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Set up your first tracking project

Before you start​

You need administrative permissions in your organization, a website or application that can send events and access to the warehouse you want to use. Start in a test environment. Warehouse setup may require help from the person managing your database.

1. Create a project and environment​

Open Platform, create a project for your website or application and add an environment for testing. Keep testing and production separate. Confirm which environment is selected before continuing.

2. Connect your tracking​

Open Ingestion keys and create the appropriate key for your sender. Follow Tracking setup for the endpoint, authentication and integration instructions. Before the first schema is published, send representative example events without a schema-version header so that Schema Discovery can observe their structure.

Use examples that cover the event types and fields you actually want to collect. Discovery samples help define the schema. They are not a historical event import.

3. Review and publish the schema​

In Event Schema, review the discovered fields, their types and required values. Check the Base Schema mappings and the fields for each event name. Publish the schema only when it describes the events your sender will produce.

Open Update tracking and apply the published version header to your sender. Copy the exact header from the application. See schemas and validation.

4. Configure a destination​

In Destinations, choose an available warehouse and configure the target database, table and writer connection. Review consent and bot settings. Test the connection and save the destination. Check that the selected environment shows Collection active.

If it still shows Validation mode active, valid events are checked but not stored. Earlier validation events will not be delivered after activation.

5. Verify delivery and enable reporting​

Send fresh events and check the individual event results and the target warehouse. Successful acceptance alone does not prove that an event has arrived in the table.

Enable an Explorer data source in the destination settings if you want reports. For ClickHouse, configure a separate read-only connection. Where BigQuery is available, Explorer users connect their own Google account with the required read and query permissions.

You can now create a report from the delivered data.

Implementation details​

Continue with website and tag-manager tracking, the HTTP API and tracking diagnostics.