In a previous post we mentioned that enlisting others to help with digital analytics QA is a great way to resolve efficiency issues and get through QA more quickly. It is also a good practice to have someone else QA the implementation other than the person who placed the tags. A fresh set of eyes will look at the flow differently and potentially uncover bugs that the developer may have overlooked. Sometimes a developer will become myopic and forget to account for all cases when tagging an interaction.

It's a good practice to write up the process you would like followed and walk the QA person through it. All someone needs is a little bit of technical knowledge, the ability to follow directions well and an eye for detail. Now let's take a look at an outline for the Adobe Analytics QA process using Chrome.

1. Preparation
1. Install the Adobe DTM Switch Chrome extension
2. Open the site you would like to QA
3. Open developer tools in Chrome (Ctrl+Shift+I)
1. Go to the network tab
2. Filter for "b/ss"
3. Check the preserve log box
4. Open your implementation specifications
5. Now you are ready to QA!
2. QA Pageviews
1. We recommend QA of your pageviews followed by QA of your events, but it's really up to you. It's good to do it in that order though, as QA of pageviews is usually an iterative process where you are looking for the same things on every page. Occasionally there will be pages where additional variables are passed, so keep an eye out for those as well.
2. You may elect to uncheck the preserve log box during QA of pageviews to make it easier to identify the tag you need to QA.
3. Start by refreshing the first page and make a note of the tag that loads in the network tab. The first Adobe Analytics tag that will probably fire is the pageview tag. Click on the tag in the name column to see the details. Expand the query string parameters section. You can confirm that it is a pageview tag if you don't see a pe variable. The pe variable indicates that it is an event tag.
1. If you hover your mouse over the tag name, you will see the report suite(s) which this data will be sent to immediately following "b/ss/" in the URL. You can also expand the general section for the tag to see this same tag URL.
2. Verify that the pagename variable is being set correctly.
3. Verify that the expected props and eVars are being set correctly. Props are labeled as c1, c2, c3, etc. and eVars are labeled as v1, v2, v3, etc.
4. Verify that the expected events are being set. These are passed in the events variable.
3. QA Custom Links (also referred to as events or interactions)
1. You will want to check the box to preserve the log. If an event triggers a new page to load and this is not checked, the tag will disappear from the list. It's also a good idea to clear the tags before firing an event, so you know that the first tag listed is the one you're interested in.
2. You can verify the report in the same way that you did for pageviews.
3. You will be able to tell that it is a custom link due to the presence of a pe variable. The value for an exit link is lnk_e. For most other clicks the value will be lnk_o.
4. If you are customizing the custom link values, check for them in the pev2 variable.
5. Check events, props and eVars in the same way as you did for pageviews above.
4. As you go QA each item, mark it as passed in your documentation or note it as a bug and follow up with your developer for resolution.

This outline will walk your QA through the process, and help ensure all the data is captured.