Adding Google Analytics Tracking Code to JIRA

Some posts ago I described how you can easily add the Google Analytics Tracking Code to your Confluence instance.

In the case of JIRA it's just as easy although it might not be intutiive: the quickest place where you can put the Google Analytics Code is in the "Announcement Banner." As of JIRA 4.1, Pasting your Analytics code there won't have any side-effect in the way the JIRA user interface appears in your browser. And yes, you will still be able to add an announcement banner text.

Adding Google Analytics tracking code to Confluence

If you're using Atlassian Confluence as your content management system and you'd like to collect statistical information about its web traffic, Google Analytics is probably the tool you're looking for.

Google Analytics is an extremely powerful and flexible tool: I'm using it to monitor the web traffic to the sites I own and I'm very happy with it. Getting started with Analytics is very simple: just install the tracking code in the pages whose web traffic you want to monitor.

If you're using Confluence it's pretty easy to do: Confluence uses a flexible templating engine and modifying a page layout for a given space is straightforward indeed.

If you want to monitor all of the web traffic to your Confluence instance, though, the best option is using the Custom HTML option in Confluence Administration Console. Custom HTML lets you define fragments of HTML code to be inserted in the following positions in the generated page:

• At the end of the HEAD tag.
• At the beginning of the BODY tag.
• At the end of the BODY tag.

Just insert your Google Analytics tracking code in the appropriate place, which is usually at the end of the BODY tag and you're done! Your Confluence web traffic statistics are now being collected by Analytics.

If you're willing to experiment, Google has recently launched an asynchronous version of its Analytics tracking code which improves load times and accuracy, amongst other benefits. More information can be found here.