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

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Design data in Avo

Create and modify your events, properties and metrics

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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

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Stream Segment data to Avo Inspector

Inspect your analytics implementation without any code changes

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How to read the implementation markdown diff

Avo represents tracking changes in a way optimized for implementation, learn how to understand it

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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

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Invite your coworkers to Avo

Grow your team on Avo

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Discussions and collaboration on branches

Discuss the changes in your tracking plan

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Review and approval workflows (steps 4 and 5 in the guide)

Protect your main branch from mergin non approved changes

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Publish tracking plan from Avo to other analytics tools

You can set up your tracking plan to be automatically published to Segment Protocols, 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

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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

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Listen to the tracking plan changes with a webhook

Listen to the tracking plan changes with custom code

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Use Inspector to monitor analytics implementation

Find the difference between your tracking plan and the actual implementation in the code

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How does Avo Inspector SDK work?

Learn the technical part of the Inspector SDK

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Using Mobile Debuggers

Monitor events flow visually in your apps

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Avo Inspector SDK reference

Methods and parameters of the Inspector SDK on all platforms

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Set up the Mobile Debuggers

Enable a view to see the events flow in your debug and staging apps

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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

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How do Avo Functions work?

Learn what's inside the Avo functions

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Check the implementation status of an event in the Avo UI

Verify that particular event with correct parameters was sent from your code

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Avo Cli

Install and use the Avo CLI to conveniently fetch the generated code

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Avo Inspector and Avo Functions

Setting up Avo Inspector and Avo Functions to work together

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Web Debugger

Monitor events flow visually on your website

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Avo functions reference

Programming languages you can generate Avo Functions for

List of languages and platforms supported by Avo Functions

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How to define custom destinations

Learn how to write a custom destination in your language

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Controlling the console logs

Disable or write your own logs

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Explore your Avo workspace

All the workspace screens explained

Learn your way around Avo

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Comprehensive data design and implementation guides

Global namespace

Learn why events and properties are global in Avo

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Naming conventions

One of the most important things in a tracking plan

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Controlling Logs

Change how Avo Inspector and Avo functions print logs

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Purpose meetings

This is how we recommend to plan analytics for a new release

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Downstream deps

How to document dependencies of your analytics events in Avo

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Avo and tests

Use Avo in unit and integration tests

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Multiple sources on Avo branches

Best practices in working with multiple platforms

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Defining descriptive events and properties

Our advice on how to name entities in your tracking plan

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Avo in the CI

Use Avo in your continuous integration pipeline

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Organizing metrics and events

Categories, metrics and naming conventions for events and properties

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Using Avo in large development teams

Learn how seamless it is

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Avo functions and linters

Set up your linter to work with Avo functions

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