BlackBerry Analytics provides the developer with the capability to insert instrumentation, collect data and display metrics analysis in charts or graphs for an app. These analytics are extremely useful to understand the behavior of your application and how users are interacting with it. By design, BlackBerry Analytics have very little effect on an app’s processing performance or communication bandwidth, and is strongly recommended for use with any app.
Applications integrated with the BlackBerry Analytics SDK library record data as events. These events include information about the device and app including the operating system, time zone, locale (human language), app name and version. Additionally, app usage information can be collected. For example, the launch count, daily/monthly active users, and minutes used. Developers can create custom events as well that are specific to an application. Events are recorded when an application is used or launched, halts abnormally or crashes and is sent to or returned from the background.
Events are collected and sent to the BlackBerry Analytics Engine every 4 to 6 hours. Every 24 hours, the engine sums and aggregates the events to create metrics. The metrics include app usage (launch count), daily/monthly active users, crash count, time zone, locale (human language), app name, app version, operating systems and minutes used. The aggregated data and metrics are presented on the web-based BlackBerry Analytics Dashboard as analyses, charts or graphs. The engine and dashboard are cloud-based and don’t require additional software or servers on-premises. No information that identifies a user is collected or stored.
Today, BlackBerry Analytics only supports BlackBerry Dynamics apps. You can implement BlackBerry Analytics in your dynamics app by following the getting started guide here. Once you are done with the getting started guide you will see the data on Analytics Dashboard or by going to https://analytics.blackberry.com. BlackBerry Apps like BlackBerry Work, BlackBerry Access etc. are analytics enabled which means you will see these apps on the dashboard with your apps.
You can also get some additional data about a specific app by selecting the app under Apps in the left navigation panel. You will also see custom events of the app there.
Here is what the dashboard looks like:
Happy analyzing your apps!
About Gurjit Ghangura
Enterprise Solutions Developer, Love BlackBerry, Developer at Heart.
About Richard Schaefer
Richard is an SME for BlackBerry Dynamics and its ISV ecosystem on the Enterprise Solutions team where he on boards ISVs and certifies their applications for the BlackBerry Marketplace.
