Google Analytics - Intelligence Report 2nd Part

In the last post (Google Analytics - Intelligence Report) I started talking about the Business Intelligence report in Google Analytics. But I just highlighted the main features of that. However, that is not everything, now that you know that you can create custom alerts where you can specify to Google Analytics what to watch for, we would like to tell you how to create and manage custom alerts.

There are two ways to create custom alerts:

1. The easiest one is from the Intelligent report, clicking '+ Create a Custom Alert'.

That action will take you to a new page where you specify the conditions to trigger the alert.

1.1 Enter the alert name
1.2 Specify to the profiles that you want to apply the alert using the drop-down menu

1.3 Select a period (day,week,month) to apply the alert.

1.4 Select the check-box if you want to receive an email when the alert is triggered.
1.5 Create the conditions for the alert. The conditions are divided by dimensions and metrics.

Lets say that you launched a new campaign in three regions and you want to know if there is an impact for only the visits that come from a specific city, and when they exceed certain number. In order to do that you will select as dimension city and as condition the city you want to monitor.

And then you select the metric and value which will decide when to trigger the alert.

1.6 Finally you click 'Create Alert' and this would be displayed in your Intelligence report when the alert is triggered. A difference with the automatic alerts is that custom alerts are applied to the report since the moment that they are created. For example, if the number of visits for that city was greater than 1500 yesterday but the custom alert was created today, the user will not see that custom alert in the report. If the number of visits is exceed for the same conditions in a future and the custom alert is still applied to that profile they will be shown in the report.

2. The other way to create custom alerts is accessing the 'Manage Intelligence Alerts' panel found at the left hand of the screen under 'My Customizations' menu

In this panel you can not only create a new alert, but also import alerts from other profiles. See other alerts created under that account, and being there you can delete them, hide them or edit them.

2.1 To import an alert from other profiles click 'Import alerts from other profiles'. This action will display a dropdown list with other custom alerts created.

You will see the new alert imported and several action that can be applied to that alert.
As you can see in the image you can edit, copy, share, delete and hide from profile the alert imported. 'Avg. Time on Site > 10'.

NOTE: Delete an alert means that you are going to delete the alert not only from this profile, but also from all the others that it has been applied. While Hide From Profile in other words means delete the alert only from this profile.

2.2 You can also display Other Alerts for that account and add them to this profile.
2.3 Finally you can see the alert templates and copy and then edit them for our own purposes.