If Activation Insights data is missing, looks wrong, or doesn't include what you expect to see, the cause is usually one of a few specific things rather than a general "is ACI working?" problem.
1. Confirm the site is linked to Activation Insights
The most common cause of missing data is that the site itself was never connected to Activation Insights on the back end. Without a back-end connection between the site's Composer Application ID and its Piano Analytics Site ID, no Composer or VX data is sent to Piano Analytics for that site, regardless of any client-side configuration.
To check:
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Look in the relevant Piano Analytics Activation Insights board for any data at all. If the board is completely empty for the site, that is the signature of a missing back-end link.
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Confirm with Piano Support that the AID-Site ID connection is in place for the site you're investigating. See the dedicated enablement article for the connection process.
2. Confirm Activation Insights is enabled for the right environment
The Composer Sandbox is not connected to Activation Insights. Data from the Sandbox will never appear in Piano Analytics through ACI, no matter how the site is otherwise configured. If you're testing on a Sandbox environment and seeing no ACI data, that is expected.
Production and staging environments are supported, but only after the per-environment enablement request has been processed.
3. Check for browser-side event blocking
If you see visits that contain only Composer events without an accompanying page-display event — or template/exposure events without the expected analytics context — the Piano Analytics SDK was likely blocked on those visits.
The most common causes are:
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An ad blocker or privacy extension in the visitor's browser blocking the Piano Analytics SDK while letting Composer scripts through.
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A network-level block (corporate proxy, content filter) blocking the Piano Analytics collection endpoint while not blocking the Composer endpoint.
Composer-only visits with no page display are an expected artifact of this pattern: Composer's own scripts can fire while the analytics collection is being blocked. You won't be able to "recover" these visits — they're permanently incomplete — but recognizing the pattern stops you from looking for a data-quality bug that isn't there.
4. Check article-level data is missing or sparse
If site-level Activation Insights data is present but article-level breakdowns are sparse or empty, the most common causes are:
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The Composer content metadata tagging is incomplete on the site (article identifiers or content type meta tags are missing).
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The site has been recently linked and historical article-level data has not yet been accumulated.
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An A/B test or experience is configured in a way that exposes the template without capturing the content context.
Compare the article-level tab against the Composer experience data to confirm Composer is firing as expected, then validate the content tagging on a representative page using Tag Inspector.
5. Confirm the property you're investigating is expected to populate
Some Activation Insights properties only populate under specific conditions:
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Properties scoped to A/B tests only populate for events from sites where the relevant A/B test is configured.
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Properties relying on Active Churn Prevention (ACP) only populate when ACP data is being collected for the site (see the "Subscription performance" board notes).
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Some properties take more than a day to populate; there is no specific property that is guaranteed to be available exactly one day after the event. Population timing depends on the scope.
If a property is consistently empty in Data Query, check whether the property is expected to populate for your event scope before assuming a data quality issue.
When to escalate to Piano Support
Open a Support ticket if:
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The site is linked, the environment is supported, no client-side blocking is evident, and Activation Insights boards are still empty beyond 24–48 hours.
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A specific event you expect (for example,
vx.conversionfor a known paid conversion) is consistently missing despite the conversion completing. -
Properties you've validated should populate based on the data model reference are consistently empty.
Include in the ticket: the AID, the Site ID, the environment, the event/property you're investigating, and a specific example timestamp where you expected data but didn't see it.