We know that the web is one of the largest platforms developed on across the globe. We want to meet developers where they are, no matter what platform that may be using.
At I/O earlier this year, we announced Firebase Performance Monitoring for web. It was our next big step in bringing the complete suite of Firebase products to the web. And just a few weeks ago, at the Firebase Summit, we announced support for web apps in Google Analytics, Cloud Messaging and Remote Config! These new features give you insight into your web users, what they are doing inside your app, and help you create personalized experiences for them - just like you already do on native. Let’s take a closer look at all that is new for web developers in Firebase.
At the heart of a successful app and business strategy lies data. Analytics helps you understand how your user base is growing, who these users are, and what actions they are taking in your app. You can then use these insights to build tailored experiences that will delight, engage and retain your users.
If you're already comfortable using Google Analytics for your native apps, the web version of Analytics should look very familiar to you. But if you are new to Firebase, there are a few key components in Analytics we want to highlight:
Analytics also has a feature called audiences, which provides a way to segment users along attributes that are meaningful to you. For example, you can create an audience comprising all the users who performed a specific sequence of events in your app. These audiences now also work for users on the web, and membership can even be evaluated across multiple platforms by setting the user_id in the Analytics SDK.
Let’s take the example of an e-commerce app and a product review feature. One important thing to track in such an app is users who started writing a product review, and then left without completing it. Using audiences, we can create a user segment that represents exactly this group of users.
Example sequence of events “Started session” > “Started review” > “Canceled review”
We can create an audience representing that sequence in the Audience builder shown in the screenshot below:
In the next two sections we will show you how to combine audiences with Remote Config & Cloud Messaging to create personalized experiences for your users.
Remote Config (now works on web) gives you the power to alter your app for any segment of users without requiring you to release a new build. For example, you can segment users by geo and date (like Christmas) and infuse a holiday color palette into your app.
Going back to the product review example, say you want to show a custom message when any user who’s part of the “Abandoned reviewers” audience opens the app. You can now use that audience as the targeting condition for your Remote Config parameters across both your web and native apps. You could even strategically roll out new features to target audiences across web and native, so you can monitor regression and roll it back if you run into any issues.
Cloud Messaging has already been available for web for quite some time. What's new is that FCM for web is now integrated with Google Analytics, which allows you to send targeted notifications to your users based on their behavior in your app. You can do this by leveraging both new web specific signals (like browser type) and Google Analytics’ custom audiences and user properties. It’s another great way for you to personalize your users’ app experiences.
What’s also new is that campaigns can be easily configured in the Firebase console. Additionally, the funnel report that tracks campaign success also now works for web campaigns. All you need to do is specify an Analytics conversion event when setting up your campaign and the report will track success automatically.
Let’s go back to our favorite product review example. Now that we have a way to identify the audience who haven’t completed their reviews, we can re-engage them with tailored notifications for users on the native app as well as users on the web app. Since the audience is already being populated by Google Analytics with these user segments, you now simply have to go to Firebase Cloud Messaging in the Firebase console and create a campaign which sends a message to these audiences on their respective platforms.
Once we’ve started our messaging re-engagement campaign, we can use Google Analytics to create closed funnels to view the performance of the engagement workflow on any specific platform.
To use any of what we just described you, take a look at the instructions for implementing and integrating the web analytics SDK here. One important note is that if you are already using analytics for your native apps, you will first need to upgrade to the full Google Analytics experience in order to access web analytics. The Remote Config SDK for web is currently in Beta and you can access it here. To get started with FCM for web, simply follow the instructions here.
We hope you’re as excited about these new web features as we are. The above example illustrates one way you can use the new web analytics features to improve your web app experience and engage users, but there are many more ways these features can be used together. We can’t wait to hear what use cases you’ve implemented in your own web apps. As always, you can reach out to us on StackOverflow and through our official support page to let us know and give us feedback. Happy Developing!
Last month, our friends at Android launched the Android Developer Challenge, and asked you to submit your ideas focused on helpful innovation, powered by on-device machine learning.
ML Kit for Firebase helps power many of these experiences, including adidas’ new in-store shopping experience for their London store. Shoppers can scan products on their phones while they are in the store and the app lets them check stock and request their size without the need for queues.
If you’ve used ML Kit for Firebase to create a great user experience, or if you’ve got a great idea for how you might use it, submit your idea by December 2! You can also check out more examples on the Android Developers blog.
