Important: Google Analytics doesn't include Google software

[Tim Green]

Some users have written to us asking whether the Google Analytics feature in Help & Manual 5.5 includes Google software that is somehow embedded in the program and/or your compiled output. They were concerned that Help & Manual could be automatically adding some kind of Google tracking features to their help. This is NOT the case. There is no Google software of any kind in Help & Manual and Help & Manual does not and cannot install any Google software.

All the Google Analytics feature does is give you a quick and easy way to integrate your own personal setup for your Google Analytics account in your help. It streamlines the process and makes it easier for you to get better results. If you don't enter your own personal Google Analytics codes nothing at all will happen. And nothing at all is possible unless you actively set up a Google Analytics account, transfer the codes it gives you to your project setup and explicitly activate it in your project setup.

So, to sum up: The Google Analytics feature includes no Google software. It just provides a quick and easy way to link your help to your own Google Analytics account if you have one. If you don't have a GA account, it can't do anything. And even if you do, it still can't do anything unless you enter the code from your account.

[James Sharman]

Hello,
I am troubleshooting a H&Mv5.5 issue that one of our developers is encountering. After placing the GA code in H&M, the compiled output does not contain any reference to Google. I have also compiled the same project and had the same issue.

We are now looking at a manual solution and I believe the Tracking Code would all go in the index.html, right?

Let me know what information I can provide to resolve this issue. Thanks!

Edit - I didn't mean to post that right here, whoops.

[Tim Green]

Hi James,

Have you actually tested whether it's working on your GA account? The GA integration works with a script, not with embedded code as it would if you entered it manually, and the code is included in the script.

[James Sharman]

They've gone back to using the GA features built in to H&Mv5.

I have verified the mainorf_navigation.js has the correct var gaaccount = "UA-20175288-1"; code in it. Since this web help is on an intranet web server, I verified that users could access the following links:

http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js
https://ssl.google-analytics.com/ga.js

Google Analytics has still not received any data.

Any ideas?

[Tim Green]

Hi James,

Have you also checked this second requirement for GA on intranets?:

Code: Select all

Additionally, your intranet must be accessed using a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) such as http://intranet.example.com. The ga.js JavaScript will not work if your intranet is accessed using a non-FQDN (such as http://intranet).

[James Sharman]

Yes, but I read it wrong the first time. :X

Now that I'm using the fully qualified URL, it's working great. Thanks Tim!

[James Sharman]

Just a note, in case anyone else has this issue.

These developers use Zoom Professional, so we had to also modify Zoom's search configuration to also use the FQDN. Before making the Zoom change, when a user selected search result, the header images on the topic page would be duplicated/missing images.