Events in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) are actions users take on a website or in an app. In addition to automatically collected events in GA4, we track events that are specific to Foleon Docs. This article shows you how events work in GA4 and gives you an overview of these Foleon-specific events.
💡 If you’re looking for information about connecting Google Analytics to Foleon, read our article Set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for your Docs.
In this article
What are GA4 events?
Events in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) are actions that users take on a website or in an app — Foleon, in this case — such as clicking a button, watching a video, or completing a form. Each event consists of an event name and one or more parameters:
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Event (name) — A string that identifies the type of action that occurred, such as "button_click" or "video_play".
- Parameters — Provides additional information about the event, such as the name of the button that was clicked or the time that the video started playing. Four predefined parameters are automatically collected for each event: "event_name", "timestamp", "user_id", and "page_location".
Once an event is sent to GA4, it’s processed and stored in the data stream for your GA4 property. By analyzing events and parameters, you gain insights into your audience’s behavior so that you can optimize your Foleon Docs to achieve your business goals.
Automatically collected GA4 events
Automatically collected events are triggered by basic interactions that your audience has with your Foleon Doc. You don’t need to take any action to collect this data; Google Analytics takes care of this for you.
There’s a long list of events that GA4 automatically collects. Here are a few examples:
- First_visit (app, web) — The first time a user visits your Foleon Doc
- Scroll (web) — The first time a user reaches the bottom of each page
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Video_start (web) — When a video starts playing
…
📖 For a detailed overview of all automatically collected events, read Google’s documentation on this topic.
Foleon-specific events in GA4
When connecting Foleon to Google Analytics, we’ll automatically measure a wide range of additional events we send to GA4, providing you with even more data.
If you want additional information for these events, we recommend creating three default parameters for each event: event_category, event_action, and event_label. Of these, event_label will give you the most valuable information. You can learn how to set up this parameter in the next section.
| Event | When | event_label |
| click_page_index | When clicking a page in the page drawer overview | [page title] |
| click_navigation_bar | When clicking the hamburger menu that opens the page overview | [Next | Previous | Page index | logo | Mobile page index] |
| swipe_gesture | When swiping to another page (on mobile) | / |
| click_social_platform | When clicking a social platform icon in the navigation bar | [platform name] |
| share_page | When clicking a sharing option in the share element | [platform name] |
| button_external | When clicking an outbound button (a button leading your visitor outside your Foleon Doc) | [button text - [link path] |
| link_external | When clicking an outbound link (a link leading your visitor outside your Foleon Doc) | [link text - [link path] |
| image_external | When clicking an outbound linked image (a linked image leading your visitor outside your Foleon Doc) | [image URL - [link path] |
| hotspot_external | When clicking an outbound hotspot (a hotspot leading your visitor outside your Foleon Doc) | [hotspot text - [link path] |
| button_internal | When clicking an inbound button (a button leading your visitor to a different location in your Foleon Doc) — overlays have separate events | [button text - [link path] |
| link_internal | When clicking an inbound text link (a text link leading your visitor to a different location in your Foleon Doc) — overlays have separate events | [link text - [link path] |
| image_internal | When clicking an inbound linked image (a linked image leading your visitor to a different location in your Foleon Doc) — overlays have separate events | [image URL - [link path] |
| hotspot_internal | When clicking an inbound hotspot (a hotspot leading your visitor to a different location in your Foleon Doc) — overlays have separate events | [link text - [link path] |
| opened_overlay | When opening an overlay | [overlay path] |
| close_overlay | When closing an overlay | [overlay path] |
| submit_form_success | When submitting a form successfully | [form name] |
| submit_form_invalid | When submitting a form unsuccessfully | [form name] |
| show_lead_form | When a lead generation form is showing | [social platform name] | [form name] |
| submit_lead_form_success | When submitting a lead generation form successfully | [social platform name] | [form name] |
| skip_lead_form | When you skip a lead generation form | [social platform name] | [form name] |
| submit_lead_form_invalid | When submitting a lead generation form unsuccessfully | [social platform name] | [form name] |
| disable_autoplay_accessibility | When the reader disables autoplay for videos / GIFS | [autoplay videos/gifs] |
| enable_autoplay_accessibility | When the reader enables autoplay for videos / GIFS | [autoplay videos/gifs] |
How to set up a parameter
We recommend setting up event_label as a custom definition in GA4 so you can learn additional information about Foleon-specific events.
As an example, we would learn about the opened_overlay event which overlay visitors of your Foleon Doc are opening. Follow these steps to set this up:
Go to your GA4 property and open the admin settings in the left-hand navigation menu.
Click custom definitions in the list of options.
Click create custom dimensions.
Type in the following information in the fields (as you can see in the screenshot below:
- Dimension name: "Foleon Event info"
- Scope — Select "Event" from the list
- Description: "Send additional event information for Foleon-specific events."
- Event parameter — Select "event_label" from the list
Make sure to save. That's it. You'll now collect additional information for your Foleon-specific events.