11.3 Create a Data View

Customer Journey Analytics - Create a Data View

Objectives

Understand the Data View UI
Understand the basic settings of visit definition
Understand Attribution and Persistence within a Data View

11.3.1 Data View

With your connection done, you can now progress to influencing visualization. A difference between Adobe Analytics and CJA, is that CJA needs a Data View in order to clean and prepare the data before visualization.

A Data View is similar to the concept of Virtual Report Suites in Adobe Analytics, where you define context-aware visit definitions, filtering and also, how the components are called.

You'll need a minimum of one Data View per Connection. However, for some use-cases, it's great to have multiple Data Views for the same connection, with the goal of giving different insights to different teams. If you want your company to become data-driven, you should adapt how data is viewed in each team. Some examples:

UX metrics only for the UX Design team
Use the same names for KPIs and Metrics for Google Analytics as for Customer Journey Analytics so that the digital analytics team can speak 1 language only.
Data View filtered to show for instance data for one market only, or one brand, or only for Mobile Devices.

On the Connections screen, check the checkbox in front of the connection you just created. Click Create Data View.

You'll be redirected to the Create Data View workflow.

11.3.2 Data View Definition

You can now configure the basic definitions for your Data View.

The Connection you created in the previous exercise is already selected. Your connection is named --demoProfileLdap-- – Omnichannel Data Connection.

Next, give your Data View a name following this naming convention: --demoProfileLdap-- – Omnichannel Data View.

Enter the same value for the description: --demoProfileLdap-- – Omnichannel Data View.

For the Time Zone, select the timezone Greenwich Mean Time; Monrovia, Casablanca [GMT]. This is a really interesting setting as some companies operate in different countries and geographies. Allocating the right time zone for each country will avoid typical data mistakes such as believing that for instance, in Peru, the majority of the people buy T-shirts at 4:00 AM.

You can also modify the main metrics naming (Person, Session and Event). This is not required but some customers like to use People, Visits and Hits instead of Person, Session and Events (default naming convenction from Customer Journey Analytics).

You should now have the following settings configured:

Click Save and Continue.

11.3.3 Data View Components

In this exercise, you'll configure the components you need to analyze the data and visualize it using Analysis Workspace. In this UI, there are three main areas:

Left side: Available components from the selected datasets
Middle: Added components to the Data View
Right side: Component settings

If you can't find a specific metric or dimension, please check if the field Contains data is removed from your dataview. If not, please delete that field.

You now have to drag and drop the components you need for the analysis to the Components Added. To do this, you need to select the components in the left menu and drag and drop them onto the canvas in the middle.

Let's start with the first component: Name (web.webPageDetails.name). Search for this component, then drag and drop it onto the canvas.

This component is the page name, as you can derive from reading the schema field (web.webPageDetails.name).

However, using Name as the name is not the best naming convention for a business user to quickly understand this dimension.

Let's change the name to be Page Name. Click on the component and rename it in the Component Settings area.

Something really important is the Persistence settings. The concept of evars and prop doesn't exist in CJA but the Persistence settings make a similar behavior possible.

If you don't change these settings, CJA will interpret the dimension as a Prop (hit level). Also, we can change the Persistence to make the dimension an eVar (persist the value across the journey).

If you aren't familiar with eVars and Props, you can read more about them in the documentation.

Let's leave the Page Name as a Prop. As such, you don't need to change any Persistence Settings.

Next, pick the dimension phoneNumber and drop it on the canvas. The new name should be Phone Number.

Finally let's change the Persistence settings, as the Mobile Number should persist at user level.

To change the Persistence, scroll down in the right menu and open the Persistence tab:

Check the checkbox to modify the persistence settings. Select Most Recent and the Person (Reporting window) scope, as we only care about the last mobile number of that person. If the customer doesn't fill out the mobile in future visits, you'll still see this value populated.

The next component is web.webPageDetails.pageViews.value.

In the left side menu, search for web.webPageDetails.pageViews.value. Drag and drop this metric onto the canvas.

Change the name to be Page Views under the Component settings.

For the attribution settings we will leave this empty.

Note: Persistence settings on metrics can also be changed in Analysis Workspace. In some cases you may choose to set it here to avoid business users from having to think which is the best persistence model.

Next, you'll have to configure a lot of Dimensions and Metrics, as indicated in the below table.

DIMENSIONS

METRICS

Your configuration should then look like this:

Don't forget to Save your Data View. So click Save now.

11.3.4 Calculated Metrics

Although we have organized all the components in the Data View, you still need to adapt some of them, so that business users are ready to start their analysis.

If you remember, we didn't specifically bring in Metrics such us Add to Cart, Product View or Purchases into the Data View. However, we do have a dimension called: Event Type. So, let's derive these interaction types by creating 3 calculated Metrics.

Let's start with first Metric: Product Views.

On the left side, please search Event Type and select the dimension. Then drag and drop it in to the Included Components canvas.

Click to select the new metric Event Type.

Now change the component name and description to the following values:

Now lets count only Product Views events. To do that, scroll down on the Component Settings until you see Include Exclude Values. Make sure to enable the option Set include/exclude values.

As we only want to count Product Views, please specify commerce.productViews under the criteria.

Your calculated metric is now ready!

Next, repeat the same process for Add to Cart and Purchase events.

Add to Cart

First drag and drop the same dimension Event Type.

You will see a pop up alerting of a Duplicated Field as we are using the same variable. Please click on Add Anyway:

Now, follow the same process as we did for the metric Product Views:

First change the name and descritpion.
Finally add commerce.productListAdds as criteria to count only Add To Cart

Purchases

First drag and drop the same dimension Event Type as we did for both previous metrics.

You will see a pop up alerting of a Duplicated Field as we are using the same variable. Please click on Add Anyway:

Now, follow the same process as we did for the metrics Product Views and Add to cart:

First change the name and descritpion.
Finally add commerce.purchases as criteria to count only Add To Carts

Your final configuration should then look similar to this this. Click Save and continue.

11.3.5 Data View Settings

You should be redirected to this screen:

In this tab, you can mofify some important settings to change how data is processed. Let's start by setting the Session Timeout to 30 min. Thanks to every experience event's timestamp you can extend the concept of a session across all channels. For instance, what happens if a customer calls the call-center after visiting the website? Using custom Session Timeouts you have loots of flexibility in deciding what a session is, and how that session will merge data together.

In this tab you can modify other things like filtering the data by using a segment/filter. You won't need to do that in this exercise.

Once you are done, please click Save and finish.

You can come back to this Data View afterwards and change settings and components at any time. Changes will affect how historical data is shown.

You can now continue with the visualization and analysis part!