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Enhancing GA4 Configuration with Repeated Firing and Data Fields
Hey there, I need to gather some clarity on an issue I’ve run into with my Single Page App. I’ve been doing some work with a GA4 configuration tag and I’m trying to streamline data tracking across different tag fires. I thought maybe I could add my parameters to the GA4 config parameters and set it to trigger each time the user changes paths. Here’s what I’ve set up:
Now, this is where I need some help. Firstly, is it going to spell big trouble that I’ve set my configuration tag to fire multiple times instead of just on the page load? Secondly, I’ve found that while my parameters in ‘user properties’ are working just fine, the same can’t be said for the parameters in ‘fields to set’ (the ones for Module and Menu). They show up on my GTM preview but they’re nowhere to be seen on my GA debug view, much to my confusion.
Do you have any idea what’s going on here? I’ve included screenshots of my GTM preview and GA debug view for your reference.
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2 Replies
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Setting your GA4 configuration tag to fire multiple times instead of just on the page load should not cause trouble. It’s actually quite common in single page apps to do so since users can easily navigate between sections without reloading the page. However, it seems like there’s an issue with ‘fields to set’ not working properly. The ‘fields to set’ is typically used to pass additional parameters onto hits that aren’t already included in GA4 Config and can be very specific to certain hits. Since they aren’t appearing on your GA debug view, it’s possible there’s a mismatch between the parameters being sent, the processing rules of GA4, and how they’re configured in Google Tag Manager. It would help to check if the parameters are correctly named and comply with the requirements of GA4 event parameters. Make sure the ‘fields to set’ parameters correspond correctly to what’s supposed to be captured in GA4. If all configurations are correct, reaching out to GA or GTM support may be your next step to resolve the issue.
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The Google Analytics 4 tag doesn’t behave like the previous Universal Analytics tag where you could define custom dimensions at the tag level which would persist with each subsequent hit. In GA4, the parameters captured in an event do not carry over to the subsequent events.
As for firing your GA4 configuration tag multiple times, it’s not inherently problematic but can lead to data quality issues because firing multiple times could reset existing parameters or user properties. It’s generally a good practice to fire it once on page load and then use dynamic triggers for event tags as needed.
Regarding ‘fields to set’ not showing up in the GA debug view, note that ‘fields to set’ is used for configuring certain settings in Google Analytics itself, not for sending data. So, if you want to pass custom data like ‘Module’ and ‘Menu’, you’ll instead want to add these to event parameters or as user properties, not in ‘fields to set’.
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