Firebase Authentication provides an end-to-end identity solution for your applications, which allows you to authenticate and verify users with passwords, phone numbers and popular federated identity providers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft.
Today, we are pleased to announce beta support for Sign in with Apple in Firebase Authentication. Sign in with Apple allows your users to sign in to your applications and websites using their Apple ID.
Firebase also provides FirebaseUI, a customizable drop-in authentication UI that allows developers to easily implement a variety of authentication flows using any of the authentication services supported by Firebase, including Sign in with Apple.
Support for Sign in with Apple is available in beta now, and can be integrated in your applications using the latest versions of the Firebase SDKs for iOS, Android, and the web.
Hello, Cloud Firestore developers! We wanted to let you know about some useful new querying features we've added to Cloud Firestore this week. Starting with… in queries!
in
With the in query, you can query a specific field for multiple values (up to 10) in a single query. You do this by passing a list containing all the values you want to search for, and Cloud Firestore will match any document whose field equals one of those values.
in queries are a good way to run simple OR queries in Cloud Firestore. For instance, if the database for your E-commerce app had a customer_orders collection, and you wanted to find which orders had a "Ready to ship", "Out for delivery" or "Completed" status, this is now something you can do with a single query, like so:
customer_orders
We've launched another feature similar to the in query, the array-contains-any query. This feature allows you to perform array-contains queries against multiple values at the same time.
array-contains-any
array-contains
For example, if your app had a products collection, and those documents contained an array of categories that every item belongs in, you could now look for items that were in the "Appliances" or "Electronics" category, by passing these values into a single array-contains-any query.
Note that the baby monitor document will only be returned once in your query, even though it matches with multiple categories.
These queries are also supported in the Firebase console, which gives you the ability to try them out on your dataset before you start modifying your client code.
This also seems like a good time to remind you that you can apply filters directly in the Firebase console. Neat, huh?
Security rule behavior for these queries is pretty straightforward. Cloud Firestore will look at each potential value passed in for your in or array-contains-any operation and make sure your query would be allowed for that value. If any value is not allowed, the entire query fails.
For example, if your project was set up with these security rules…
match /projects/{project} { allow read: if resource.data.status != "secret"; ... }
This request would work…
db.collection("projects").where("status", "in", ["public", "unlisted"]);
...but this entire request would fail, because it's possible that our query will return documents that are forbidden in our security rules.
db.collection("projects").where("status", "in", ["public", "unlisted", "secret"]);
Not sure why we couldn't just send you back the allowed documents? Make sure to review the 'Rules are not filters' section of this video.
While we're excited to have you unlock the potential of in queries and array-contains-any queries, you should know about a few important limitations:
I think there's a lot of exciting things you can do now with in queries, and we're looking forward to hearing what new functionality you've added to your apps. So make sure you've upgraded your client libraries to the latest versions to take advantage of the new features, check out the documentation, and happy databasing!
At Firebase, our mission is to help mobile and web developers succeed, but with over 2 million apps actively using Firebase every month, we know that success means different things to different developers. For example, to Le Figaro, the oldest and largest French newspaper, success means increasing paid subscriptions significantly with the help of a combination of Firebase products. For Mighty Immersion, a three person startup on a journey to improve patient care with VR technology, success means scaling their apps to more hospitals as fast as possible using Firebase backend products.
Stories like these are what inspire us to continue investing in our developer community. We all benefit from a vibrant and open ecosystem that helps bring ideas to life.
We’re excited to be in Madrid at the fourth annual Firebase Summit to hear about what you’re building, and share updates on how we’re simplifying your app development workflows and infrastructure needs. Read on to learn about everything that’s new at Firebase Summit 2019! You can also check out the keynote and sessions on our YouTube channel or the summit website.
Save time on everyday development tasks with Firebase Extensions
Repetitive app development tasks can slow you down, leaving less time for creating amazing user experiences. To save you time, we’re thrilled to introduce Firebase Extensions, pre-packaged bundles of code designed to automate common tasks in your projects. Whether you want to resize an image, add people to an email list or shorten URLs, we’ve built an array of solutions that you can easily deploy to your projects. There’s no need to write or debug code–it’s all done for you, but you still have the flexibility to configure extensions for your specific use cases. Firebase Extensions are open-source and integrate seamlessly with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products. Starting today, you can discover extensions suited to your specific use cases on the Extensions Directory page on our website or Firebase Extensions GitHub repository.
