Google analytics measurement protocol session time

Question

Let's assume we have a goal to setup offline events tracking using measurement protocol, the only limitations from our side is that we need to post the events feed once daily and have a GA setup with correct standart reports from GA UI.

GA limits:

• Session timeout limit is 4 hours;
• Max time delta between when the hit being reported occurred and the time the hit was sent - the qt parameter, is also limited to 4 hours;

Test case:

"0". Session timeout limit is set to the max 4 hours.

1. User visits site at 9 a.m first session is created.
2. It takes him 10 minutes to get the info needed for making a call.
3. User makes a call and an phone order at 9:10 a.m. Unique, non personally identifiable code is passed with the call to CRM and saved in GA dimension and uid.
4. At 6 p.m call-report CRM generates the call-report and passes it to GA using measurement protocol event upload HTTP requests.
5. At 6 p.m call-report CRM generates the transaction-report and passes the phone order value & number to GA using measurement protocol transaction requests.

Questions:

1) Does the qt parameter in request described on the 5'th step of test case needs to be equal to:

1.1) Possible maximum value - 4 hours (because otherwise it may be not processed by this rule "Values greater than four hours may lead to hits not being processed.") 1.2) Actual value - 8 hours & 50 minutes.

2) Does 1.1 result in a first session timeout?

3) Does 1.1 result in a second session being created, which:

• start-time is equal to 4 p.m & 50 minutes;
• end time is equal to 4 p.m & 50 minutes;
• user-agent by-default is equal to the value which has been used in measurement protocol HTTP request;
• by-default is not closed, so if a second user visit is on 4 p.m this visit's hits will be sent to this session;

4) Does this second session affect the value of standart report's parameters, such as:

• average session length;
• average bounce rate & exit rate;
• average pages per session;

5) Does the second session affect the flow reports or any other Google reports making in incorrect?

Answer 1

1. It should be equal to possible max value, or 0, if it's more then 4 hours since the date, and you should write the actual date as a custom field and process the data later.
2. Yes, a new session will be created, if the last session expired.
3. Somewhat.
4. Yes.
5. Flow reports are based on users not sessions.