The migrations plans outlines the standards that we are going to use on the global Google Analytics 4 setup.
We have create two plans to migrate the Universal Analytics setup to Google Analytics 4 for the global engagement systems: Planet 4 and Open Social
But before looking at the final migrations plan, take a look at the file structure below to understand how to read and interpret the plan:
The first tab contains events you are familiar with. Events from Universal Analytics, i.e. your current GA.
Columns A to D includes Event Categories, Action, Label, and Value. Columns E - J contains details about the GTM setup for the given events.
Values in { } are GTM variables. For example {{DLV - pageType}} means that an event label’s value comes from a variable named DLV - pageType.
In column J you’ll find a short description of a trigger. The first value before “|” tells about the type of a given trigger. For instance Click | dataset.gaCategory = Search Page|Search Results means that particular event fires for Clicks which meets the following rule; dataset.gaCategory = Search Page|Search Results (i.e. regex syntax with the operator “|” = OR)
The second tab contains new events which we’ll have in our new GA4 property.
At a glance, there are a lot fewer of them than in UA, aren’t there?
In practice, almost each of the old events will be in GA4. To prove it, a special tab was prepared which explains how to find an equivalent of UA event in GA4. That is the GA4 / UA tab but more about that in a moment…
Back to the point, in the GA4 Events tab, there are 6 sections. All of them are crucial for setting up our new, shiny GA4.
So let’s dive into each.
GA4 Event Name
That is what events will look like in GA4 reports.
GTM Event Name
Names of events in Google Tag Manager.
Trigger
Description of events’ triggers in a similar fashion to triggers in the previous tab.
Event Parameters [to expand click “+” above the column name]
In this section, you will find the names of all event parameters that should be attached to a given event.
User Properties [to expand click “+” above the column name]
In a similar fashion in this section, we have user properties.
Fields to set [to expand click “+” above the column name]
And here we have fields to set for particular events.
How to use in practice that information was covered in the next sections.
In that already mentioned tab, we will find a comparison between old and new events, which should help us follow the change.
The scheme is simple.
In column A you’ll find well-known names of events’ categories and just next to it in column B their equivalents in the GA4.
You should get used to finding events by their names instead of the event category. That’s a crucial change but in practice, data is the same.
You can be confused about the GA4 Event - click event. A lot of Universal Analytics’s events have been replaced on this. But as you’ll expand Event Properties you’ll find properties such as i.a.:
category
action
label
So then for example old Menu Navigation Event Category, you will find under the click event with the category property = Menu Navigation.
That is basically all of the Event Parameters, User Properties, and Fields to set gathered in one place.
The first two sections contain the list of all event parameters visible in GA4. The first one covers the final names that should be added in GA4 UI (look at the 4. Custom Definitions
The second part is for user properties and the last includes all fields to set. This tab will help you navigate through the Migration Plan and let you find particular properties easier.
Now that you understand how the document was created, take a look at the plan for each platform:
