Flows

The paths profiles actually take. Pick a start point and see what happens next, or what led there, live and sampled for speed, or saved as an exact fixed-period report.

What a flow shows

A flow is every path profiles take from a chosen start point, drawn as one branching picture. Each column is a step away from the start, each node is what happened at that step (a view, a custom event, a session marker, a survey, a push, a crash), and the width of each band is how many times that route was traveled.

Start points come in nine kinds: sessions, views, custom events, surveys, NPS, journeys, ratings, push, and crashes, either one specific item or "any" of a kind. Counts are occurrences, not profiles: a route traveled twice by one profile adds two.

Small branches beyond the shown ones fold into an Other node, and paths that stop feed the drop-off. The picture answers the question lists cannot: not "how many did X" but "what did they do around X".

Explore vs Reports

The two tabs are the same idea at two levels of commitment.

Explore is live. Every change to the start point, direction, steps, or window recomputes on the spot. To stay fast on large projects the server computes from a sample of profiles and scales the totals up; the amber Sampled badge says by how much, and its tooltip explains the estimate. An exploration that runs long finishes in the background and is saved for you as a private report, so nothing is lost.

Reports are exact. A report fixes the definition and the period, computes once from all profiles, and caches the result, with event-level segmentation on the anchor and an audience filter. Reports carry visibility (private, shared, global), re-run on demand for the latest, and the reports list exports to a file.

Rule of thumb: explore to find the story, save a report to state it.

Use Cases

See what happens after a moment

See what profiles do right after a moment you care about.

1. Pick the moment as the start point: a view, a custom event, or "any" of a kind.
2. Keep direction on Forward and read the first column after the start. That is the next step profiles actually take, ranked.
3. Add steps at the chart's edge to follow the trail further, and hover the Other node to see the smaller alternatives it holds.
4. Read Top paths for the same answer as routes: the most-traveled full sequences, each with its share and drop-off.

Find what led profiles here

Find out how profiles arrive at a moment, a purchase, a crash, an exit.

1. Set the start point to the destination: the purchase event, the crash, the view.
2. Flip direction to Backward. The columns now grow to the left: the step before, and the one before that.
3. Use Both to see the full neighborhood, what led in and what followed.
4. Right-click any interesting node and pick Set as start point to re-anchor the flow there, so you can walk the product one hop at a time.

Cut the noise

Real paths are full of wallpaper: a heartbeat event, a home view everyone bounces through. Flows can ignore them without losing the people.

1. Open Advanced and add the noisy events to Exclude events. They vanish from every path and steps bridge across them: A to X to B reads as A to B. The profiles still count; only the event is ignored.
2. Add an Audience filter to ask the same question of one group: property conditions, a cohort, a profile group.
3. Re-read the flow. With the wallpaper gone, the real transitions and their drop-offs stand out.

Make it exact and share it

Exploration is sampled. Its link opens the same exploration: send it, reload, or come back to it with Back. When a flow becomes an answer worth keeping, make it a report.

1. In Explore, press Save as report, or build one from scratch with Create report on the Reports tab.
2. The wizard fixes the definition: the anchor event with optional segmentation, the flow shape, the audience, the period.
3. Pick visibility: private, shared with specific members or groups, or global.
4. The report computes once, exactly, from all profiles, and caches. Re-run any time for the latest.

FAQs

Why do Explore and my saved report disagree?

Explore is sampled and scaled for speed; the report computed exactly. The report is the number to quote. Direction, window, and exclusions must also match.

Why is an event I know happens missing from the flow?

Small branches fold into Other once the per-step cap is reached, and excluded events are bridged over. Hover the Other node to see the branches it holds, or anchor the flow closer to that event.

Times or profiles?

Times. Every traversal counts, so a loop one profile walks daily keeps adding. For distinct profiles behind a step, ask Drill.

What happens when an exploration takes too long?

It finishes in the background and lands as a private report with the same definition, so the work is never lost.

Who can see my report?

Its visibility: private is yours, shared names members or groups, global is everyone with flows access. An exploration has no visibility of its own: anyone you send its link to opens it in the same project, if they can open Flows there.

Can I start a flow from a push or a crash?

Yes. Any of the nine kinds anchors a flow, one specific item or the whole kind at once.