Spiify Documentation

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Note: This tag template is intended to be used in situations where you have unwanted text that may come through in event parameters, user properties, or page location or referrer urls in analytics requests made to sGTM that needs to be filtered/redacted before that event data is sent to Google Analytics 4. Any other use of this template is untested.

Warning: There is no guarantee of the unwanted text being completely filtered/redacted and it is the responsibility of anyone using this template to ensure that the tag is working as expected. This will require monitoring and adjustments be made to the tag configuration on an ongoing basis along with continued audits of the Google Analytics data to ensure the tag is filtering properly and if not that the necessary action is taken to remove/redact the unwanted text from Google Analytics.

Description

This tag template takes every analytics request (/g/collect) that comes in, pulls the event data from it, redacts specific text based on regex patterns specified in the tag configuration, and sends the (now filtered) event data back to the container to be processed by any other tag. The filtered event data will contain a filtered parameter set to true. This allows triggering the GA4 tag using this filtered parameter ultimately giving the ability to filter this unwanted text out without losing the built-in behaviors from the Google Analytics 4 client and tag.

Installation and Configuration

Download the Repository and Unzip/Extract

1. Download the repository and extract the contents.
2. The tag.tpl file is the .tpl file you'll need for the next step.

Import the Server-side Google Tag Manager Tag Template

1. Once looking at the server-side container within Tag Manager select Templates in the left menu.
2. On the templates page next to Tag Templates select New.
3. From here select the three vertical dots menu next to save and select Import.
4. Select the Spiify Tag template (tag.tpl file as mentioned above) and once loaded select Save in the upper right corner.

Create & Configure the Tag That Will Use This Template

1. Once looking at the server-side container within Tag Manager select Tags in the left menu.
2. On the tags page next to Tags select New.
3. Change the name in the top left to something more identifiable for the purpose such as Spiify Tag.
4. Select anywhere in the Tag Configuration box.
5. In the menu that appears select Spiify Tag.
6. In the configuration check Enable Logging to have aspects of the process logged to the console in preview mode (generally for troubleshooting), create the Filter Configuration entries for anything you want to redact (the name will show instead of the actual value - [REDACTED PHONE_NUMBER] for example), add any parameters under Ignore you wish to have Spiify ignore and not accidentally filter (only applies to top level event data parameters).

Add Custom Variables

Will be used in conjunction with the triggers created following the guide below in server-side tag configurations to gate the requests that those tags processes.

1. Once looking at the server-side container within Tag Manager select Variables in the left menu.
2. On the variables page next to User-Defined Variables select New.
3. Change the name in the top left to something more identifiable for the purpose such as Filtered by Spiify.
4. Select anywhere in the Variable Configuration box.
5. In the menu that appears select Event Data under Utilities.
6. In the box that appears under type filtered.
7. Select Save at the top right.

Add Custom Triggers

Will be used in conjunction with the variables created following the guide above in server-side tag configurations to gate the requests that those tags processes.

1. Once looking at the server-side container within Tag Manager select Triggers in the left menu.
2. On the variables page next to Triggers select New.
3. Change the name in the top left to something more identifiable for the purpose such as Events Filtered by Spiify.
4. Select anywhere in the Trigger Configuration box.
5. In the menu that appears select Custom.
6. Below this select that this trigger fires on Some Events then in the first dropdown select our custom variable we just created (Filtered by Spiify), in the second dropdown select equals and in the third type true.
7. Select Save at the top right.
8. Create an unfiltered trigger. Follow steps 1-7, but in step 3 use Events Not Filtered by Spiify as the name and in step 6 select not equals instead of equals in the dropdown.

Add Triggers to Tags

Add your Filtered trigger as a firing trigger or add your Not Filtered trigger as an exception to any tag you wish to only run if the request has first been filtered.

1. Once looking at the server-side container within Tag Manager select Tags in the left menu.
2. Select the name hyperlink to edit the tag configuration.
3. On the configuration window that opens select anywhere in the Triggering box and then select the + icon on the right. Or select Add Exception if you have existing firing triggers and want to use the Not Filtered trigger as an exception instead.
4. In the menu that opens select our newly created Trigger - Events Filtered by Spiify (or Events Not Filtered by Spiify if you are adding an exception).
5. Select Save at the top right.

Troubleshooting / Seeing the Proof

Getting Started

1. Once looking at the server-side container within Tag Manager select Preview at the top right.
2. Once looking at the client-side container within Tag Manager select Preview at the top right.
3. In the client-side container preview window that opens once you connect interact with the page in some way then go to the server-side container preview.

Redactions in Action

Select one of the events that came in such as page_view and select the Event Data tab.

Note: There will be two events for each request (one filtered and the other unfiltered/untouched) i.e. only one of the events (the second in the set) will have redacted data.

Ensuring Tags are Firing Correctly

Select one of the events that came in such as page_view and select the Variables tab. You should see Filtered by Spiify. If the value of it is true then the Google Analytics 4 tag should have fired.

This can be confirmed by selecting the Tags tab; there the tags configured to run for requests filtered by Spiify should be listed.

The opposite should also be true. If Filtered by Spiify has a value of undefined then the Google Analytics 4 tag should not have fired. The other tags that are configured to process unfiltered data should have fired in the prior event at the same time the Spiify tag fired.

This can be confirmed by selecting the Tags tab; there the tags configured to run for requests not filtered by Spiify should be listed.

The Tag at Work

The first event for every request (with the lower number of the two next to it) should show the Spiify tag having fired. Click the incoming and outgoing requests on the Request tab to get additional details on each. To see logs (if you have logging enabled via the tag configurations) you'll see more details under the Console tab as it filters the event data and passes it along. This also shows time elapsed since the Spiify tag started processing the request so you can see the latency this tag adds to each request (this will vary based on your setup).

Regular Expression Filter Examples

Warning: These are not defaults! These are provided only as examples and do not guarantee that all the unwanted text of these info types will be filtered. Depending on the environment they are used in they could result in loss of data (accidentally filtering text that is needed unexpectedly) or could fail to filter the unwanted text entirely if not tested and adjusted properly. Do not use these as-is.

NAME

Key Pattern
^(f|fst|frst|first|l|lst|last|s|sur)?[_\-]?(n|nm|name)?$

Value Pattern
([\w\,\.\'\-]+\s?){1,6}

---

PHONE_NUMBER

Key Pattern
^(t|tl|tel|tele|m|mob|mobile)?[_\-]?(p|ph|phn|phone)?[_\-]?(n|nm|num|numb|number)?$

Value Pattern
([+]?[0-9]{0,2}[\-\s]*(\(?[0-9]{3}\)?)[\-\s]*[0-9]{3}[\-\s]*[0-9]{4}|(\(?[0-9]{3}\)?)?[\-\s]*[0-9]{3}[\-\s]*[0-9]{4})

---

EMAIL_ADDRESS

Key Pattern
^(e|em)[_\-]?(mail|ml)?[_\-]?(a|ad|adr|addr|address)?$

Value Pattern
.{1,}\@.{1,}\.[a-z]{2,10}

---

PASSWORD

Key Pattern
^(pw|pwd|pswd|pwrd|pass|passwd|passwrd|paswrd|paswd|password)$

Value Pattern
.{5,}

---

ZIPCODE

Key Pattern
^(p|post|postal|z|zp|zip)?[_\-]?(c|cd|code)?$

Value Pattern
[0-9]{5}([\-][0-9]{4})?