How mPulse Tracks Sessions

mPulse uses the application's Session Timeout setting when determining how to track users sessions on your site. Each user session has a timeout associated with it (equal to the value in the Session Timeout field). As each new visitor arrives on your site, they're assigned a new and unique Session ID, and will retain that Session ID until their session reaches the timeout.

The default Session Timeout for applications is 30 minutes. You can adjust the value based on your visitors' browsing habits. For example, visitors that read long articles on news sites may need longer session timeouts. The 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. A completed session is then time-stamped according to the last beacon that mPulse received.

If a user visits only one (1) page before the session timeout expires, mPulse counts that session as a Bounce.

Unlike page-level data, session data (such as Session Count, Session Duration, Session Length and Bounce Rate) is not reported in real-time, as sessions won't finalize until they reach their timeout. As a result, you will not see those session metrics in widgets like Metrics over Time until the session timeout has expired.

For example, if sessions are configured to timeout at 30 minutes, and you're viewing a chart for the Last 60 Minutes, session metrics will be blank for the most recent 30 minutes. Only session data outside of the last 30 minutes are complete and will be visible in the Metrics over Time widget.

Set up session tracking across your domains

mPulse can optionally be configured to track sessions across multiple domains.

Before you begin

Boomerang version 1.500 or higher is required.

For cross-domain session tracking to work, you will need to host an HTML page on the main domain that is valid for the app:

• If ​Akamai​ delivers your traffic, you can do this in Property Manager
• If not, you can add the HTML file to the origin server.

Configuring your mPulse Application

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 default 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).

Hosting the Cross-Domain HTML in Property Manager

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

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.