Custom analytics integration

Hi all!

I built and published my first app (https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/6678b31a-3c8c-4c60-8387-3fb6c8294b0e) and the store shows the number of installs and some base stats like how many users are on which version of the app and on which device, but I'd like some advanced analytics, to know how often a user starts/ends a session, how much different features are used, etc. Now on the mobile world I'd use Crashlytics / Google Analytics, but what's the recommended way of doing it with Connect IQ? I'd like to avoid having to use a companion app if possible, but to do everything on the watch.

Bonus point of anyone has links to an open source app that does it

Cheers!

0 sabeard over 1 year ago

Pretty sure you won't find an open source app that does what you are asking for. Pretty much if you want advanced statistics you would have to develop your own web API to capture the stats you are interested in and then write that info the app to send the log of the details you are looking for. You do also have to be careful with GDPR and be sure to disclose via a privacy policy what details you do capture and what for.

0 jim_m_58 over 1 year ago in reply to sabeard

Yes, a dev needs to do it themselves. Using things like Azure, where the app sends info there.

I know of an app that did just this and the dev could see info like where in the world the app was installed, and there was a whole thing with GDPR and a privacy statement. It wasn't a trivial exercise!

Too much work until you get a fair number of new downloads (what everyone sees on the main screen in the store, not the stats only a dev can see under "stats")

0 Daniele over 1 year ago in reply to jim_m_58

Yeah, I was expecting something like that... the interface / network calls might not be too tough to implement, but the GDPR is more annoying for sure... I think I'll postpone this until I get more traction from users

0 flocsy🤠 over 1 year ago in reply to Daniele

I'm not a legal advisor but I think that GDPR is not hard to do if you are willing to get rid of the bits of data that would have problems with GDPR. If you are really only interested in general things like how many of the users use which screens, etc then maybe you can collect enough information without storing problematic data. The question is a) is that enough for what you want to do with the data, b) what exactly can you store. IMHO if you don't store IP or user ID, just events, then you should be OK. If you wan't to be even more fancy then you could probably even translate the IP to something like country or maybe even town and then store that.

I think a lot of useful information can be collected this way, but I can also think of lot of information that is "lost", i.e you won't be able to categorize the users like "users that use screen A for 80+% of the time" vs "Users that use screen B for more than 50% of the time" because you won't be able to identify the users. Now again I am not a legal expert, but there may be ways to do even that (it's not hard technically, [i.e you could save the SHA1 of the user_id] but I have no idea if that complies with GDPR or not)