Allow Dashboard to decide "Session recording mode"
Instead of the recording mode being decided via JavaScript (ust.min.js vs ust-rr.min.js) this should be decided via a dashboard toggle dynamically. Effectively further separating the Marketing and Development roles for efficiency.
Over the past year I have come to realize that the Full Session recording mode takes up a lot more space than I anticipated. I’ve also come to realize that I don't necessarily always need it.
Imagine if there was a toggle on the dashboard to switch from the Default to Full session recording and back when needed. We can even have an icon on the session to indicate the type of recording.
I don’t always need the full session recording, but would love to turn it on when further testing is needed.
While pretty straight forward, I know this is probably not a small task but yields many benefits.
All domains would have the same tracking code so we wouldn’t have to dig into the code to change the JavaScript.
We can save TONS of space by not having to always record full sessions.
Better separation of team roles. As the marketing guy I don’t always need to rely on the dev guy to update the tracking code as needed.
I’m sure more that I just can’t think of.
While not critical, I think this would be the ultimate QoL feature.
Thanks!
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Hi David,
Thanks for the suggestion!
Let me just write my thoughts.
The main reason for having the two separated is performance.
If you included the same JS snippet for both recording modes, it would mean that either:
A. The JS for both modes will need to be served, which means a much larger JS file size when the default recording is used (as it would still include all the full recording systems)
B. No recording system is loaded initially, first the settings are loaded (to know which recording system is used), and then the recording system JavaScript is loaded. The problem with this is that it adds a lot of latency before anything can be recorded, which means more data will be lost from each pageview.So, the implementation is not hard (to load the recording system after loading the tracking settings), but there are some big drawbacks that come from it.
That being said, there is also an option C: dynamically generate the ust.min.js to include the correct recording system. This is the best option, the only problem with this is caching. If the user already had the old ust.min.js stored, if you change something in the settings, they will not receive the new version if the browser still has the old one in cache.
Thinking about it now, this might not be that big of a problem, as now the tracking settings are indeed stored dynamically in ust.min.js and still encounter the same issue.
One "hacky" way of changing the tracking system without changing anything on the tracked website is to use .htaccess rewrite rules to load the different file.
You could write in the .htaccess file to always load ust-rr.min.js when ust.min.js is requested, thus switching to the full tracking mode.
> We can even have an icon on the session to indicate the type of recording.
There already is one in the playback (the HD indicator is for full recording). Where would you want this icon to be displayed?