Being able to see your analytics data in real-time can be invaluable. In this blog we’ll walk through Firebase’s StreamView report, giving you the ability to gain immediate insight into your users' in-app behaviour.
What is StreamView?
If you have ever used Google Analytics before, you’ll probably be familiar with the aptly named “Real-Time” reports. For quite some time Google Analytics for Firebase was missing the real-time reporting element from its feature set – StreamView is the answer to this.
The StreamView report gives you the ability to view the data that is flowing into your Firebase project from across the world in almost* real-time.
To access the StreamView report, navigate to your Firebase project and you’ll see it as an option under the “Analytics” menu section:
When you land on the report you’re greeted with a world map with heat spots representing the locations users active in the last 30 minutes visited from:
From this view you can filter by platform and app name and view the events and parameters that have fired the most over the last 30 minutes as well as the top location, app version, and the ability to view a random user’s event stream by clicking the “User Snapshot” button.
* SDK hit batching still in effect to save the end-users battery life and data.
How is StreamView useful?
StreamView can be used in several different ways and for a number of different reasons – but the two key use cases are:
- Get a top-level view of your app usage worldwide in real-time
- Understand whether new tracking pushed live is working
The first use-case is self-explanatory; you may be interested in getting a quick top-level summary of how many users are currently active and general app usage.
The second is probably the more valuable use of the StreamView report. Implementing new event tracking is commonplace and it’s vital to know that your events are working. As a first port of call you should configure and use DebugView but this is restricted to one local device; StreamView allows you to see whether your new events/parameters are pushing through to Firebase correctly at scale and allows you to make quick decisions off the back of the real-time data.
What now?
Whenever you’re implementing new tracking, or just want a top-level summary of how many users are currently active within your app, make sure to use the StreamView report. If you have any other questions or need some support in using the report get in touch.
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