We discussed that each action and entity in HockeyStack can have properties. If goals are nicknames for a group of actions, defined properties are nicknames for a group of properties.
Let’s go back to our Actions table.
Timestamp | Entity | Action Name | Source | UTM Source | UTM Medium |
… | start-session | paid_social | |||
… | start-session | organic_social | |||
… | start-session | paid_social | |||
… | start-session | facebook.com |
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|
This table depicts a list of website sessions from various sources. The properties Source, UTM Source, and UTM Medium have meanings on their own. But they have a much larger meaning when looked at together. For example, a UTM Source = linkedin and UTM Medium = paid_social might mean LinkedIn Ads, and a UTM_Source = empty and Source = facebook.com might mean Facebook Organic.
Let’s say we want to add another column to our table to depict this meaning, which will be called “Channel” Our ruleset will be:
If UTM Source contains “linkedin” and UTM Medium contains “paid” → LinkedIn Ads
If UTM Source contains “linkedin” and UTM Medium contains “organic” → LinkedIn Organic
If UTM Source is empty and Source contains “facebook”, or if UTM Source contains “facebook” and UTM Medium contains “organic” → Facebook Organic
Timestamp | Entity | Action Name | Source | UTM Source | UTM Medium | Channel |
… | start-session | paid_social | LinkedIn Ads | |||
… | start-session | organic_social | LinkedIn Organic | |||
… | start-session | organic_social | Facebook Organic | |||
… | start-session | facebook.com |
|
| Facebook Organic |
This Channel property doesn’t actually exist in our dataset, but it can be inferred from the list of other properties that our actions have. This is called a “Defined Property”. You can apply the same thing on any Shared Property as well.
For example, a common Defined Company Property to define is “Region”. If your CRM only stores countries, you can create a Defined Company Property that groups relevant countries into regions.
For a ruleset like Country = “Canada” or Country = “United States” → NAM, you can imagine the below Company Properties:
Key | Value | Country | Region |
company_id | 12387 | Canada | NAM |
company_id | 12354629 | United States | NAM |
In HockeyStack, navigate to Definitions > Properties.
This page is your property dictionary.
You can click on the + icon on the top right corner to create a new defined property.
Each mapping in a defined property will have:
A ruleset
And a value that the ruleset maps to
The ruleset can be constructed using and/or logic using any property in the HockeyStack dataset.
The mapped value can either be:
A static value
For example: I want to map Canada and United States to “NAM”
A dynamic value
For example: I want to create a property called Resources that stores all my resource interactions. This property will show 1- the URL of the page if the action is a pageview on a resource page, 2- the name of the email, if the action is an email open on an email with a specific subject schema, 3- blank if it’s neither.
High level filters like Action Name, Action Type, or Touchpoint Type are often overlooked by beginners to HockeyStack. In the above case, we wanted to add a specific filter to only include pageview actions, because clicks and form fills might also have a page url. The significance of this becomes clearer when you are doing attribution, where the number of touchpoints is really important.