Google Analytics 4 - how to capture file_downloads in Confluence?

[Judy Williamson]

Does anyone have success in capturing file_downloads in Google Analytics 4 for a Confluence website?

File_downloads is activated in Enhanced Measurement.  Tag instructions are added correctly (Page_views, Scrolls etc. are recorded correctly).

However, the Event File_downloads is not captured in DebugView.  File_downloads is not even represented as an Event under Reports. 

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

[David at David Simpson Apps]

Hi Judy

If you're talking about our app Google Analytics in Confluence, I can help you out with answers. Also happy to do this on our support portal.

The debug view will not work for file downloads because the events are sent to Google Analytics by our servers rather than from within the web browser.

We also only send attachment views/file downloads for files which are not images. The reason for this is that images are often displayed within a Confluence page, so an event would be logged for every image displayed on every page. 

You can see attachment views (aka file downloads) in the attachments report in our app:

Aside, the scroll event will not be useful, so we recommend that you switch that off in Google Analytics settings.  The Google Analytics tracking code is loaded in an iframe , so any scrolls will be of that iframe and not for the actual page. This is because of how Atlassian allows us to build apps for cloud.

– Cheers, David