Trying to understand Firebase funnels

[timoth...@thelinguist.com]

We've just gotten started with Firebase analytics, and we are having trouble seeing the utility of the funnels feature.  I've read the documentation, and I see that firebase creates "open funnels".  As far as I can tell, this means that one step is not funneled into the next.  Instead, it's just a comparison of event rates.  If I create a funnel with two events, it shows the same results as the events page.  The only difference is that the funnel shows the relative percentage of events/users.

I read in the faq that it is possible to create "closed" funnels programmatically by determining the user's flow through the app programatically, and logging different types of events for different flows.  It seems to me that (folowing the faq example) if I'm tracking C_1 and C_2, I should also have a base event C.  So in addition to the extra work of tracking my users flow manually I probably need to create three times as many event types.

We're coming from mixpanel where this sort of thing is very straightforward.  I know a lot of people are using firebase analytics and I assume there's something I'm missing with respect to the funnels feature.  Is there something we're not understanding here?

Thanks,

-Tim

[Adam Schroeder]

Hi Tim,

Did you get any answers or figure it out yourself?  I have the same question, trying to figure out how to best use Firebase Analytics vs. other systems.

[Kato Richardson]

Hi Tim, Adam,

Closed funnels are not something we can offer right now. We do recognize their value, and are considering these for the future. No ballparks or public release dates I can share. Sorry.

Note that we really love the feedback, even when (especially when) the report card isn't all A+ material. Thanks for letting us know that we have some work to do here. I've made sure your comments were heard and discussed. Please also consider filing a feature request; that helps us quantify and prioritize what to work on next.

Happy developing!

☼, Kato

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[Adam Schroeder]

Hi Kato,

Thanks for the reply!   

My interest is discovering what we CAN do with Firebase vs. its current limitations.  This is for our own use with DifferenceGames but I'm also trying to figure out what useful information FGL could easily make available through Enhance for a Firebase ZeroCode integration.

Today, I think the trick to getting the best use from FireBase funnels is to flatten your events.  (ie, send "levelComplete1', 'levelComplete2' instead of 'levelComplete' with the level number as a parameter.)

Since its an open funnel you'll also want to look at linear flow (ie, level progressions) or general comparisons of values (ie, Ad requests, ad displays, ad clicks).  

I'd LOVE to hear other examples of valuable information that can be discovered using the funnel capabilities within Firebase today.

 

On Friday, January 20, 2017 at 4:02:37 PM UTC-5, Kato Richardson wrote:

Hi Tim, Adam,

Closed funnels are not something we can offer right now. We do recognize their value, and are considering these for the future. No ballparks or public release dates I can share. Sorry.

Note that we really love the feedback, even when (especially when) the report card isn't all A+ material. Thanks for letting us know that we have some work to do here. I've made sure your comments were heard and discussed. Please also consider filing a feature request; that helps us quantify and prioritize what to work on next.

Happy developing!

☼, Kato

On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 11:26 AM, Adam Schroeder <ad...@differencegames.com> wrote:

Hi Tim,

Did you get any answers or figure it out yourself?  I have the same question, trying to figure out how to best use Firebase Analytics vs. other systems.

On Thursday, January 5, 2017 at 10:01:21 AM UTC-5, timoth...@thelinguist.com wrote:

We've just gotten started with Firebase analytics, and we are having trouble seeing the utility of the funnels feature.  I've read the documentation, and I see that firebase creates "open funnels".  As far as I can tell, this means that one step is not funneled into the next.  Instead, it's just a comparison of event rates.  If I create a funnel with two events, it shows the same results as the events page.  The only difference is that the funnel shows the relative percentage of events/users.

I read in the faq that it is possible to create "closed" funnels programmatically by determining the user's flow through the app programatically, and logging different types of events for different flows.  It seems to me that (folowing the faq example) if I'm tracking C_1 and C_2, I should also have a base event C.  So in addition to the extra work of tracking my users flow manually I probably need to create three times as many event types.

We're coming from mixpanel where this sort of thing is very straightforward.  I know a lot of people are using firebase analytics and I assume there's something I'm missing with respect to the funnels feature.  Is there something we're not understanding here?

Thanks,

-Tim

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[Tomáš Hubálek]

From my point of view current implementation of funnels in Firebase Analytics is simply useless. It doesn't show any relation between sequence of events.  They just show there i X events A and Y events B. 

I'm considering to go back to Google Analytics until Firebase Analytics are fixed.

[Adam Schroeder]

Flurry has a great funnel view also.  I'm using the Enhance connector library to log events and then routing them each to Flurry, GA and Firebase to compare the differences.  Depending on what I'm looking at each has different strengths.  I like the summary overview from Firebase the best but if I need to look at things in detail then Flurry or GA seem to be better options.

[Nick Halper]

I will chime in on this thread too, that the funnels feature is not very useful. I've been trying it with onboarding users, to track what % of them go from sign up to making posts. However, all it gives is a % of # of signups -> # of posts, rather than a % of # of signups -> users that posted. So basically I have to explicitly log other events, like "first_post" and all the other things I might want to look at, which starts to become pretty client-side code heavy.

[Dirk Bosman]

Hi Guys

This script would point you in the right direction: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45619643/accessing-structs-and-arrays-in-firebase-closed-funnels-through-bigquery

I also post related scripts over twitter, follow me there to stay up to date there: https://twitter.com/dirkjobosman

:D