Data Point

What exactly is considered a data point in Countly? Each of the below metrics affect data points in a Countly deployment.

• Sessions: Each launch of the application or a visitor landing on a web page.
• Events: Optionally triggered custom metrics from the Countly SDKs.
• Views: Page views in web or views in mobile/desktop applications. Most Countly SDKs have a mechanism to enable automatic tracking of views.
• Ratings received: Via Countly Ratings plugin.
• NPS® and surveys response received: Via Countly Survey and NPS plugins.
• Push notifications sent: Each push notification sent from Countly to APNS and/or FCM.
• Push notification actions: A user interaction with a push notification, such as tapping the message, or clicking a button inside a rich push notification.
• Clicks and scrolls within views: For web applications, to visualize click heat maps of views. This has to be enabled in Countly Web SDK.
• Crashes and errors: Each occurrence of a crash in a mobile application or a JavaScript error in a web site.
• Attribution link clicks: Each click to an attribution link generated from Attribution plugin.
• Performance monitoring: Each trace sample in performance monitoring corresponds to a data point. If enabled in the web SDK, page load traces and network traces are automatically captured by the SDK. The mobile SDK automatically captures these duration traces - app_start, app_in_background, app_in_foreground.

This list is updated as new Countly plugins are released.

View

A view is a page view (for web) or screen view (for mobile) that measures how many times tracked pages are viewed by visitors or users (respectively). It is mostly automatically tracked with Countly SDKs. It is one of the fundamental metrics in digital analytics. It is used to calculate many other metrics related to page view, like total and new visitors (or users), bounces, and average time on page.

Event

An event is like a counter. It is used to measure how many times a user triggered an action on any tracking element or page. Unlike a page view, which is automatically generated, an event must be manually implemented. You usually trigger an event when the user takes some kind of action. The action may be clicking on a button, playing a video, swiping a screen, etc. The key is that the user is interacting with your app. Events can be determined by you to track the interactions that are important to your app and goals.

Session

A session is simply a collection of hits, from the same user, grouped together. By default, Countly groups hits together based on activity. In other words, if a user opens an application or visits a website, it counts as a session until they close it. Countly uses 20 minutes of inactivity to separate sessions. When Countly detects that the user/visitor has been inactive for more than 20 minutes, it will terminate the session and start a new one when the user/visitor opens the app or visits the website again.

Previous Period

When viewing any chart, you may see a comparison with 'Previous Period'. This period is calculated on the basis of the time period you have selected, and refers to the period just before the start of your selected time period. If you have selected one month (or week), the previous period will indicate the month (or week) ending the day before the start of your selected period. For example: if you choose to view data for the period of June 16 to June 22 (7 days), the previous period will be June 9 to June 15.

Glossary

In this glossary you will find explanations to abbreviations and other terms you see in articles and the Countly Dashboard. 

A

• Actions performed: Number of actions performed for this app. An action represents a positive interaction of a user to your message.
• Active users: Total number of unique users who initiated sessions. Note that when the API sends event data without a session, the user is not counted as active user. For a more detailed explanation of Events and Sessions, please see Countly Terminology.
• APM / GCM credentials: Credentials that are received either from Apple's or Google's console. This is required for push notifications to work.
• Average NPS: Number of the Average Net Promoter Score for all running NPS surveys using the calculation method covered in the NPS documentation
• Average requests received: Number of write API requests Countly Server receives for each session (includes sessions, session extensions, events, etc).
• Average time spent: Total duration spent using your application divided by total user count.

B

• Bounce: If the user landed on a page/view and exited from the same one without navigating through any other page/view, then it is counted as a bounce.

C

• Crash: A crash is a software failure that causes the program flow to break unexpectedly. This term is usually used in the iOS world.

D

• Data point: Any meaningful fraction of data that can be collected and processed. For a more detailed explanation, please see Countly Terminology.
• Drill: A Countly feature that's used to perform advanced segmentation to your apps.

E

• Event: A custom metric such as number of button clicks, in-app purchase times and amounts, number of times the player finished a game level, etc. For a more detailed explanation, please see Countly Terminology.
• Event count: Total count received for an event key.
• Event duration: When calculated, shows the duration of an event, usually in seconds
• Event sum: Total sum received for an event key.
• Events served: Number of write API requests the Countly Server received for your application.
• Exception: An exception is an event that occurs during the execution of a program and that disrupts the normal flow of the program's instructions. This term is usually used in Java and Android worlds.

F

• Fatal crashes: A crash that causes the application to stop and quit.
• Funnel: A Countly feature that is used to track the goal completion rates of a step-by-step path inside your application.

M

• Messages sent: Total number of messages sent for this application within a selected period of time. Applies to Push Notifications.
• Messaging-enabled users: Number of users who opted in to receive push notifications.

N

• New sessions: Number of times your application is opened by a first-time user.
• New users: Number of first-time users.
• Non-fatal crashes: A crash that does not stop the application but allows it to run after a crash is encountered.

P

• Previous period: Previous period denotes the period just prior to the selected time period and of the same duration. For more details, please refer to the Countly Terminology document.
• Production users: Users who are actively using your application downloaded from an appstore.

R

• Response Rate: Percentage of the Number of Responses over Total Shown. Applies to Feedback features like Surveys, NPS®, and Ratings.
• Returning users: Number of users that have used your application at least one time before. It's simply calculated by subtracting new users from total users for the time period chosen.
• Running Surveys: Total number of active surveys.

S

• Segmentation: Secondary key to slice the data for an event. Can be anything like an event key and it is used to categorize the event data. An example can be using app_version and country segmentations for an in_app_purchase event. This way, one can compare in_app_purchase count for different app_versions and countries of the user.
• Session: Each launch of the application or a visitor landing on a web page. For a more detailed explanation, please see Countly Terminology.
• Session frequency: Indicator of how frequently users open your application. Usage is distributed into one of the ranges below:
  • 1-24 hours
  • 1 day
  • 2 days
  • 3 days
  • 4 days
  • 5 days
  • 6 days
  • 7 days
  • 8-14 days
  • 15-30 days
  • 30+ days

T

• Test users: Test users who have been testing your application. Applies to Push Notifications.
• Time spent: Total time spent inside the application for a given time period.
• Total occurrences: Number of repetitions of a crash or group of crashes.
• Total responses: Total number of the ratings given by each individual user who responded to an active survey. If a user responds to more than one survey, (i.e. gives scores 2 times for 2 active surveys), this is counted as 2 instances on Total Responses.
• Total sessions: Number of times your application is opened.
• Total users: Number of unique users or devices your application is used from.

U

• Unique crashes: Number of crashes that happen uniquely. In this case, only the first occurrence of a crash type is recorded.
• Unique sessions: Number of times your application is opened from a unique device.
• Unresolved crashes: Crashes that are not marked as "Resolved" are unresolved crashes.
• User loyalty: Indicator of how many previous sessions the users had. The number of users is distributed into one of the ranges below:
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3-5
  • 6-9
  • 10-19
  • 20-49
  • 50-99
  • 100-499
  • Greater than 500

V

• View: Page views on web or views in mobile/desktop applications. Most Countly SDKs have a mechanism to enable automatic tracking of views. For a more detailed explanation, please see Countly Terminology.