Want to monitor your SharePoint site and get advanced data, session recordings, and even heatmaps? Microsoft Clarity is for you. It’s not a new tool but with native support for SharePoint sites, it’s worth a try. Let’s go and check how to configure it and start working with it.
Introduction
You’ve just created and deployed an Intranet SharePoint site or a department site on SharePoint. The question – how to monitor it? There is an out-of-the-box feature that displays basic information about the site (for instance, page views, time spent per user, page traffic by time). In many cases it’s good enough – shows stats and you can even export data to an Excel file. If you need more detailed data (for example, session recording, click heatmaps, advanced filtering) you need to implement a 3rd party tool. Today I will show you Microsoft Clarity.
This is a free online tool that you can use to monitor your online sites. Clarity offers out-of-the-box support for WordPress, Joomla, Wix, Shopify, and many other popular platforms. If you can’t find your platform you can manually install a monitoring script. It’s also GDPR and CCPA compliant (important if your organization has strict rules).
Check details on Clarity page – https://clarity.microsoft.com/
Configure Clarity
The first step is to configure a project in Clarity.
1. Navigate to the Clarity site and sign in or create a new account (https://clarity.microsoft.com/)
2. Create a new Project, provide a name and a URL for a monitored site
3. Select a category for your project and copy the Project ID. This code is required in the next steps. The code is unique and assigned to your monitored page.
Configure SharePoint
Now the main part – connect your SharePoint site to Clarity.
1. Navigate to your App Catalog site in SharePoint and open SharePoint Store. Search for clarity. You should find the Microsoft Clarity app – it’s a dedicated app created by Microsoft.
2. Open the Microsoft Clarity app and then click on the Add to Apps site button.
3. Now the critical step – where do you want to install the Clarity app? By default, it’s installed on ALL SharePoint SITES. It could be useful in some cases but it’s much better to control which site has monitoring enabled. Just imagine – 500 sites and all data displayed in Clarity… madness…
I strongly advise you to select a specific site(s) and install the app only on this app. To do this select Only enable this app and then click the Add button.
4. Navigate to the site that you want to monitor and add the Clarity app to it. You can quickly go to the store from the main page using the App button from the New dropdown section.
5. Add the app to your site
6. Now it’s time to register the app. Open the PowerShell window and run those cmdlets.
- Connect with your SharePoint Admin center
Connect-SPOService -URL https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com/- Add a Site Collection scoped App Catalog to the site
Add-SPOSiteCollectionAppCatalog -Site https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/yoursite- Connect to your site using PnP PowerShell
Connect-PnPOnline -URL https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/yoursite -Interactive - Configure Clarity for your site (you need the Project Code ID from the Clarity page here)
Add-PnPApplicationCustomizer -ClientSideComponentId: "9088b932-6b45-4dc7-a391-256c4933526f" -ClientSideComponentProperties: '{"clarityId": "your-Project-ID"}' -Scope site- Check if Clarity is properly configured for your site. You should get 1 entry for your site.
Get-PnPApplicationCustomizer -ClientSideComponentId: "9088b932-6b45-4dc7-a391-256c4933526f"- If there are more entries (I got 2 last time) you have to remove them and add them again.
Remove-PnPApplicationCustomizer -ClientSideComponentId: "9088b932-6b45-4dc7-a391-256c4933526f"Use Clarity
You can navigate to the Clarity page and check the data. Although Microsoft suggests waiting up to 2 hours, I get results within minutes. This is my test SharePoint site – I can monitor basic information such as Users, Click, Referrers, etc.
There are 2 more sections:
- Recordings – A recording session is the recording of the exact user behavior while on your site. This includes navigation throughout the web pages along with clicks/taps and scrolls.
- Heatmaps – Clarity tracks all user taps on the device and automatically generates a heat map. The screenshot below shows a single test session with just 2 users. You can see patterns and areas where users clicked.
Summary
Configuration is a straightforward process, but the PowerShell part can be a problematic one. Just remember to check the configuration using PowerShell and correct it if needed. The Clarity app is available in the SharePoint Store, and you can quickly install it and start monitoring your sites.
Clarity has a lot of options and monitoring capabilities. You can check all of them on the Clarity website and even try a live demo which is based on the site itself. If you need a such solution, give it a try!
