This guide shows how to upgrade your Google Tag Manager variables and tags to use our monitoring technology.

The end result will be your own dashboard that monitors all of your marketing tags and variables:

Step 1: Import (2) Tag Templates from GTM Template Library

Inside of Google Tag Manager > Templates (on left navigation) > Tag Templates, click the "Search Gallery" button that will enable a right drawer as shown in the screenshot above.

Use the search to find our two tag templates.

Click to add both of these to your GTM account.

Step 2: Import Variable Template from GTM Template Library

Inside the Variable Templates section click "Search Gallery".

Do the same search for "elevar" and import our template.

Step 3: Update Data Layer Variables to Use Variable Template

In this step we are going to upgrade your pre-existing data layer variables to use our data layer variable template with the error monitoring wrapped around it.

Go to Variables (left navigation) > User Defined Variables > filter your variables for "data layer" variables.

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If you have 20 data layer variables the you'll need to upgrade most if not all of them. They only take a few seconds to update each.

Here's what the process looks like in real time (explanation below):

Here is the step by step process to update each data layer variable:

Step 3a: Copy Data Layer Variable

In this step once you click into your pre-existing data layer variables simply copy the entire data layer name.

Step 3b: Change Variable Type to Elevar Monitoring Variable

Once you've copied your data layer variable key in step 3a, then click the variable type to change to our Elevar monitoring value template

Step 3c: Update Monitoring Variable Values

Once you've done this then paste the value you just copied into the data layer key section which is shown in step 1 in the image above.

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Be sure the data layer key you paste into this field is the same that you copied from your pre-existing data layer variable setting

Then you'll also want to:

• Copy the name of your variable into the variable name field shown in step 2 above
• Determine if this variable is required or not when a tag has this variable included in it (most of the time this will be true)
• Select the type of variable this is: value, array, or object. The majority of variables are going to be single values but you might have array or object variables used. See the definitions below. If you are unsure you can actually see if it's an array or object in GTM preview mode shown in the image below. If it's anything other than "array" or "object" in GTM preview mode then it is a value type.

Examples of value type variables:
Value type: Value

"Maple Wood Composite Softball Bat"

Value type: Object

{price: 15, name: "Easton Baseball Bat"}

Value type: Array

[{name: "Maple Wood Composite Softball Bat"}, {name: "Easton XL3 Baseball Bat"}, {name: "Prime Maple Bat"}]

["Maple Wood Composite Softball Bat", Easton XL3 Baseball Bat", "Prime Maple Bat"]

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If you are unsure then ask us. Do not guess on this step. Setting this incorrectly could cause unknown reporting issues.

Step 4: Add Core Tag and Timer Trigger

Once your variables are done then head over to Triggers in the left navigation.

We're going to create a new Timer based trigger that fires every second for 10 seconds:

Once done then go to Tags and create new tag.

Select the "Elevar - Monitoring Core Tag" shown in the right sidebar and add the timer trigger you just created:

Once done, click save.

Step 5: Add Tag Monitor and Event Trigger

Repeat the step above in similar fashion.

First you need to create a new trigger that fires on all events. The event name is:

Once this trigger is added then create a new Tag and this time select the "Elevar Monitoring Tag Info" tag template:

Assign the trigger to this new tag and click save.

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These tags don't push data anywhere except to your Elevar dashboard. They need to fire on each event to simply listen for errors to report on.

Step 6: Update Marketing Tags with Metadata

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When this is set in your marketing tags, this will count as a "unique tag" that is displayed at the top of your Activity dashboard under the metric "Total Unique Tags w/Errors".

This is the last step to complete your setup. Depending on the total # of marketing tags you have this could take upwards to 1 hour to complete.

The steps for this are the following:

1. Determine what tags you want to monitor (maybe some are not important to you)
2. Enable the "Additional Tag Metadata" that exists on each tag. No need to recreate any of your pre-existing tags.
3. Add "name" to the Key for tag name field as shown above (this needs to always be name. Do NOT input your tag name here)
4. Add a "channel" key as shown in image above. For the value input the name of the marketing channel. This is how we group all of your marketing tags together inside your dashboard.
5. Add a "variables" key as shown in the image above and populate with all of the data layer variables that exist in the tag. Here are more details:

This is the most manual step as part of the setup process if you are not using one of our pre-configured templates. The process is to take the data layer variable names that exist in your tag => paste them into the variables field separated with a comma.

So using this Facebook tag as an example:

You'll see that we have the following variables used in the HTML section:

1. dlv - Add to Cart - Product ID
2. dlv - Add to Cart - Product Name
3. dlv - Add to Cart - Price
4. dlv - Add to Cart - Category

So the values that we copy into the key:value section looks like this:

dlv - Add to Cart - Product ID,dlv - Add to Cart - Product Name,dlv - Add to Cart - Price,dlv - Add to Cart - Category

Repeat this step for every tag that you would like to have reported on.

If this step is not completed then you will still receive errors on data layer values but we will not be able to match them back to the proper tag.

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If you change the name of your variables then you will also need to update this setting for each tag that contains the variable as well.

Summary

That's it! If you have questions or need help please contact us.