YouTube Walkthrough

Analytics reports

The analytics report is the main data source from YouTube. (see also: YouTube ETL)
YouTube is generating predefined reports such as Annotations and User activity and periodically updates their reporting data.
Each report contains data for a unique 24-hour period lasting from 12:00 a.m. through 11:59 p.m. Pacific time.

Limitations

YouTube doesn't generate reports for the current open day in Pacific time (UTC -7)

As a rule of thumb reports for the previous day are generated at the end of the current day (In Pacific time).
For example at the end of the 8th of July the report for the 7th of July is generated. The farther your account is from Pacific time the bigger the gap you will experience which could be up to two days.

Daily API reports and backfill reports are available for 60 days from the time that they are generated. Historical data reports are available for 30 days from the time they are generated.

Walk Through

Click on "Report" to retrieve a list of all the generated reports available and their corresponding job id (the identifier enclosed in round brackets at the end of the report name) e.g. Annotations (1111-2222-3333-4444)

There is a set of predefined reports available in the analytics section, each report doesn't begin to generate until a corresponding job is created on YouTube for that report.

If a report doesn't have the identifier it means that no job was created for that report.
When you execute the river, Rivery will automatically create a job for all of your reports.
It can take up to 24 for YouTube to start generating the report data so it is most likely you will get a "no data return" warning when executing the river in that time range.

Select the date type and time period.

Reports can be filtered by creation date or business date.
YouTube creates reports once a day per business date and can also create additional retroactive reports.

For example:

Selecting reports filtered by business data from 01/01/2019 to 10/01/2019 will return all 10 relevant business reports between these dates. While the same date range under created date filter will return these reports and any additional retroactive reports created in that time period.

Business date has an additional feature called"Pull changes only".
When checked the river will only pull reports which were created after the last run of the river.
When unchecked the river will bring all reports regardless of the extracted reports from the previous run.
If the box is checked and you still want to extract all reports (to a new table for example) simply uncheck the box, run the river and then check the box again.

Select the type of time period of the report.
It can be a custom date range (as described in the picture above) or a defined time period shown in the pop-up list (for example Yesterday, last week etc.)

Instructions if selecting ‘Date Range’:

Select the start date and end date.
Leave the end date empty in order to pull data until the moment the river runs.
After each run of the river, the start date will be updated automatically with the end date, and the end date will be updated with the empty value. This enables the next run to pull data from the end of the previous run.
The Start Date won't be advanced if a River run is unsuccessful. If you don't want this default setting, click More Options and check the box to advance the start date even if the River run is unsuccessful (Not recommended).
Select the time zone offset. It will be relevant only if the end date is empty in order to find the moment of the river’s run according to the time zone.
Days back - use this input to tell Rivery to pull data from the given days back before the given start date.