Launch extensions available in Firebase Console
Increase your development velocity with the Firebase Emulator Suite
The Firebase Emulator Suite is a fast, rich and safe environment that provides you with a set of local tools for building your next app or feature. Based on your feedback, we’ve expanded the functionality of our emulator suite to include hot reloading for changes to Security Rules and added broader support for client and server side SDKs. We’ve also included support for Realtime Database triggered Functions and developed a new command to tighten how it works with CI. Learn more here.
Firebase Emulator suite now supports Realtime Database & broader client and server side SDKS
Enhance app stability and usability before publishing with Firebase App Distribution
Building apps inevitably comes with bugs, which are important to address before your app is live so they don’t affect the user experience, or your ratings and reviews. Today, we’re excited to announce Firebase App Distribution, which gives you an easy and flexible way to distribute pre-release versions of your apps to trusted testers. App Distribution provides one central hub where you can distribute both iOS and Android test apps. You can also build pre-release testing into your existing workflows with CLI support for Gradle, fastlane and the Firebase CLI. There’s no SDK to install, forms to fill out or review process to go through. Get started with Firebase App Distribution here.
Send pre-release versions of your app to trusted testers via the Firebase console
Expand your web app capabilities with Google Analytics, Firebase Remote Config and Firebase Cloud Messaging
Once your app is running, the next step is to understand your users and identify ways to increase engagement. Users often interact with your business across multiple touch points and on different devices, so today we’re excited to announce we're expanding our integration with Google Analytics to include support for the web. You can now use the powerful analytics features you’ve enjoyed for native mobile apps–like the ability to segment your audience, trigger actions, and record events and user properties–for web apps. This makes it easier to understand how users are interacting with your apps, no matter what device or platform they're on. You’ll also now have access to closed funnels just a click away in the Google Analytics UI. And with our recently-upgraded audiences feature, you can create a more personalized experience for your web users with Remote Config or Firebase Cloud Messaging, which are now also available for web.
Google Analytics now supports web apps
Easily forecast user behavior with Firebase Predictions
Last year we launched Firebase Predictions into general availability, letting you apply the power of machine learning to your app analytics and create smart segments of your users based on their predicted future behavior. We’ve made some recent improvements to the Predictions experience to give you more information and more control. Most significantly, we’ve updated the Predictions interface so you can see the full spectrum of your user’s predicted behavior and target any segment of users depending on your use case. Learn more here.
Peek under the hood with more open-sourced SDKs
We believe an open platform is essential to creating powerful software and a connected community. Over the past few months, we’ve open-sourced four additional iOS libraries and four additional Android libraries. Today we’re open-sourcing the new Web SDK releases for Remote Config and Analytics. We’ve also worked closely with Invertase, a company that has created a comprehensive React Native library for Firebase, to ensure their libraries cover all Firebase products. The new React Native Firebase v6 release adds support for every Firebase service and includes a new documentation website, quick start guides, and upgraded SDKs. Get started here.
Limit access to your Firebase projects
In addition to making our platform more open, we’re also making sure you have the right processes in place to keep your data secure. To help you do this, we’re happy to share Firebase Roles and Permissions has graduated into general availability. This battle-tested system lets you use either predefined Firebase roles or create your own custom roles in order to limit access to your Firebase projects and data to the appropriate people. Learn more here.
Reduce test run time with Firebase Test Lab
We’ve made improvements to Firebase Test Lab that allow you to speed up tests with Test Sharding. Test Sharding enables you to divide tests into subgroups (shards), and run them in parallel. Learn more here.
Update on Fabric migration
With the launch of App Distribution, we’ve completed our journey to bring the best of Fabric to Firebase. All of the Fabric features you love can now be accessed in Firebase, and to take advantage of the latest updates, we recommend migrating your Fabric apps and teammates to Firebase today. The Fabric dashboard will sunset on March 31st 2020 and an early migration will ensure that you’re set up for success in your new home. Get started here.
We're continuing to invest in Firebase to provide a more helpful platform that simplifies your app development workflows and infrastructure needs, so you can focus on building amazing user experiences. As we continue to grow and enhance the platform, we'd love to get your feedback. Join our Alpha program to get a sneak peek of what we're building next, share your thoughts with us, and help shape the future of Firebase.
