Snowplow Android Tracker 1.1.0 released

We are pleased to announce a new release of the Snowplow Android Tracker.

Version 1.1.0 introduces new auto-tracking features for Snowplow mobile users including screen events and entities, install events and application context.

With these new features, Snowplow users can set up comprehensive tracking much faster so your data team can gain access to valuable insights about your application within minutes.

Read on below the fold for:

1. Screen tracking
2. Install tracking
3. Application context
4. Updates
5. Documentation
6. Getting help

1. Screen tracking

With this release we have updated our approach to screen view tracking with the introduction of screen contexts and automatic screen view tracking.

1.1 Updated screen view event with new data points

Previously the trackScreenView method took up to two arguments with each screen view: a name and an id:

t1.track(ScreenView.builder() .name("HUD > Save Game") .id("screen23") .build());

The new version of the method takes takes an additional, optional “type” argument, “transitionType” and optional arguments for the previous screenview:

tracker.track(ScreenView.builder() .name("Product list") .id("some Id") .type("ListView") .previousName("User grid") .previousId("another Id") .previousType("GridView") .transitionType("swipe") .build());

In addition, the “ID” field is automatically set by the tracking SDK and is used in the screen context as below. The previous screen view ID, type and name are automatically recorded by the SDK with the event, making it easier when analysing the data to understand how individual users navigate through the app.

The fields recorded with each screen view event can be viewed here.

1.2 Introducing the screen context

The screen context is an additional context that describes the screen on which an event is sent, that can automatically be sent with every event recorded from the tracker. To enable this feature, set the context during initialization:

Tracker.init(new Tracker.TrackerBuilder(...) .screenContext(true) .build() <span class="o">);

The screen context is then attached to every event recorded from the app, based on the screen view events that have been fired.

This makes it significantly easier when modelling the data generated by the SDK to aggregate all the events that occurred on a particular screen based on the screen view ID sent with both the screen view event and each screen context. Previously, in order to identify what screen an event occurred on, a window function would have been required to identify the most recent previous screen view event for that particular user ID.

1.3 Automatic screen view tracking

The new version of the tracker supports automatic screen view tracking. This makes it significantly faster for companies getting started implementing the tracker.

Enabling automatic screen view tracking is very simple:

Tracker.init(new Tracker.TrackerBuilder(...) ... .screenviewEvents(true) .screenContext(true) .build() <span class="o">);

2. Install tracking

The automatic install tracking feature makes measuring app installations more straight-forward so your team can conveniently build reports related to app downloads.

Set the following option to enable the install tracking feature:

Tracker.init(new Tracker.TrackerBuilder(...) ... .installTracking(true) .build() <span class="o">);

3. Application context

We now offer application context tracking so you can automatically track the app build and version your users are operating on, and use this data to easily compare your apps’ performance across releases and updates.

You can enable this feature by setting the following option:

Tracker.init(new Tracker.TrackerBuilder(...) ... .applicationContext(true) .build() <span class="o">);