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How can I validate my Android app is passing referrer parameters to Localytics?

Before you start tracking user acquisition campaigns on Android, we recommend that you validate your app is passing referrer parameters to the Localytics SDK. First we'll explain why this matters, then how to do it.

Why it matters
When you use Localytics to measure acquisition campaigns, Localytics depends on your app first collecting certain information about the acquisition campaign then communicating it to Localytics so we can report on it downstream. If the app is not configured to reliably collect this information upstream, then what you see in Localytics won't look right. The solution is to ensure your app is properly configured to collect this referrer information and relay it to Localytics.

How to test that your app is set up to communicate referrer information to Localytics
If you're familiar with using Android Debug Bridge, we have developer instructions on how to test attribution locally. If your app is already in the Google Play Store, you can verify that your app is configured correctly by conducting a test install.

  1. Construct a testing URL. Start with the following URL. http://a.localytics.com/android?id=YOUR_ANDROID_PACKAGE&referrer=utm_source%3DAttributionTest%26utm_campaign%3DAttributionTest

  2. Substitute your app's Android Package (e.g. com.localytics.testapp) for YOUR_ANDROID_PACKAGE.

  3. Locate an Android device that has never previously installed your app. It is essential that the app has never been installed on the device, because Localytics maintains a memory of devices it has seen and will only attribute a device on the first ever session. Uninstalling and reinstalling is not a workaround, because Localytics' identifiers deliberately persist through uninstalls.

  4. Open a web browser on your Android device and navigate to the testing URL you constructed in steps 1 and 2. This will redirect you to the Google Play Store.

  5. Install and run your app. Once you complete a session, the Localytics SDK will upload data from your device to our service. Note that force-closing the app may not provide an opportunity for the data to transmit, so we recommend backgrounding the app for more than 15 seconds. To be sure the data uploads, make sure you have a reliable connection and complete a few sessions in the app.

  6. Wait a few minutes while the data transmits to Localytics and goes through our processing pipeline. If your app is configured correctly, you should see a new user in the Attribution Report within the Localytics Dashboard where acquisition source is "AttributionTest." This is because the URL that you clicked included utm_campaign%3DAttributionTest, which is the URL-encoded version of utm_campaign=AttributionTest.

If you don't see a new user in the Attribution Dashboard, confirm with your engineering team that your app is passing referrer parameters to the Localytics SDK, as instructed in our Developer Documentation. The Developer Documentation also clearly outlines how to configure your app if the app has multiple referrer receivers.