Limitations of Server-Side Tagging with Blue Triangle

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Limitations
• Security
• Performance

Overview

The implementation of the Blue Triangle Tag as a Server-Side Tag (SS Tag) can have adverse effects on data collection within the BT Portal that can greatly limit some important metrics. This is due to some features of Server-Side Tagging environment (client) that intentionally obfuscate data collection. Additionally, providers currently do not support many analytics features. Some of the limitations listed below may resolve in time as these providers develop their products. While SS Tag implementation for many services may provide full functionality for your organization’s purposes, Blue Triangle is likely not one of them. SS Tag implementation generally solves issues with content security and speed of a site. In this article, we will cover: 

• Some limitations of implementing the Blue Triangle Tag as a SS Tag 
• The security precautions we have taken with the Blue Triangle Tag 
• The performance precautions we have taken with the Blue Triangle Tag 

This article is not exhaustive, and we encourage additional research into how Server-Side Tagging can affect additional services that are currently utilized by your site. 

Limitations

Although SS Tagging can produce faster page load times and limit data usage, it is not recommended with the Blue Triangle product due, but not limited, to the following limitations of most Server-Side Tagging clients: 

• Cannot measure performance of SPA Pages
• Network requests during SPA Page turns are not collected 
• Most errors are not collected:
  • JS Errors
  • Page Content Errors
  • CSP Violations
• RUM Resource Timings cannot be properly collected 
• Most clients lack Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, FCP) 
• No clients are currently able to collect Time To Interactive data 
• Capabilities of the BT Dynamic Tag are severely limited or are not supported at all
  • Dynamic Tag allows the collection of content on the page by checking for issues in the DOM and populating custom variables) 

These limitations would cause the Blue Triangle Portal to lack SPA Monitoring, Core Web Vital monitoring for all traffics, the waterfall functions of RUM Monitoring, and may also affect much of Tag Governance functionality. While there could be concerns over the security of serving content from a 3rd party provider onto a web page or that performance delays might increase with incremental additions of third party content on a web page, we have taken measures to secure the BT Tag and address those concerns.  

Security

A customer’s tag will never be stored on disk when it is generated. It is served up from the Cloud and is only handled securely.  

To minimize more security concerns, the BT Tag can undergo a customer’s QA process every time updates to the BT portal are deployed. Although this could add some overhead, it puts the customer in complete control. The BT Tag’s JS code is also fully legible to customers (not obfuscated), where it can be reviewed for any potential issues prior to implementation with each update.

Using a strong CSP in conjunction with the BT Tag can further add security to a web page. 

Performance

The Blue Triangle Tag is very lightweight, usually measuring at or less than 20 kilobytes. In most cases, there is only one file that loads to the page once the tag has run. Comparatively, most tags require two or more additional files. Our tag loads and begins to collect measurements only after the page has already loaded and does not require any processing-heavy or long-running JavaScript functions.