Event taxonomy

  • Updated

Event taxonomy helps you organize the events in an event stream, creating an efficient and streamlined experience. With event taxonomy, you can control which events are visible in the event selector inside templates. You can also make changes to the configuration of individual events, such as modifying their names, descriptions, and definitions.

Access events

Go to Data >Events. All event streams in your dataset display here.

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Manage event stream details

Locate specific events

To see details related to an event stream, click the stream and view details like display name, descriptions, definition, and visibility status.

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To search for specific events in the events stream, enter the event name in the search bar.

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To filter events by their visibility status, use the Visibility drop-down list. The following options are available:

  • All Visibility – View events regardless of their visibility status.
  • Visible – View visible events.
  • Hidden – View hidden events.
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Modify event details

To modify an individual event, click anywhere on the event or select More > Edit, make changes to its information, and then click Apply.

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Event descriptions display on hover wherever you can select events in the Analytics app. Users can manually specify descriptions, including updating descriptions that automatically sync from the table description in the data warehouse when there are tables in union datasets that contain only one event type.

Event usage stats

Each event type carries usage stats collected from daily event counts. Use them to separate a live event from one that stopped receiving data. Hover an event to open its popover, which reports the following stats:

  • Average – The average number of events received per day.
  • Present on – The days the event was received, out of the days counted.
  • Trend – The daily change as a percentage. Optimizely shows a trend only when the direction is clear enough to report.
  • Your usage – How often you query the event, ranked against every event in the app.

  • App usage – How often everyone in the app queries the event, ranked the same way.

The two usage ranks measure how often an event is queried, not how much data it receives. A high-volume event that nobody analyzes ranks low.

The daily average uses the days Optimizely holds counts for, up to the most recent 30. A recently synced dataset reports a shorter window rather than counting the missing days as empty. Optimizely recounts every two days, so a newly instrumented event has no stats until the next run. The stats do not change when you change the time range of an analysis.

A daily average of zero, or no stats at all, means Optimizely holds no recent counts for the event. Check whether the event was merged into another event, and whether its dataset still receives data. Hide the event when it is obsolete. Raise it with the team that owns the dataset when the event should still arrive.

Control visibility of events

To control the visibility of an event, toggle Visible on or off for each event.

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To hide multiple events, select the events using the checkboxes and click Hide. This turns the status of the selected events to Hidden. 

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To display previously hidden events, select the events using the checkboxes and click Show. This turns the status of the selected events to Visible.

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To categorize events for organizational purposes, click the drop-down list in the Categories column and select an existing category. You can also create a category by clicking +. See Manage Categories. 

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Merge events

Merging events streamlines analysis by combining related actions, such as unifying separately captured events like explorations and dashboards, or consolidating renamed events over time.

  1. Select the events using the checkboxes and click Merge.

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  2. Enter the Display Name, Description, and set the visibility status of the selected events you want to merge.

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  3. (Optional) Add events to the merge list by clicking the Definition field and selecting the events from the drop-down list.

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  4. Click Apply to see the merged event.

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Unmerge events

  1. Click the merged event and remove the events from the Definition field.

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  2. Click Apply. The unmerged event displays in the original event list.

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Refresh event details

To refresh the page, click Refresh.

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Custom events

You can create custom events directly from the Events section or the app Menu bar. Custom events are cohorts of events that fall under a single event stream. When you create the custom event, you can select events by name using the Filtered Event block.

Create a custom event

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To create a custom event, do the following:

  1. Go to Data > + New > Custom Event.
  2. Enter a name for your event and add a desired description.
  3. Use the Cohort of drop-down list to select the event stream where you want to create a custom event. This opens the cohort editor.
  4. In the Filtered Event block, select the events you want to include in the cohort and click Apply.
  5. Run the cohort and click Save. The system creates your custom event, and it is visible under the Custom Events tab in the Events section.

Edit, duplicate, or delete a custom event

To edit, duplicate, or delete an existing custom event, do the following:

  1. Go to Data > Events.
  2. In the Custom Events tab, click More (...) corresponding to the event you want to edit, duplicate, or delete, and click on the associated option. 
  3. Make the necessary edits and click Save.
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