In case you haven’t noticed, we haven’t been on campus for a while now. We know there are many benefits to this: the morning commute is much shorter and warmer than it would usually be at this time of year, we now don’t have to share office space with anyone except the cat, and workplace attire now includes our PJs and fluffy slippers.
There is, however, one victim to our temporary exile: the generic Gmail address used by dozens of departments to access their Google Analytics has become less useful. The reason for this is that when someone logs into Analytics, Google checks to see if they are logging in from the same or similar location as before. They do this by looking at the IP address, the unique locator that identifies the network point from which the user is logging in.
Generally, when we are on campus, people log in from an IP address beginning with the same few digits, usually 134.117.x.y. But when we are scattered to the four corners of the 613 the IP addresses vary wildly and Google immediately grows suspicious and sends a request for confirmation to the cell phone of the poor individual who initially set up that Gmail account. Without knowing who is trying to get into the account they cannot grant access.
What to do?
While you can still try using the generic email account (it doesn’t always lock users out) what we recommend is creating a Gmail account specifically for your department and request that it be associated with your departmental website. To do so, follow these instructions:
- Visit this page: https://accounts.google.com/signup/v2/webcreateaccount?flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=SignUp to create a new gmail address. For example, if you are in the Math Department you could create a Gmail account of the name analytics.math@gmail.com. (Anyone in the department can do this, but the details of the account should be recorded somewhere that anyone who might need to log into Google Analytics can access.) One member of the team will need to give a back-up email address and cell phone number.
- The next step is to contact the ITS Service Desk (ITS.Service.Desk@carleton.ca) or via their service portal: https://itsjira.carleton.ca/servicedesk/customer/portal/5 to request that the Gmail address be added to the Analytics account for your department’s website (or websites – one Gmail account can be used to access several sites).
- Finally, once the Service Desk has confirmed the Gmail address has been added you can log into Google Analytics with that email address and password here: https://analytics.google.com/ Any website that has been associated with that Gmail address will be visible. You can click on any of them and start viewing your site’s visitor traffic.
Now we have solved that problem, it’s back to working on that vaccine…