do the following:

Procedure

  1. Before you begin, you may want to create a directory structure. The following directories are recommended for storing your dimension log files:
    • source - raw downloaded files from the Portal are stored here.
    • whitelist - the edited whitelist that you uploaded to the Portal.
  2. Edit the URL (Normalized) dimension. See 1. Initial configuration for URL (Normalized).
  3. In the Edit Dimension dialog, click the Advanced Options caret.
  4. Click Edit Whitelist....
  5. In the Edit Whitelist dialog, click Download Log Values. Save the file locally to your source directory.
  6. Create a copy of the file and save it in your whitelist directory. Edit this new file.
  7. More documentation on the recommended workflow is in the following location.
  8. Some tips for populating the URL dimension:
    • In the text file, the logged values are displayed in column 1, and the count of occurrences of each value is displayed in column 2.
    • If you are using a tabular editor such as Excel, you should sort by column 2 in descending order, which displays the detected values by number of occurrences. You can then determine a cutoff threshold for occurrences, above which values are included. For example, you may decide that any URL can be included in the whitelist if it was visited at least two times.
    • The maximum number of values that can be contained in a whitelist is 50,000. For a high-volume dimension, you may need to make some decisions about the sample of URLs of your web application that you want to track.
    • You may not want to populate all 50,000 values in the initial pass. Adding any additional values to a maxed whitelist requires removing an individual value, which must be performed through the Edit Whitelist dialog.
  9. After you completed your editing, do the following:
    • Delete all rows that are not to be included in the whitelist.
    • Delete column 2 that contains the number of occurrences of the whitelisted values.
  10. Save the file into the whitelist directory.

Results

Note: In the future, when you update your whitelist, you can use the saved versions of previous updates, such as this initial version, to compare occurrences in the whitelist and to determine the values that are newly detected.