Goal-based dimensions

Event firing and event publishing

When the conditions that are specified in the event definition are met, the event fires, which stores a marker for the event on the hit.

An event is published when the event and its recorded data are made available to Tealeaf® on Cloud services, such as Search Indexing and the Data Collector.

By default, event data is published to dimensions when the event (with which the dimension is associated) fires for the first time. This immediate responsiveness ensures that event activity and contextual data are captured as a snapshot of the current state of the session.

There can be use cases when you want event data to be published at Session End, rather than when the event fires. For example, you might want to track the number of users who trigger a search on your web application, and who failed to complete a purchase transaction. It isn't possible to evaluate the failure until all hits of the session are processed. You must delay tabulating the other event (users who triggered a search), which tracks search + failed to complete, until the end of the session. At the end of the session, the last known value for each dimension is back-populated to the event occurrences from earlier in the session.

Configuring event processing for goal-based dimensions

When you create or edit an event, you specify how you want the data to be published.

To process the objectives that are associated with goal-based dimensions, you must configure both the event and the dimension to publish at Session End. Configuring the event to publish at Session End, but not the dimension (or vice versa) results in different event processing behavior. By forcing the event and the dimension to be published at Session End, the correct values for both event and dimension are recorded for indexing.

Use the Published at event attribute to control when event data gets published, either immediately (when the event fires) or at Session End.

If you set Published at to Immediate, the event and associated dimension values are published immediately (when the event fires). Data is extracted from the session when the event is triggered. When an event fires, the values of the associated dimensions are published with the event value. If the event has associated dimensions that are configured to Publish at Session End, the event gets published immediately, and the associated dimensions are left blank (no captured value).

If you set Published at to Session end, the event values detected at the time the event fired are recorded. However, publishing doesn't occur until the session is completed, either by the visitor of if the session times out.

This method for event publishing enables the support of the capturing of the dimension values associated with the event from their last occurrence in the session. As such, any associated dimensions that are configured as Publish at Session end get populated with the absolute last value for that dimension in the session. The value is used for any occurrence of the event, even if the event fires and the dimension was populated before session end.

Example