Custom Dimensions within Custom Dimensions in Google Analytics

Question

Within the unpaid version of Google Analytics, you are limited to 20 custom dimensions per property/view. As a workaround, I am currently attempting to create a custom dimension table within the existing custom dimensions in Google Analytics. In essence, I am trying to use an index and value custom dimension as a custom dimension table within itself. The problem that I am trying to solve is with a 6sense GA integration, currently, 6sense takes up 17 out of the 20 available custom dimensions. I want to consolidate these 17 custom dimensions into a lookup table variable that is pulling from the 6sense companyData variable in the dataLayer: 6sense Lookup Table Variable

The problems that I am running into are this:

1. Once I have this configured how do I access each of these indexed values in GA?
2. As it is configured, would it still allow for granular Session data (Session, Bounce Rate, Goal Completions, etc.)?

Any ideas, help, suggestions are all appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The value of the custom dimension is a string, you cannot use it as a lookup. The way you are trying it won't work, because if for example the dimension is at the session or user level, the next value will replace the previous one within that session, therefore you would lose all the previous values and the last one sent to that index would 'win' and it will be the value of that custom dimension of the session.

An alternative solution could be to create a string with the information of interest concatenated and send it in a custom dimension (always considering that if this string changes, the one sent as last to Analytics in the session is saved, for session and user level hits).