# About Universal Analytics

This page is showing example of how to setup Universal Analytics for learning purpose, please be aware the Google Universal Analytics will no longer process new data beginning July 1, 2023. You'll have to switch to Google Analytics 4 Property.

## Create GA4 Property
At here, we'll try to create GA4 property, if you have existing account with the old Universal Analytics you can use the same account and create a new property and use the GA4 Setup Assistant to setup GA4.
![GA4 Setup Assistant](/images/setup-ga4-with-gtm/img4.png)

Choose the option that want to create a new Google Analytics 4 Property.
![Crate GA4 - Get Started](/images/setup-ga4-with-gtm/img5.png)

Click Create Property to create new GA4 property. Once create a GA4 property make a note for the mesurement ID, because we'll need later the value to add to the Google Tag Manager.
![Create GA4 Property](/images/setup-ga4-with-gtm/img6.png)
## Create new Google Tag Manager Container
Here, create a new Google Tag Manager container under your account.
![GTM Code Snippet](/images/setup-ga4-with-gtm/img1.png)

## Install Google Tag Manager into Your Site
Then go to the admin section and follow the instruction to use the code snippet and add back to your site. Once add Google Tag Manager code to the site, later we can configure additional tags or scripts to load to the site.
Here add new tag and add the Google Analytics GA4 Configurations
![GTM - GA4 Configuration](/images/setup-ga4-with-gtm/img2.png)

## Add Google Analytics GA4 Configuration
Add the GA4 mesurement ID, so Google Tag Manager's GA4 configuration will connect to the new GA4 Analytic's measurement ID.
![GTM - GA4 Configuration with Measurement ID](/images/setup-ga4-with-gtm/img3.png)

Now, if you load the page with the GTM script you add before should be loading the script for the GA4 start collection default data and send to Google Analytics, such as page view.








Google Tag Manager provide easy way to setup Google Analytics 4, this blog provide steps to walk through how to setup GA4 via GTM.

How to Setup Google Analytics 4 with Google Tag Manager

# About Universal Analytics

This page is showing example of how to setup Universal Analytics for learning purpose, please be aware the Google Universal Analytics will no longer process new data beginning July 1, 2023. You'll have to switch to Google Analytics 4 Property.

## Why use dataLayer for GA4?

GA4 has different ways to fire events. Enhanced measurement events, which is build in events that will enable by options, then Recommended events, these events won't send automatically but will require some configuration or manual setup. Now, if the events you want to fire are not both of these scenario, you can create custom events and send to GA4. You can use `gtag` or `dataLayer` to send custom events. 

This blog will focus and demo how to use `dataLayer` to fire custom events to GA4.

## Pre Requirement

This blog assume following task are already done on your site.
+ You have google tag manager already configure for GA4.
+ Your web site had load above GTM.
+ Your Google Analytics had link to Big Query.

## Goal
The goal we're trying to do is fire following dataLayer events, assume you have contact form at home page, you would like to try this data at GA4. For testing purpose we'll fire below events at console, but once we fire the events, we'll see how does it show at the browser, how to see events at GA4 UI and hwo data flow into Big Query.

```
// we wan't to fire this event when the user click the submit contact form button.
dataLayer.push({"event" : "contact_lead", "email": "test@test.com", "page": "home"});
```
If you just run the above Javascript at console, nothing will happen until you finish following setup at GTM.

## Create Triggers at GTM

At GTM, click Triggers > Custom Events, and enter the event name as `contact_lead`.
![Enter Event Name for Custom Events](/images/setup-datalayer/img1.png)

## Create DataLayer Variable
If you look at the above dataLayer, you can see there are two fields, `email` and `page`. We'll need to configure the dataLayer variable so run above dataLayer will include the `email` and `page` fields.

At GTM, click Variables -> User-Defined Variables, create 2 dataLayer variables as below.
![Enter dataLayer variable for Custom Events](/images/setup-datalayer/img2.png)

## Crate Google Analytics GA4 Event
One created Triggers and Variable, we can create a new GA4 Event tag.
Click Tags > New > Google Analytics: GA4 Event
![GA4 custom events](/images/setup-datalayer/img3.png)
Here, we'll enter the event name as `contact_lead` and also 2 more Event Parameters. Now the configuration for run above Javacript code is ready. 

## Choose the Triggering for GA4 Event
Now, the last part is add the trigger, as when above events should fire, so far we set all the custom events but you can filter to class or id.
![GA4 custom events trigger](/images/setup-datalayer/img4.png)

## Publish or Preview the GTM changes
If you don't want to publish your GTM changes, you can preview and test the setting or just did and see if we can fire the events with GA4.

## Verify the code

Run the below code at browser console windows to test. 
![Run dataLayer code](/images/setup-datalayer/img5.png)

After run the above code, take a look at the browser network tab, you should see some request start from `collect?v=2...`, this is GA4 request.

As you can see the GA4 request include the email and page's key and value, without the GTM setup, you won't see this request fire, without the dataLayer variables you won't see the email and page include to the payload either.
![GA4 Payload](/images/setup-datalayer/img6.png)

You can test by running following javascript code at console, so if the GA4 will include this data or not, which it will not include unless you configure the datalayer variable `data1` at GTM.
```
dataLayer.push({"event" : "contact_lead", "email": "test@test.com", "page": "home", "data1": "other data"});
```

## Verify at GA4 UI
You can verify the event by go to the GA4's realtime section and check the section for events, as you can see our `contact_lead` displays at the page, and you will see the email and page's key and value as well.
![GA4 UI](/images/setup-datalayer/img7.png)

## How about the Big Query?
If you connect the GA4 with Big Query, you should see the something `analytics_111111` and there's `events_intraday_`, that intraday will be a stream data coming from GA4, and you can see our contact_lead is writing to this table.

![Big Query](/images/setup-datalayer/img8.png)

## Conclusion
GA4 provide `dataLayer` and `gtag` to fire custom events, if using `dataLayer` you will have to configure trigger and events at GTM, if follow the correct steps should be able to configure quick, but lots of configuration at GTM might not suitable for certain company's requirements.









Google Tag Manager provide easy way to setup GA4, and GA4 custom events. This blog provide steps to walk through how to setup GA4 custom events via GTM.

Category Google Tag Manager

How to Setup Google Analytics 4 with Google Tag Manager

How to Use dataLayer to fire GA4 Custom Events via Google Tag Manager