This article details how to tag Features in your mobile application. Features are identified as follows:
- A Feature is always tagged in the context of a Page.
- A rule is created for each tagged Feature that relates to the "class" of the element, the element's text if this exists, its position in the list, its position on the Page, and many other parameters.
Features are usually identified correctly across your app versions. However, you might need to update the Page to make sure all Features are identified correctly and fix the tagging in the following scenarios:
- You made UI changes to your app, and specifically you changed button texts.
- You released a new app version with some changes to your Pages or Features so you are not seeing updated analytics.
For more information, see Update a Page in your app to start collecting data or Troubleshoot mobile tagging.
Tag a new Feature
Feature tagging can either be done when tagging a Page or by accessing the designer via Tag Pages:
- Go to Pages and select Tag Pages.
- Filter to your mobile app.
- Select the Page you want to tag Features on.
- Select Manage Page and start tagging your Features in the screenshot on the right, or select the button to let Pendo tag all the Features on the page for you. Each Feature shows up in a table on the left, where you can name it, group it, edit its attributes, and then save it.
Suggested Features
The Suggested Features list generates recommended Feature tags for UI elements in your application that receive high engagement. It gives you an overview of how users engage with UI elements in your application and the ability to prioritize tags based on engagement data.
Pendo detects UI elements in your application that are buttons, links, and input boxes (not the text inside an input box) and identifies the relevant rule tagging these elements. Pendo then populates the Suggested Features section based on the number of clicks over the last 36 hours.
Additionally, a heatmap of your UI provides a visual display of elements in your application that Pendo has detected based on this engagement.
Pendo only begins processing Feature data after you've tagged it. Suggested Features haven't been tagged or processed yet. You can't see full retroactive analytics and you can't use suggested Features in reports or tagging until after suggested Features are accepted (tagged) and data processing is complete.
You can either accept and finish creating a suggested Feature or delete it. Once you accept or delete a suggestion, Pendo doesn’t suggest the Feature again.
Review suggested Features
Open the Suggested Features table for a list of untagged Features that appeared in your events in the previous 36 hours for both public and staging environments. If a UI element isn't used in the last 36 hours, it disappears from the list until it's used again.
Hover over items in the list to see what elements they correspond to in your application. Elements corresponding with a suggested Feature are highlighted as you hover over each one in the Suggested Features table.
Turn on the heatmap using the toggle at the bottom of the Page for a visual representation of how much engagement each of the suggested Features has received. You can select a heatmap item to highlight it in the suggested Features list.
The data you see in the Suggested Features list can be different from the data you see when you tag them to add them to your Features list. This is because suggested Features includes data from both your public and staging environments, whilst tagged Features include data only from your public environment.
Accept suggestions
Before making a decision to accept or delete a suggestion, hover over a suggested Feature from the list to see which UI element you would be tagging and how much usage that UI element has gotten.
To accept the suggested Feature, select Tag at the end of the suggested Feature's row. This moves the rule into the Features list with a processing status. Processing can take up to an hour.
Delete a suggestion
To delete the suggested Feature, select the trash icon at the end of the suggested Feature's row. This removes the suggested Feature from the list and doesn't suggest the Feature again. Deleted suggestions don't reappear in the list, but can be created manually following the instructions outlined in Tag a new Feature.
Edit tagged Features
- In the Tagged Features list, select the Feature name to rename it.
- Select a product area from the dropdown list.
You can always see how the changes affect the Feature rule before applying them:
Code-base solution for tagging Features
Note: Currently available for native iOS and Android apps, and React-Native apps only. We plan on adding this feature to Xamarin Forms in the future.
Pendo might not always recognize a Feature in your apps. It can either render it as untaggable in Pendo, or it does show as taggable but doesn't show any analytics. Our code-based solution solves this problem by allowing your mobile developers to tag and get analytics for any Feature using an API.
To implement this, your developer must set this up. See Setting up a code-based solution for Mobile Tagging.
Frequently asked questions
I can’t tag some of the Features in my application. What do I do?
There are many ways to implement mobile buttons within an App and we are optimizing the way our SDK identifies Features. However, if you’re unable to tag and receive analytics for specific mobile Features, contact Pendo Support. A possible workaround is using Track Events to track specific Features to collect that data.
Note: Pendo automatically tracks events for back button clicks on Android devices. This is relevant only when the app is in the foreground and in focus. These events are included in the path data, so you can see if the back button was clicked when navigating between pages. This event is not available for Guides and other analytics reports.