Data specification

Experimentation Events Export gives you access to the following data:

• Decision events (also known as impressions) – Special events fired when Optimizely Experimentation "decides" that a visitor is bucketed into a certain experiment and variation pair.
  • Decision events in Optimizely Feature Experimentation.
  • Decision events in Optimizely Web Experimentation.
• Conversion events (also known as events) – Other events that are fired when a visitor "converts" to a desirable action, such as a click, page view, or purchase.
  • Conversion events in Optimizely Feature Experimentation.
  • Conversion events in Optimizely Web Experimentation.

Your export contains the same decision and conversion event data that Optimizely uses to display your experiment results, or metrics, on the Experimentation Results page. This means you can correlate your analysis with The Optimizely Results page. For information, see How Optimizely Experimentation counts conversions.

Event content

Your event data sent by the Optimizely client or Event API contains the following (but not limited to):

• Event timestamp (time zone is in UTC. The format is UNIX epoch milliseconds).
• Visitor ID.
• Event (entity) ID and event name.
• User attributes.
• Event tags.
• Miscellaneous visitor and event metadata (user-agent).
• Server process timestamp (time zone is in UTC. The format is UNIX epoch milliseconds).

🚧

Important

Optimizely no longer automatically generates the session_id field for decision events and experiments and session_id fields for conversion events as of October 9, 2023.

For more information, refer to the Experimentation Analytics October 2023 release notes.

For the full reference of the event data, see the schema section.

Event data transformation

Optimizely pre-processes the data in the Experimentation Events Export to ensure accuracy, consistency, and usability for analysis. As part of this process, certain transformations may be applied to standardize event attributes, remove inconsistencies, and prevent data issues. The following transformations may be applied to the data:

• Remove duplicate events – Deduplicates events based on uuid.
• Populate missing event names – Sets event_name to entity_id if event_name is blank.
• Filter out incomplete conversions – Removes conversions unless at least one of the following conditions is met: entity_id is populated, revenue is populated, value is populated, or event_type is client_activation.
• Replace oversized values – Substitutes event_name or experiment_id if the original value exceeds size limits.

Access and inspect Experimentation Events Export data

The data is stored in Parquet-formatted file parts. The number of file parts fluctuates and depends on the overall experiment record volume. parquet-tool is a handy tool for inspecting the file content and schema.

The data is encrypted using AWS-KMS. To access the data, you need one of the following clients:

• AWS CLI version 1.11.108 or later.
• The AWS SDK released after May 2016.

AWS S3 Partitioning

Your event data is exported in the following S3 partitions:

Decisions – s3://optimizely-events-data/v1/account_id=<account_id>/type=decisions/date={YYYY-MM-DD}/experiment=<experiment_id>

Conversions – s3://optimizely-events-data/v1/account_id=<account_id>/type=events/date={YYYY-MM-DD}/event=<event_name>

Legend

• optimizely-events-data – S3 bucket name.
• account_id – Your unique account identifier.
• date – The data creation date.
• experiment_id – Unique experiment identifier (used for the decisions partition).
• event_name – Event (entity) identifier (used for the conversions partition).

Status file

The daily partition files are ready for import when the _SUCCESS file is available at:

Decisions – s3://optimizely-events-data/v1/account_id={account_id}/type=decisions/date={YYYY-MM-DD}/_SUCCESS

Conversions (Events) –s3://optimizely-events-data/v1/account_id={account_id}/type=events/date={YYYY-MM-DD}/_SUCCESS

You should check for this file at regular intervals. It is safe to start importing the daily partition data if it is present.

File structure

The Experimentation Events Export has the following file structure:

• Decisions – All visitor bucketing information for experiments.
  • Experiment
    • Day
• Events – (Conversions) All events tracked, such as click, hover, or anything else that might be configured.
  • Event
    • Day

Schema

Decisions

Each row represents a single decision event.

🚧

Important

Optimizely no longer automatically generates the session ID field as of October 9, 2023. For more information, refer to the Experimentation Analytics October 2023 release notes.

** Optimizely no longer automatically generates the session ID as of October 9, 2023. See the Experimentation Analytics October 2023 release notes

Conversions

Each row represents a single conversion event.

🚧

Important

Optimizely no longer automatically generates the session ID and experiments fields as of October 9, 2023. See the Experimentation Analytics October 2023 release notes.

** Optimizely no longer automatically generates the session ID and experiments fields as of October 9, 2023. See the Experimentation Analytics October 2023 release notes.