Getting started with Avo
Avo is where your product analytics starts. Avo is the proactive data planning and governance platform for product analytics. With Avo, teams like Patreon implement 10x faster with autogenerated type safe code and unit tests, sending data exactly as planned.
Avo will give you and your team: Better tracking plan management. Tracking validation. Better analytics release workflow. You can adopt all three, or stop at 1 (no engineering effort) or 2 (little to no engineering effort).
Step 1. Tracking plan management – no engineering required
Use Avo instead of your spreadsheet to manage and discuss your tracking plan changes. Avo is designed for analytics, so it's way better than the spreadsheet for managing your tracking plan.
This adoption step does not require any developer input, so you can adopt it in the data design team without getting a developer buy-in.
Creating tracking plan in Avo
If you already have a tracking plan you can import it to Avo, or you can create your plan in Avo from scratch. In any case you'll be able to fine tune it and add new events for every feature release in Avo.
Import existing csv spreadsheet, Amplitude or Mixpanel tracking plan
Move your existing tracking plan to Avo in a few easy steps
Design data in Avo
Create and modify your events, properties and metrics
Define consistent event and properties across teams and platforms
Global namespace for events and properties makes sure you don't create conflicting event and property names
Stream Segment data to Avo Inspector
Inspect your analytics implementation without any code changes
How to read the implementation markdown diff
Avo represents tracking changes in a way optimized for implementation, learn how to understand it
Branched workflows
One of the core features for effective data design in Avo is branched workflow. It allows you to see the changes for a single feature and provides implementation instructions that you can share with the developers working on the analytics implementation
How to create a branch, view branch diff and share implementations instructions
Learn how to utilize the branched workflows to iterate on your analytics
Invite your coworkers to Avo
Grow your team on Avo
Discussions and collaboration on branches
Discuss the changes in your tracking plan
Review and approval workflows (steps 4 and 5 in the guide)
Protect your main branch from mergin non approved changes
Publish tracking plan from Avo to other analytics tools
You can set up your tracking plan to be automatically published to Segment Protocols, RudderStack, Amplitude and Mixpanel every time a branch is merged. We also provide a webhook for advanced automation.
Setting up publishing and auto publishing to Segment, Amplitude and Mixpanel
Use Avo as a source of truth of your tracking plan, sync other tools automatically when changes are made
Step 2. Tracking validation – one time SDK install or add as Segment Destination
Add a lightweight SDK to your code to learn how actual implementation compares with the defined tracking plan. Get instant feedback on what tracking is implemented when working on new features with the Implementation status in your Avo workspace soon. Observe your tracking calls on device in real time with the Avo Debuggers.
This stage requires one time setup in each of your applications. The setup is simple and shouldn't take more than 30 minutes. It is not necessary to set up all platforms at once, you can start with a single platform. Once it's done the data design team will get the full power of Avo.
Adoption step 1 is required, but steps 2 and 3 are interchangable, i.e. you can go directly to step 3 without going through step 2 if your platform does not yet have the Inspector SDK and start using the Inspector once it's available.
Set up webhook publishing
Send tracking plan changes to a custom endpoint
Listen to the tracking plan changes with a webhook
Listen to the tracking plan changes with custom code
Use Inspector to monitor analytics implementation
Find the difference between your tracking plan and the actual implementation in the code
How does Avo Inspector SDK work?
Learn the technical part of the Inspector SDK
Using Mobile Debuggers
Monitor events flow visually in your apps
Avo Inspector SDK reference
Methods and parameters of the Inspector SDK on all platforms
Set up the Mobile Debuggers
Enable a view to see the events flow in your debug and staging apps
Step 3. Tracking implementation workflow for your team
Avo generates human readable, type-safe, tracking code called Avo Functions, that sends the data exactly as planned. No more data bugs or cross-platform discrepancies in your analytics tracking!
This step requires developers to adopt Avo into their tracking implementation workflow.
It's not necessary to swap all your tracking with Avo functions, in fact we recommend starting by only using Avo functions for new events.
It's not necessary to adopt Avo functions on all platforms at once, you can start with a single platform.
Set up the tracking plan for Avo functions
Enable Avo to generate type-safe code for your analytics implementation
How do Avo Functions work?
Learn what's inside the Avo functions
Check the implementation status of an event in the Avo UI
Verify that particular event with correct parameters was sent from your code
Avo Cli
Install and use the Avo CLI to conveniently fetch the generated code
Avo Inspector and Avo Functions
Setting up Avo Inspector and Avo Functions to work together
Web Debugger
Monitor events flow visually on your website
Avo functions reference
Programming languages you can generate Avo Functions for
List of languages and platforms supported by Avo Functions
How to implement destination interfaces
Learn how to implement destination interfaces in your language
Controlling the console logs
Disable or write your own logs
Explore your Avo workspace
All the workspace screens explained
Learn your way around Avo
Comprehensive data design and implementation guides
Global namespace
Learn why events and properties are global in Avo
Naming conventions
One of the most important things in a tracking plan
Controlling Logs
Change how Avo Inspector and Avo functions print logs
Purpose meetings
This is how we recommend to plan analytics for a new release
Downstream deps
How to document dependencies of your analytics events in Avo
Avo and tests
Use Avo in unit and integration tests
Multiple sources on Avo branches
Best practices in working with multiple platforms
Defining descriptive events and properties
Our advice on how to name entities in your tracking plan
Avo in the CI
Use Avo in your continuous integration pipeline
Organizing metrics and events
Categories, metrics and naming conventions for events and properties
Using Avo in large development teams
Learn how seamless it is
Avo functions and linters
Set up your linter to work with Avo functions