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HTML Attributes

Collected Events

For click and focus events on the page, Pendo only collects:

  • The type of element that was clicked (<a>, <span>, <div> etc.)
  • The text inside of elements such as <a>, <span>, <div>
  • The id and/or class(es) of the element
  • Other attributes of the element if they exist, including title, href, and tabindex.
  • For <button>, we collect value (the text of the button) and name
  • For <img>, we collect src and alt
  • For <select>, we collect type and selectedIndex
  • For <textarea> and <input>, we collect name

For privacy reasons, we do  not  collect text inside of  <input>  or  <textarea> fields or the document <title> in load events.

In addition to the data described above: for the element that was clicked on, we collect the same data for its parent element, and the parent above that, up through the HTML hierarchy to the <body> tag.

Note: You can optionally set a flag to make it so Pendo does not collect any of the text elements on the page, but this may make it more difficult to tag Features on your pages.

 

Custom HTML Attributes

What are Custom Attributes?

Pendo natively collects the data outlined above. With custom attributes, you can opt to choose specific additional attributes for tracking click events.

This feature affects Analytics only. It was previously possible to utilize any attribute in a custom CSS selector rule for Guide step targeting.

Any features tagged with the custom attribute rules will not be immediately available for retroactive analysis. This is because if a feature is tagged with a rule using a custom attribute today, Pendo will not be able to retrieve any data prior to the date when the custom attribute was added.

Note: Custom HTML Attributes are available in Agent version 2.3.0 and on under the Agent Settings tab on the Install Settings page. Only admins can access this feature.

 

How Does It Work?

Here is an example from HTML in an app:

<a class="block-list"
   target="_blank"
   data-id="1.0-Nav-Home.Dashboard">

In this example, the only attribute that we could currently latch onto for feature tagging is the class="block-list". In this instance, that class is not globally unique to that item and would not be specific enough if you wanted to isolate that unique feature. This example site was instrumented with an additional attribute called “data-id” which contains some helpful identifying content, specifically that this "a" tag has the value "1.0-Nav-Home.Dashboard" for "data-id" (a feature that navigates to the home dashboard).

Custom HTML Attributes can be accessed by admins on the Install Settings page under the "Agent Settings" tab.

To begin gathering the "data-id" attribute, you could choose to track everything beginning with "data-" with the rule "data-*" (meaning every attribute that starts with “data-” will be recorded) or you could target the specific attribute of "data-id". Pendo will begin collecting the attribute within click events 15 to 30 minutes after entering the rule.

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