Managing Adobe Analytics Assets

If you’ve worked in Adobe Analytics for any meaningful amount of time, you’ve probably faced this situation: You open the 'Segments' panel and see hundreds of segments. Some were created last week, others haven’t been touched in five years. Some are shared across the company while others are buried in personal folders.

The same goes for calculated metrics, Workspace projects, and even data views. Over time, these assets pile up, making it harder to find what you need, creating inconsistencies and introducing risks to data governance.

Enter Analytics Inventory! An incredibly useful tool within Adobe Analytics that gives you visibility into every object created in your organization’s environment.

Today, I want to walk you through what it is, how it works, and how it can transform the way you manage your Adobe Analytics setup.

What Exactly is Analytics Inventory?

At its core, Analytics Inventory is a centralized reporting tool for administrators. It shows you a complete list of key analytics objects like:

• Segments
• Calculated Metrics
• Workspace Projects
• Scheduled Projects
• Report Builder Workbooks

Think of it as a catalog of everything that’s been built inside your Adobe Analytics instance. Every segment created by anyone in your company? It’s listed. Every calculated metric, even the ones hiding in personal folders? Also listed.

And it’s not just a static list. You can filter, search, sort and export the data. This is crucial if you’re trying to get control over your analytics ecosystem.

Let me give an example: Imagine your company has been using Adobe Analytics for 7 years, with dozens of analysts coming and going. Over time, people have created hundreds of calculated metrics, many with similar names like “Revenue per Visit v1,” “Revenue per Visit Final,” or “Rev per Visit_NEW.” You’re tasked with cleaning this up. But how do you even know what exists?

That’s where Analytics Inventory comes in. With a few clicks, you can export a CSV file of every calculated metric in the system, including details like creator, last modified date, owner, sharing status, and more. Suddenly, what seemed like an overwhelming black box becomes visible and manageable.

Why does 'Analytics Inventory' matter?

You might be thinking: “Can’t I already see segments and metrics in the Workspace UI?” Sure! But that view is limited to what’s shared with you or publicly shared in the organization. It won’t show you everything across private folders, nor does it give an at-a-glance exportable summary.

Analytics Inventory offers value in several critical areas:

• Data Governance: It helps enforce consistency across your analytics setup by showing you what definitions exist, who owns them, and how they’re shared. This is especially important in organizations with multiple analysts creating overlapping or redundant assets.
• Asset Clean-Up: Over time, many segments and metrics fall out of use. Inventory lets you identify assets that haven’t been modified in years, or those tied to inactive users, making it easier to deprecate what’s no longer needed.
• Audit Readiness: If your company is audited, or if you need to document your data definitions for compliance, Analytics Inventory gives you an exportable record of all analytics assets.
• Migrations & Mergers: If you’re migrating from one report suite to another, or merging data environments, this tool lets you map out all existing definitions so nothing critical gets left behind.
• Onboarding & Training: New analysts can benefit from a guided tour of existing assets using Inventory exports. Instead of digging through the UI blindly, they can get a structured overview of segments, metrics, and projects.

How do we use Analytics Inventory effectively?

Here’s a walkthrough of how you can use this tool:

1. Navigate to Admin Tools: Go to Admin > Admin Tools > Analytics Inventory in Adobe Analytics.
2. Select Asset Type: You’ll see options to view different inventories : Segments, Calculated Metrics, Workspace Projects, etc. Pick the one you want.
3. Use Filters: You can filter by criteria like Creator, Sharing Status (Private, Shared, Company), Last Modified Date, and more. For example, you could filter for “All Segments created before 2022 that are Private.”
4. Export to CSV: Once filtered, you can export the inventory to a CSV file. This file includes metadata like name, owner, creation date, last modified date, report suite, sharing status, and ID.

This exported data is incredibly valuable because it allows you to analyze assets outside of the Adobe UI : using Excel, Power BI, or any other data tool. You can build pivot tables, mark assets for review, flag duplicates, or even cross-reference with usage data.

Note:

1. In this initial release, you can see summary inventory numbers for Workspace projects, Segments, and Calculated metric. Subsequent releases will allow you to analyze these components.
2. Analytics Inventory doesn’t tell you if an asset is actively being used in reports or projects. It shows metadata about the asset’s existence, but not its utilization. You’ll need to combine Inventory data with usage analysis (e.g., which segments are applied in live projects) for a complete clean-up strategy.

Practical scenarios where 'Analytics Inventory' shines

Let’s make this even more concrete with some real-world scenarios:

• Redundant segments across teams: Marketing and Merchandising both created their own “High-Value Customer” segments, but each uses different criteria. Analytics Inventory reveals these parallel definitions, enabling a conversation to standardize the metric organization-wide.
• Cleaning up Assets: An analyst who left the company 3 years ago created 50 private calculated metrics. No one’s sure if they’re still relevant. By filtering Inventory for that analyst’s name, you can review and decide whether to archive or transfer ownership.
• Preparing for a data governance audit: Your company’s compliance team requests documentation of all shared segments and metrics used for executive reporting. You quickly export Analytics Inventory filtered for shared assets, fulfilling the request without manual screenshotting or digging through multiple folders.
• Moving to Customer Journey Analytics (CJA): If you’re migrating from Adobe Analytics to CJA, you can use Inventory to catalog every segment and calculated metric in use, so you can prioritize which definitions need recreating in the new environment.

In conclusion, if you care about data governance, consistency and long-term scalability in Adobe Analytics, you can’t afford to ignore Analytics Inventory. It provides the visibility and control needed to tame the complexity of growing analytics environments.

Instead of relying on tribal knowledge or scattered documentation, this tool gives you a data-driven, exportable overview of your analytics ecosystem.

I recommend using Analytics Inventory not just reactively (when problems arise), but proactively by scheduling periodic reviews to keep your environment clean, standardized, and efficient.

Have you checked out this latest feature yet? If yes, share your thoughts in the comment section and share this article with the digital enthusiasts in your team!