Help Article View

Event Serialization

always

Business Use Case

1️⃣ Customer Service self-service leads track weekly Help Article Views by article_category and entry_point, and when returns_refunds views rise ahead of contact volume, they add or rewrite the article and place it in the contact form suggestions before the spike reaches agent queues. 2️⃣ Support operations managers join help article views to same-session contact creation to identify articles with high views and high follow-up ticket rates, then assign those articles to the knowledge management team for rewrite and re-measure Ticket Deflection Rate after publication. 3️⃣ Content and knowledge base owners review views by article_locale and article_status to retire archived articles still receiving traffic, redirect inbound links, and prioritise translations for locales with high demand but thin coverage. 4️⃣ E-commerce returns program owners segment views by has_open_order and display_surface to decide whether order-status-page help links should surface refund timeline articles proactively for shoppers with a return in progress.

Business Criticality

High

Journey / Navigation Area

Engagement

Owning Function

Customer Service

Calculation Notes

1️⃣ Firing rule: emit one page_view when the article body has rendered, with no viewport or scroll condition, on the help center and in the embedded support widget, including when the widget is opened from chat, the order status page or in-app help (the display_surface value records which). A suggestion card or link alone is not a view until the article itself renders. The event qualifies as a help article view only when content_type is 'help_article' or 'faq' and article_id is populated; help center home, category and search-results pages must carry a different content_type so they never inflate the numerator. 2️⃣ Serialization and dedupe: event_serialization is 'always', so every render counts and Help Article Views is an event-level count. Suppress the duplicate push caused by SPA re-renders and back/forward cache restores by keying on article_id + page_location within the same route change. A locale switch loads a different translation at a different page_location and counts as a new view; article_locale is optional and is not part of the dedupe key. Unique viewers and self-service session flags are derived downstream at User and Session scope, not by suppressing the event. 3️⃣ Required parameters: content_type, article_id, article_category, display_surface and entry_point must be present on every fire. Optional: article_title, article_section, article_locale, article_version, article_status, search_term, has_open_order and login_status. Send article_id as a string identical across locales; joins to the knowledge base and to contact-reason data must use article_id, never article_title. 4️⃣ Consent and PII: pii_flag is false and sensitivity is Internal, but search_term is free text and must be scrubbed of order numbers, emails and phone numbers before it reaches the data layer. profileID in the W3C layer must be a hashed customer key only. Fire analytics tags only after the analytics consent state is granted, and honour consent withdrawal mid-session by stopping subsequent pushes. 5️⃣ Stitching and timing: has_open_order and login_status are evaluated at render time and are not backfilled, so a shopper who logs in after reading an article stays 'guest' for that view. Deflection analysis joins help article views to subsequent contacts within the same session or a fixed post-view window defined by the consuming KPI. Use the property's session timeout, 30 minutes of inactivity by default in both GA4 and Adobe Analytics, and do not redefine it for the help center. 6️⃣ Exclusions and filters: exclude internal and agent traffic, knowledge base preview and draft renders, and content-publishing QA sessions. Keep article_status 'archived' views in the data but report them separately, because they signal stale inbound links rather than active demand. Bot and prerender traffic hitting help URLs should be filtered before Self-Service Rate is computed. 7️⃣ Common instrumentation mistakes: firing on the help center search-results page with a stale article_id, sending article_category with display labels instead of the stable taxonomy keys, omitting content_type after a help center theme upgrade so the view silently drops out of reports, populating the Adobe eVars on only one surface, and letting the widget and the help center host page both fire for the same article.

Data Mappings

{
  "page": {
    "pageInfo": {
      "pageID": "help:article:360041234567",
      "pageName": "help:returns_refunds:how-long-do-refunds-take",
      "destinationURL": "https://www.example-store.com/help/articles/360041234567",
      "referringURL": "https://www.example-store.com/help/search?q=refund",
      "language": "en-US",
      "version": "2026-09-02",
      "sysEnv": "desktop"
    },
    "category": {
      "primaryCategory": "help_center",
      "subCategory1": "returns_refunds",
      "subCategory2": "refund_timelines",
      "pageType": "help_article"
    },
    "attributes": {
      "contentType": "help_article",
      "articleID": "360041234567",
      "articleTitle": "How long do refunds take?",
      "articleCategory": "returns_refunds",
      "articleSection": "refund_timelines",
      "articleLocale": "en-US",
      "articleVersion": "2026-09-02",
      "articleStatus": "published",
      "displaySurface": "help_center",
      "entryPoint": "help_search",
      "searchTerm": "refund",
      "hasOpenOrder": true
    }
  },
  "user": [
    {
      "profile": [
        {
          "profileInfo": {
            "profileID": "hashed_customer_key"
          },
          "attributes": {
            "loginStatus": "logged_in"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

{
  "event": "page_view",
  "page_location": "https://www.example-store.com/help/articles/360041234567",
  "page_title": "How long do refunds take?",
  "content_type": "help_article",
  "article_id": "360041234567",
  "article_title": "How long do refunds take?",
  "article_category": "returns_refunds",
  "article_section": "refund_timelines",
  "article_locale": "en-US",
  "article_version": "2026-09-02",
  "article_status": "published",
  "display_surface": "help_center",
  "entry_point": "help_search",
  "search_term": "refund",
  "has_open_order": true,
  "login_status": "logged_in"
}

{
  "event": "pageView",
  "eventInfo": {
    "path": "page"
  },
  "page": {
    "pageInfo": {
      "pageName": "help:returns_refunds:how-long-do-refunds-take",
      "pageType": "help_article",
      "siteSection": "help_center",
      "language": "en-US",
      "url": "https://www.example-store.com/help/articles/360041234567"
    },
    "content": {
      "contentType": "help_article",
      "articleID": "360041234567",
      "articleTitle": "How long do refunds take?",
      "articleCategory": "returns_refunds",
      "articleSection": "refund_timelines",
      "articleLocale": "en-US",
      "articleVersion": "2026-09-02",
      "articleStatus": "published",
      "displaySurface": "help_center",
      "entryPoint": "help_search",
      "searchTerm": "refund"
    }
  },
  "user": {
    "loginStatus": "logged_in",
    "hasOpenOrder": true
  }
}

{
  "eventType": "web.webpagedetails.pageViews",
  "web": {
    "webPageDetails": {
      "name": "help:returns_refunds:how-long-do-refunds-take",
      "URL": "https://www.example-store.com/help/articles/360041234567",
      "siteSection": "help_center",
      "pageViews": {
        "value": 1
      }
    },
    "webReferrer": {
      "URL": "https://www.example-store.com/help/search?q=refund"
    }
  },
  "_experience": {
    "analytics": {
      "customDimensions": {
        "eVars": {
          "eVar30": "help_article",
          "eVar31": "360041234567",
          "eVar32": "returns_refunds",
          "eVar33": "refund_timelines",
          "eVar34": "en-US",
          "eVar35": "help_center",
          "eVar36": "help_search",
          "eVar37": "2026-09-02",
          "eVar38": "logged_in"
        },
        "props": {
          "prop30": "How long do refunds take?",
          "prop31": "published"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Source Data

Dependencies

Prerequisite: List the dependencies required for this Event

Report Attributes

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