Dotwave Import from Google Analytics (GA4)
Google Analytics 4 holds the behavioral picture of your product or site — sessions, conversions, traffic sources, engagement. Dotwave connects to a GA4 property, lets you assemble a report from dimensions and metrics, and imports the result as a clean, typed dataset you can join with anything else in your workspace.
Requirements
Before you can import, two things must be in place:
- A GA4 property — the newer Google Analytics data model. Universal Analytics properties are not supported.
- Your Google account connected to Dotwave, with at least Viewer access to that property. Click Connect Google account the first time; Google asks you to allow read-only access. Dotwave can only see properties your account can see.
What you can import
A GA4 import is essentially a report you design in Dotwave. You choose the dimensions (the ways you want to slice the data — for example date, country, session source, landing page) and the metrics (the numbers you want measured — for example sessions, total users, conversions, average engagement time). Dotwave runs that report against the GA4 Data API and imports the returned rows as a dataset. Each dimension becomes a column you can group and filter by, and each metric becomes a numeric column ready for aggregation and charting.
Keep dimension + metric combinations under 10 columns for best results. GA4's API limits some combinations.
How to import
From the Data sources page, click Add data source and choose Google Analytics.
Type the GA4 Property ID (a number, found in GA4 under Admin → Property Settings). Your connected Google account needs access to it.
Add the dimensions that define your rows and the metrics that fill them. Stay under about ten total columns to avoid API restrictions.
Define the reporting window — a fixed start and end date, or a rolling window such as the last 30 days.
Dotwave runs the report and creates a dataset from the returned rows. From there it behaves like any other Dotwave dataset.
Working with GA4 data in Dotwave
GA4 reports are pre-aggregated by the dimensions you chose, so the imported dataset is already grouped — one row per unique combination of dimension values. If you need a finer breakdown later, run a new import with additional dimensions rather than trying to disaggregate after the fact. Date dimensions import as strings in GA4's YYYYMMDD form; use Dotwave's cleaning tools to convert them to proper dates if you want time-series charts to sort and bucket correctly.
GA4 applies data thresholding and, on some properties, sampling for large date ranges. If totals look slightly lower than expected, narrow the date range or reduce the number of high-cardinality dimensions to reduce the chance of thresholded rows being withheld.