Audit your Universal Analytics property

- [Instructor] Audit your Universal Analytics property. You should have a solid understanding of what your current Universal property is doing before you start any configuration work over in GA4. Before you start this process, make sure to grab a copy of the Universal to GA4 Migration Helper Spreadsheet, which is available with the course resources. The first tab of that spreadsheet is named GA Universal Audit. And that's what we'll be populating during this video. This sheet will provide you with a reference going forward of what your Universal property was set up to do. And honestly, it's just a good thing to have at hand regardless. That way, if anyone makes any changes to your properties in the future, you know how they were originally set up and how they were supposed to be set up. Some of the sheet is pretty straightforward. You just need to visit a section of the Universal admin interface and then note down what's there. So what I will do is only go over the parts that require some additional explanation. The first thing I want you to look at is how Universal is collecting user data. What I will often see is the slider for Enable Users Metric and Reporting is set to on, as you see here. But then when I go under tracking info and then User-ID, the User-ID features aren't actually set up at all, as you can see on the right. If you do have both the Enable Users Metric and Reporting slider set to on, and the User-ID is set up under the User-ID section, and a User-ID view is created, that means that all the steps are there to collect User-ID information. Now, you need to check if it's actually working the way it's supposed to. Go to your User-ID view, and then go to Audience and User Explorer. If the leftmost column says Client ID, like you see at the top-left, then the User-ID not being delivered to the Universal property properly. If it says User-ID, then everything is working as it should. And you'll need to note that down as it does require some additional configuration work at your end, as you move to GA4. The next section to look at is under Tracking Info, and then Data Collection. If the screen looks like this, Google Signals is not turned on. But if it looks like this, Google Signals is turned on. You'll need to turn this on separately in GA4, regardless of how it's set here. So note down which option you have. If it isn't turned on, I would recommend speaking to whomever handles privacy considerations at your company before turning it on. Depending on how much your company uses Google Ads, you may end up with quite a few audiences under Audience Definitions, and then Audiences. If you find a number of audiences here, and you aren't responsible for Google Ads, I'd recommend speaking with the person responsible for Google Ads at your company, and ask them what documentation they have already about the audience configuration that they have in Universal. I'll talk more about Audiences in the video, "Rebuild Audiences from Universal to GA4". As for the Custom Definitions, make sure to note the scope of any Custom Dimensions. Custom Dimensions are different in GA4. Instead of the scope of hit, session, user, or product, Custom Dimensions are either at a user level or an event level. We'll cover this in more detail in the video, "Configure Custom Dimension and Metrics in GA4". Otherwise, just note down what things are set to in the Google Sheet, or use your own tracking method. And then we'll be revisiting each of these settings as we configure your GA4 property in the other videos in this course.