Custom Analytics

In addition to the analytics that Course Builder provides, you can create custom analytics using

Google Analytics

You can use Google Analytics with Course Builder to get all the analytics information you would normally get with a website. Get a Google Analytics ID and paste that ID into Course Builder’s Google Analytics ID field.

Google BigQuery

You may want to create custom analytics that is neither available with the built-in analytics nor with Google Analytics. In this case, you can send your data from your Course Builder course into Google BigQuery. Google BigQuery allows you to arbitrarily query massive datasets using SQL queries against append-only tables, using the processing power of Google’s infrastructure.

Data pump values

To send data from your Course Builder course to BigQuery, you must first create a pipeline between the two and then pump data from Course Builder to BigQuery. The Data Pump page at Dashboard > Settings > Data Pump show fields that setup your pipeline into BigQuery.

  • Project ID: This is the cloud project ID that you created for your course.
  • JSON Key: Generate credential values from your console and paste them in this field.
  • Dataset Name: Optionally specify a particular name to identify this dataset. If not set, this will default to the name of the course.
  • Table Lifetime: Optionally specify the amount of time a table pushed to BigQuery will last. After this amount of time, the table will be automatically deleted. This is useful if your data retention or privacy policy mandates a limited time for analysis after which personal data must be removed. Leaving this field blank will use the default value of “30 days”. Supported units are: “weeks”, “days”, “hours”, “minutes”, “seconds”. Units may be specified as their first letter, singular, or plural. Spaces and commas may be used or omitted. E.g., both of the following are equivalent: “3w1d7h”, “3 weeks, 1 day, 7 hours”
  • PII Encryption Token: Course Builder automatically generates this value for you after you click Save as long as the Project ID and JSON Key fields are correct.

Data pump into BigQuery

Here are the steps to setup the BigQuery pipeline:

  1. Go to cloud.google.com and sign into to access your console.
  2. Go to API Manager through the navigation menu.
  3. Find and click the BigQuery API.
  4. Click Enable API.
  5. Click Credentials in the navigation menu.
  6. Click New credentials > Service account key.
  7. Copy all the contents of the resulting JSON file that’s produced.
  8. Paste the contents into Course Builder’s Dashboard > Settings > Data Pump > JSON Key field.
  9. Staying in Course Builder’s Dashboard > Settings > Data Pump page, add your Project ID.