Tracking with GTM Server Side Container
We are using server-side tracking for a few of our clients. However, all the data for CallRail is coming through unassigned. There is a measurement protocol client tag we can use now in SSGTM, but we'd need CallRail to send the data to our server URL instead of the google-analytics.com URL. Has anyone successfully set up and have the right data flowing into GA4 while using SSGTM with a site that uses CallRail?
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Hi Scott,
Thank you for posting in Community! One question regarding your inquiry- are you using visitor tracking (Webpools) for your account? If not- this could be to blame. Please let me know and I'll be happy to look into this further for you.
We are getting ready to set up server-side tracking so I would love to hear the answer to how to make sure the data goes to the server instead of directly to Google Analytics. Thank you for any clarity you can provide.
Hi Scott/ Nancy,
Here is some information regarding this:
Our integration uses the "Measurement Protocol API" which is Google's offering for sending Server-Side data to GA4. If you implement visitor tracking (using the Javascript Snippet and a Website Pool), your calls/form submissions/text messages would be assigned the correct channel group and not "Unassigned" as described here: https://support.callrail.com/hc/en-us/articles/12381200845965-Your-CallRail-data-in-Google-Analytics-4 . You do not need to send data directly to your server to make that work, and it would not work unless you implement visitor tracking in CallRail.
If you have already set up visitor tracking and are still seeing their traffic "Unassigned" , Please open a support ticket for troubleshooting. If you have some other need to receive the data at their server, we'd like to hear more about your intended result before we advise on how to set that up.
I am learning all of this as I go along. I just checked and it looks like your cookies are already first-party - that was one concern I had.
The other concern is that the phone number is being sent to GA4 with the other data. Thank you for the article. It looks like maybe the phone number is not sent but I'm not 100% certain.
We are using webpools and are experienced with CallRail for years now. It is with our client accounts that use GTM Server-Side. CallRail doesn't have an implementation that works with GTM server-side yet it appears. To be fair to CallRail, GTM Server-side did not have a way for vendors using MP to integrate, but there is now. We (CallRail users) need to be able to give CallRail the host name to send the data to plus get the activation path from CallRail to set in the SSGTM tag.
CallRail this is the Google documentation for we are trying to solve https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/server-side/send-data?option=GTM#server-to-server_apps
We have recently switched over to GTM Server-Side as well. It seems that CallRail still does not have an available option for this. It would be nice to know if CallRail is working on this or not as we are actively looking for a call tracking solution that will.
Hi all! I'm a Sr. Principal PM at CallRail and wanted to hop into the conversation.
This problem is 100% on our radar, and we understand how frustrating it is. Behind the scenes, I've been working with a couple of customers to try and build out a proof of concept to make this work. We've gotten close but not quite all the way there to get GA4 to connect sessions from server-side tagging setups to the events we send in Measurement Protocol. The official documentation around this is very vague and seems to be geared at how this worked in Universal Analytics, so we've had to do a lot of trial & error (and waiting 24 hours for events to show in reports to see our results....).
I do worry this is another use case that Google didn't prioritize to work with the GA4 Measurement Protocol, but I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet.
If any of ya'll are willing/able to participate in proof of concept testing, the more the merrier! Please respond to this post to let me know if you're interested, and I'll reach out with more information.
Hi Laura,
I work with Google's gTech organization and also have several personal clients that use CallRail and would like better server-side options and functionality.
I'd be happy to connect and bring in some team members/trusted partners who can assist in ways beyond the (admittedly outdated) documentation around this.
What's the best way to get connected?
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