Determine when your visitors' sessions on your site end.

mPulse uses the session timeout setting to calculate session metrics. Every session has a timeout associated with it, which is equal to the value in the Session Timeout field. As each new visitor arrives at your site, they're assigned a session ID.

The session timeout is preset to 30 minutes. You can adjust the value based on your visitors browsing habits. For example, visitors that read content on media sites may need longer sessions. Session timeout can be set as long as 60 minutes or as short as 1 minute.

Any beacon that mPulse receives, for a given session, refreshes the timeout period. A session is complete when the session timeout period expires due to no activity on the page. This means that mPulse has not received new beacons during the timeout period. A completed session is time-stamped according to the last beacon that mPulse receives. If a user visits one page only before the session timeout expires, mPulse counts that session as a bounce.

Unlike page-level data, session data are not reported on live sessions. You will not see session data results in the Metrics over Time widgets until the session timeout has expired. This includes, bounce rate, session length and session duration.

For example, if a 30-minute time window is in effect for a percentage metric, it remains blank for 30 minutes. Only data from outside of that 30 minutes are complete and visible in the Metrics over Time widgets.

Set up session tracking across your domains

Let mPulse track all your distinct domains in the same mPulse app.

Before you begin

Make sure that you're using boomerang version 1.500 (v1.500). For session tracking to work, you'll need to host an HTML page on a URL of the main domain that is valid for the app. If ​Akamai​ delivers your traffic, you can do this in Property Manager. Or you can add the HTML file to the origin server.

How to

1. In mPulse, click Central.

2. In the left pane, click Apps, then double-click the app that you want to set up session tracking for.

3. Click Sessions.

4. In the Session Timeout field, enter a value between 1 and 60 minutes or use the preset value of 30 minutes.

5. Select the Enable session tracking across multiple domains checkbox to show the Specify domains dialog.

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Note

The Enable Cookies for Session Tracking checkbox is preset. If you're going to track sessions for several domains, do not deselect this option.

6. In the Specify domains field, enter a subdomain that you want to track, then click Add. The subdomain appears in the Domain section of the dialog. Repeat this step for all of the subdomains that you want to track.

7. In the Domain section of the dialog is the code that you need to host the HTML page. If you're going to host the HTML page on the origin server, click Download HTML to save the code to your machine. If you're going to host the HTML page in Property Manager, copy the code to your clipboard.

8. At the bottom of the dialog, enter the URL of the host page where the code was entered, for example, www.example.com/akamai/mpulse.html.

9. Click OK to save the configuration.

10. Place the HTML file on the origin server. If ​Akamai​ delivers your traffic, use Property Manager to host the HTML page (details below).

Host an HTML page in Property Manager

Create a simple rule to make it easier to track many domains across the same mPulse app.

How to

1. Go to ☰ > CDN > Properties.

2. Create a new version of your mPulse-enabled property configuration.

3. In the Rules section for the property, click Add Rule.

4. In the right pane, give the rule a name, then click Insert Rule.

5. Click Add Match.

6. Set the criteria to match on the URL of the HTML page that you want to host, as shown in this example.

7. Click Add Behavior to open the Add a Behavior for this Rule dialog.

8. In the search field, enter construct, click Construct Response, then click Insert Behavior to open the open the behavior's dialog.

9. In the Status Response Body field, paste the HTML code from mPulse as shown in this example.

10. Save your changes.

11. Activate the property on the ​Akamai​ staging network.

12. After the property is active on staging, test your property configuration to make sure your website is working as expected. For more information about testing configurations in general, see the Edge Staging Network User Guide.

13. From mPulse, open a dashboard (for example, the Summary dashboard) and make sure that the page views count is increasing.

14. After you test your property configuration on staging and check the page views in mPulse, activate the tested property version on the production network.

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Note

An initial mPulse property configuration can take an average of 15 minutes to deploy to the edge servers. This is based on the amount of traffic being sent, and time to populate the data in the portal. If you experience delays greater than 4 hours, contact your account representative for assistance.

15. Once your property configuration is activated on the production network, it'll be several minutes before mPulse receives your data beacons.