Understanding Events
For object Security, see Event Calendar Security
Events communicate insights as to what might have caused results for a specific data point(s) to be unusually high or low. For instance, a bad snow storm on a Saturday might cause greatly reduced in-store sales for that day, but may also result in an increased volume of phone orders.
Events are organized into Event Calendars that are associated with one or more Metrics and/or Multi-Metrics. Events may be added to an Event Calendar in advance for scheduled items such as system maintenance or sales promotions. Alternatively, Events may be entered after the fact for occurrences, such as storms or system outages. The Events feature is structured into three parts:
- Event Calendars: Provide the framework and rules that govern the application and display format of Events to Elements. See Define an Event Calendar for more information.
- Events: One or more individual occurrences associated with the specific Event Calendar. Any individual Event may be designated as a Key Event and will be shown on all associated Element's charts. See Understanding Key Events for details. Otherwise, Events will display on Viewers of those Metrics and Multi-Metrics for which the Event is determined to be "Impacting", for example: If the value(s) for a date or range of dates are "Statistically Significant"; (outside of the Standard Deviation settings), the Event is considered to have impacted the result.
- Display of Events on Metric/Multi-Metric Charts: Events are not automatically removed from a chart until the chart is refreshed as a result of one of the following:
- A Data Collection process being executed
- Clicking Update Live Chart to re-generate the chart
This example uses an Event Calendar of 'Sample Holidays' that is created to determine if these planned Events have any significant impact on Website Visitor Activity.
1. Access Admin > Event Calendars > select an item from the list or create a new one
- Event Owner: Select any Administrator or Power User for this role
- Define the appearance of Events on Charts
- Event source: You can add events manually one-by-one, fetch them from a SQL Database or plugin. For more information on collecting Events see:
2. Define Associated Metrics to which Event Calendar should be applied
- Open the Associated Metrics tab
- Apply to list of: select the scope of elements to which this Event Calendar should be applied (Individual Metrics, Measures, Topics, Categories). For this example the 'Categories' option has been chosen. (NOTE: An option selected in this field influences further configurations)
- Add Categories to which this Event Calendar should be applied. This table and button are different depending on whether you apply this Calendar to Topics, Measures, Categories or Individual Metrics.
- This table displays the list of all Associated Metrics defined by the entities selected above
3. Adding Events to Calendar
Data about Events can be collected automatically or manually in the Events tab.
For more information on collecting Events see:
3.1. Find Impacting Events
- Select an Event from the list and click Impact to see the Impacted Metric Values (if any):
- Event Impact: is automatically calculated by the allowed standard deviation in the Statistical View. Standard Deviation is assigned in the Metric Viewer > Charting tab > Set Statistical view field. When the data point falls outside the statistically acceptable threshold, system interprets it as an Alert. If such Alert date coincides with the date in the Event Calendar, this Event becomes impacted and current date and the following date are added to the Potentially Impacted Metric Values list.
- Click the Metric Name to review the Element Chart
