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 your analysis aligns with what is displayed on the Optimizely Experiment Results page. For information, see How Optimizely Experimentation counts conversions.

Event content

Your event data includes (but is not limited to) the following:

Event timestamp (UTC, UNIX epoch milliseconds).
Visitor ID.
Event (entity) ID and event name.
User attributes.
Event tags.
Additional visitor and event metadata, such as 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 information, refer to the Experimentation Analytics October 2023 release notes.

For the complete field reference, 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 useful utility for inspecting file contents and schemas.

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

Check for this file at regular intervals. When it is present, you can safely begin importing the daily partition data.

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

Field	Type	Description
`uuid`	string (GUID)	Event UUID generated by the client. Used to deduplicate events.
`timestamp`	long (time millis)	Event timestamp in milliseconds (in UTC).
`process_timestamp`	long (time millis)	Timestamp in milliseconds set by the server. Indicates when the event was processed by the server (in UTC).
`visitor_id`	string	The user or visitor identifier set by the client.
`session_id` **	string	Unique session ID. Optimizely no longer automatically generates the `session_id` as of October 9, 2023.
`account_id`	string	Account identifier.
`campaign_id`	string	Campaign ID.
`experiment_id`	string	Experiment ID. Set to NULL if the user is evaluated for the experiment and fails the audience condition.
`variation_id`	string	Unique variation ID. Set to NULL if the user is evaluated for the experiment and fails the audience condition.
`attributes`	array<id:string, name:string, type:string, value:string>	An array of user attributes (also known as segments).
`user_ip`	string	User IP address.
`user_agent`	string	User-agent.
`referrer`	string	Client referrer (the page from which the event was sent).
`is_holdback`	boolean	A boolean indicating if the visitor is bucketed into the experiment based on the traffic allocation settings. If set to `true`, the user was excluded from the experiment.
`revision`	string	Client snippet revision
`client_engine`	string	Client engine string (for example, 'js' or 'node-sdk').
`client_version`	string	Client version
`activation_id`	string	The `activationTimeStamp` is only available for Web Experimentation products (including Performance Edge). Used to calculate bounce and exit metrics.
`anonymize_ip`	Boolean	When set to `true`, the last octet of the IP address is removed before storage. When `false`, the full IP address is stored. This setting is most relevant if your implementation runs in a web browser or mobile app and must comply with data privacy regulations. This flag is independent of the IP anonymization setting in Account and Project settings. If this flag is `true`, IP-based filtering does not work correctly, because anonymization occurs before IP filters are applied.

** 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.

Field	Type	Description
`uuid`	string (GUID)	Event UUID generated by the client. Used to deduplicate events.
`timestamp`	long (time millis)	Event timestamp in milliseconds (in UTC).
`process_timestamp`	long (time millis)	Timestamp in milliseconds set by the server. Indicates when the event was processed by the server (in UTC).
`visitor_id`	string	User identifier set by the client.
`session_id` **	string	Unique session ID. Optimizely no longer automatically generates the `session_id` as of October 9, 2023.
`account_id`	string	Unique account identifier.
`experiments` **	array<campaign_id:string, experiment_id:string, variation_id:string, is_holdback:boolean>	An array of the campaigns, experiments, and variations the event is attributed to. Optimizely no longer automatically generates the `experiments` field as of October 9, 2023.
`properties`	map <key:string, value:string>	Key-value pairs that define properties of the event. The value must be a string.
`entity_id`	string	Event entity identifier.
`attributes`	array<id:string, name:string, type:string, value:string>	An array of user attributes (also known as segments).
`user_ip`	string	User IP address.
`user_agent`	string	User-agent.
`referrer`	string	Client referrer (the page from which the event was sent).
`event_type`	string	Event type (click, pageview, custom, or client_activation).
`event_name`	string	Human-readable event name from the client, or `multi-event` when multiple events are batched.
`revenue`	long	Revenue (in cents).
`project_id`	string	(Optional) Only pass `project_id` if you are using the Optimizely Recommendations product.
`value`	double	The value used to compute value or numeric metrics.
`quantity`	long	Quantity metric value.
`tags`	map<key:string,value:string>	Key-value pairs of event tags.
`revision`	string	Client snippet revision.
`client_engine`	string	Client engine string (for example, 'node-sdk').
`client_version`	string	Client version.
`activation_id`	string	The `activationTimeStamp` is only available for Web Experimentation products (including Performance Edge). Used to calculate bounce and exit metrics.
`anonymize_ip`	Boolean	When set to `true`, the last octet of the IP address is removed before storage. When `false`, the full IP address is stored. This setting is most relevant if your implementation runs in a web browser or mobile app and must comply with data privacy regulations. This flag is independent of the IP anonymization setting in Account and Project settings. If this flag is `true`, IP-based filtering does not work correctly, because anonymization occurs before IP filters are applied.

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