Tutorial Overview
Hello and welcome to Mixpanel for Developers Tutorial.
This tutorial is going to consist of a couple of modules designed to help everyone understand events and properties in Mixpanel, help developers understand the Data Type it supports and how to send events to Mixpanel and enrich user data that have been documented in your Tracking Plan.
We will also explore Mixpanel’s ID management Solution for Product Managers and Analysts to identify visitors as they go from an anonymous state to a known state and even when visitors use different devices.
Mixpanel Data Model
Mixpanel data is stored and isolated within a project. Mixpanel recommends tracking 1 product with multiple platforms (mobile, web, etc.) into one project, but create separate projects for development and production.
There may be other factors where implementing separate projects is required, but do note that querying data across projects is not possible. Mixpanel supports a few different categories of data that can be used for analysis: events, user profiles, group profiles, and lookup tables. In data warehouse terminology, events make up the fact table while user profiles, group profiles, and lookup tables are dimension tables.
Mixpanel Data Model (opens in a new tab)
Mixpanel Property Types
Properties are attributes that help you define the specifics of an Event or a User. Mixpanel has many Properties defined in its Data Model.
| Property Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Event Properties | Event Properties describes the events that are tracked within your product. Learn more about Event Properties (opens in a new tab) |
| Super Properties | Super Properties are a type of Event Property that you can initialise to automatically attach to every subsequent Event you’re tracking at client side. Learn more about Super Properties (opens in a new tab) |
| User Profile Properties | User Profile Properties describe your users (they typically store current demographical information). User profiles are joined to events on event.distinct_id = user_profile.distinct_id Learn more about User Profile Properties (opens in a new tab) |
| Group Profile Properties | Group Profile Properties describe group level information (similar to User Profiles Properties at user level). With Mixpanel’s Group Analytics, multiple users can be grouped and behavioural data analysed at a customised group level (such as company, account). Group profiles are joined to events on your chosen group key. For example, if you create a new group key for company_id your events will be joined on event.company_id = group_profile.company_id. Learn more about Group Analytics (opens in a new tab) and Group Profile Properties (opens in a new tab) |
| Lookup Tables | Lookup Tables allow you to dynamically extend additional properties mapped to an exiting Event or User Property. For example, if you create a lookup table for "Songs" (with additional properties like hash_tags, top_10, all_time_favorite) and specify the mapped event property as song_id; you can use these additional properties when doing filtering or breakdowns for events that has song_id as an event property. Learn more about Lookup Tables (opens in a new tab) |
| Default Properties | Default Properties (for Events and User Profiles) are collected and populated with values automatically in Mixpanel. This can happen upon data ingestion or when using certain Mixpanel client-side SDKs. Typically, they have a dollar sign ($) or “mp_” as prefix to distinguish them from normal properties. Learn more about Default Properties (opens in a new tab) |
| Reserved Properties | Mixpanel reserves certain property names (for Events and User Profiles) for special use cases, and these may or may not be automatically populated with values. The purpose of these Reserved Properties are for processing (eg time) or specific system features (cohort exports). Examples: time, phone, created. Learn more about reserved properties for Events (opens in a new tab) and User Profiles (opens in a new tab) |