Using dataLayer.push? Include An Event To Fire Tags in Google Tag Manager

If you use the dataLayer.push method in Google Tag Manager to add data to your datalayer, you’ll want to include a Google Tag Manager Data Layer Event as well. Using a datalayer event, you can then fire a Custom Event Trigger. Using this setup will allow you fire any necessary tags to read any newly pushed data. Here’s how you set it up.

Add An Event To dataLayer.push

Once your code has completed, you’ll want to fire the final datalayer event, so that Tag Manager can intercept the event in the next step. It’s important to fire any events that need the data as quickly as possible, rather than stacking them. Here’s what we will change:

dataLayer.push({
'var1':'value'
});

To become this. Notice the addition of the comma on the previous line!

dataLayer.push({
'var1':'value',
'event':'sendUpdate'
});

Set Up A Trigger To Fire

Now that we have our event taken care of in the code, we’ll want to create a new Trigger to listen for this event to fire. To create this trigger, select “Custom Event” as the type, and give the Event Name the same value and case as we programmed above.

Update Tag To Use The New Trigger

Now we can update our tag to use the newly created trigger to fire.  Select “More” from the “Fire On” step, and select our trigger

In this way, we can ensure that our Data Layer handles the data, and any tags that are needed can be fired as quickly as possible.