Get an identity - Analytics

Get an identity writes web request events to Big Query in a format compatible with DfE Analytics.

To enable cross-service analytics, some kind of session identifier is required that is written to analytics events for both the calling service and Get an identity itself. With this in place, queries can be written that span multiple BigQuery datasets and this identifier can be used to correlate the events for a given user.

To pass this session identifier to Get an identity, a session_id query parameter can be appended to the authorize endpoint. The analytics events for all subsequent page visits in the authorization journey will have a session_id entry added to the data field with the value from the query parameter.

sequenceDiagram
    participant user
    participant client
    participant gai
    participant big_query

    user->>client: user visits first page on client site
    client->>client: generates session_id
    client->>big_query: writes event to BigQuery w/ session_id
    user->>client: user visits page requiring authentication
    client->>gai: client redirects to authorize endpoint w/ session_id query param
    loop Sign in
        user->>gai: user is authenticated
        gai->>big_query: writes event to BigQuery w/ session_id
    end
    loop Authenticated user
        user->>client: user visits authenticated page
        client->>big_query: writes event to BigQuery w/ session_id
    end