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FAQ: BlueConic Timeline events

BlueConic Timeline FAQ

What are Timeline events in BlueConic?

BlueConic Timeline events let you store time-based data for a customer or visitor profile, such as product orders, page views, clicks, etc. Events are stored on each profile's Timeline to capture information about timing and sequence of events.

You can view a profile's Timeline by selecting Profiles from the navigation bar and selecting the Profile timeline tab.

CDP use cases for BlueConic Timeline Events and first-party data

How are Timeline events created?

Timeline events are not recorded by default. You need to tell BlueConic which types of events to collect and where/how to store them. BlueConic provides several preconfigured Timeline event types. You can customize these event types and also create your own Timeline event types to suit your needs.

How do I add events to a profile's Timeline?

In order to add events to a BlueConic profile's Timeline, you need to first decide what types of events you want to record and define a Timeline event type to record this event. To add product orders, for example, you can use the prebuilt Order Timeline event type by installing the Event type: Order plugin from BlueConic.

You can import Timeline events from your martech systems using standard connections including:

In addition, the Facebook Advertising Connection exports Timeline events. Learn more about Timeline events.

Contact your Customer Success Manager for details on using Timeline event types in BlueConic.

How does the default Order Timeline event type work?

BlueConic provides a default Order Timeline event type you can use for importing product orders via the SFTP Connection.

To use this Order event information to enhance your product recommendations, you need to do two things:

In the Order details, you need to store the BlueConic product store ID in a property called "bcStoreId".
The Product IDs in the Order event must exactly match the product IDs in your BlueConic product store. You select the product store name in Step 5 of the order data import via the SFTP Connection.

In addition, keep the following guidelines in mind when creating product recommendations based on the default Order event type:

Products need to be present in the product or content store, in order to be recommended.
If you add an Order of this event type, and BlueConic matches the product id, BlueConic will add Order events to a profile's timeline.
Bought products for this order are added to a profile property that stores products ordered by this profile.
Also, product stores and related statistics are updated with new Order events. This additional product data lets you create better personal recommendations, because there is more product information available for the current profile.

Which Timeline event types are available by default?

BlueConic provides several Timeline event types out of the box, which you can use to store customer events in a profile's Timeline. These event types are available by in BlueConic default:

Order event type
Email delivered event type
Email opened event type
Email link clicked event type
Abandoned basket event type
Order refund event type, with three statuses: refund requested, returned, refunded

You can add custom properties to these event types and create your own custom Timeline event types in BlueConic. See Creating Timeline event types for details.

What are some CDP use cases for BlueConic Timeline events?

Timeline events make it possible for you to store customer order data in the BlueConic product store. Use cases for Timeline Events include:

Create better, more personal product recommendations.
Improve overall product recommendation statistics by using product order data.
Use the Python package in AI Workbench to retrieve events along with visitor profile.
Use the BlueConic REST API to retrieve events.

Can I use timeline events to capture when a profile property was updated?

Yes, you can. Because BlueConic is not a relational database, the date or time a profile property is created is not stored or available in BlueConic. To track time stamps you can configure a date-time profile property that adds the current date and time when a property changes. This property must be configured to update within every source that changes the property. For instance, if you are importing data that you need a timestamp for with an SFTP Connection, you’ll also need to add a mapping for the last date/time when the connection runs. If this property can also be updated by a BlueConic listener, you’ll want to configure the listener to also update the date/time property when it updates the target property. Or, you can configure a custom Timeline event type instead, and then use the Timeline event rollup feature to query this timeline event and store the data into profile properties.

Can I use multiple Timeline event types in the Timeline Query Connection?

Yes, when setting up a Timeline query goal in the Timeline Query Connection, if you choose SQL in the dropdown menu, you can write a full SQL query to use multiple Timeline event types in a query. For step-by-step instructions on setting up the connection, see the Timeline Query Connection documentation.

How can I deduplicate Timeline events?

To prevent duplicate events being added to a timeline, you can set an "externalID" field. It is not possible to add an event with an externalID that already exists.

How does BlueConic handle Timeline event storage and priority?

Events are data points tied to the BlueConic Timeline of a profile, containing for example an order the customer placed. BlueConic comes out of the box with several predefined BlueConic Timeline event types. You can customize how long BlueConic stores these events on the profile timeline.

For the storage of Timeline events, the maximum event size is 1kb. Events bigger than 1kb will not be stored. For this reason, we recommend that you keep the event Property ID short, to reduce the effect on the storage and event size limit.

Retention period

The retention period for timeline events can be set to a specified number of days, or indefinitely. There are also rules on how many events can be stored in the profile timeline.

Example: You create an order event with a retention period set to 90 days. A web purchase a user makes today is stored in the profile for 90 days from today. If a purchase event occurred a year ago but is sent to the profile timeline today, it is also retained for 90 days. Both events are stored for a set period of 90 days starting from when they are added to the profile timeline.

Note: If you change a Timeline event type's retention setting, the update applies only to newly created timeline events of this type.

Some notes on how the retention period works for timeline events:

When a timeline event is added to the profile, the retention period is set based on the date it is added or update on the timeline, not the event date itself.
Limits on the number of stored events and retention periods are mutually exclusive. BlueConic cleans up events when a limit of events has been reached, and event data is retained for a period of time as defined in the retention setting.
Retention is based on when an event is imported, inserted, or created in BlueConic.
Cleanup of low-priority and high priority events is done based on the oldest event date.

Timeline event priority levels

Events can be defined as high or low priority. In a standard BlueConic subscription, there is a maximum number of 250 events per profile allowed. Low-priority events have a default retention period of 30 days. High-priority events are constrained by the total number of events and take precedence over low-priority events, which are capped at 50 if there are 200 or more high-priority events.

Learn more about customizing Timeline event priority settings in BlueConic.

Are there any BlueConic Insights that measure Timeline events?

Yes, there are several ways to measure your success and ROI with Timeline Events in BlueConic:

Is there an extra cost to use Timeline events?

By default, there is currently no extra cost to use Timeline events, but events being stored are added to your BlueConic total data storage. If you have a lot of events to store, you may need to buy more data storage to be able to use Timeline events under your current contract. Contact your Customer Success Manager to discuss your data storage needs.