Tiered Events

mParticle collects data from all of your platforms and data connections and uses it to resolve customer identities and stitch together customer profiles. It also makes this data available to be forwarded to downstream systems, and retains it in long-term data stores that allow you to run data replays with help from mParticle Support.

By default, mParticle makes all data available for evaluation. However, many events and the data related to them may not be needed for running data replays or evaluations depending on how you use Audiences or Calculated Attributes. With Tiered Events, you can choose to collect data but not store it, or to collect and store data but not evaluate it.

These configurations help improve performance for all customers, and may provide cost savings for value-based pricing customers.

mParticle provides three event tiers. All three tiers support ingestion and forwarding of data, but provide different levels of support for storage and evaluation:

• Connect: Data is not stored in mParticle, but can be ingested and forwarded. The data is also used for profile enrichment. Because Connect tier events aren’t stored, they won’t be visible in the User Activity view.
• Preserve: Events marked as Preserve are ingested, stored, and forwarded but are not used in real-time evaluations for audiences or calculated attributes. The data is still available for replaying to third party tools, and for backfills of calculated attributes and standard audience creation.
• Personalize: This tier is the default for all events and related data collected as part of an mParticle ingestion. Events are ingested, available for evaluation in audiences and calculated attributes, stored, and forwarded.

The following table can help you decide which tier to apply to data:

You can always change an event tier. If your account uses value-based pricing, you can also change the default event tier for ingested events.

Workflow

To change events from the default Personalize event tier, plan and implement the changes:

1. In Data Master > Catalog, click Download Report to download a CSV file that lists all the events used in calculated attributes and audiences, and shows data volumes for the time range you specify.

   The report shows you approximately how many of each event type have been received from input for the date range you selected. You can use this number, for example, to identify events that you may want to change to another tier, and which will be easy to remove from the calculated attribute or audience definition so that you can change the tier for that event type.

2. Identify the events you don’t plan to store or use for evaluation in audiences or calculated attributes. These are the events you’ll change to Connect. Events that you do plan to store, but don’t need for evaluation can be changed to Preserve.
3. Using the mParticle UI (Data Master > Catalog), set the events you don’t need to evaluate in audiences or calculated attributes to another tier.

Prerequisites

• You must have the Admin and Compliance role to change event tiers for an event type. All other data will behave as if on the Personalize tier.

• Verify that the consequences of changing tiers are acceptable in your environment:

  • Event marked Preserve are never available for real-time evaluation, only for data replay or backfills.
  • Events marked Connect are not available for data replays, backfills or real-time evaluation. These events are not visible in the User Activity
  • Only events, including custom events, screen views, commerce events, and application lifecycle events, can be assigned an event tier. User information can’t be assigned a tier and so is only in the Personalize tier.

Change the event tier

To change the event tier:

1. Navigate to Data Master > Catalog and select the event type such as Custom Events or Screen View.
2. Next to the event, click the Event Tier drop-down and select a new tier.
3. Click Apply.

Change the default event tier

By default, mParticle assigns all event types to the Personalize tier. However, you can change the default assignment to Preserve or Connect if your account uses value-based pricing.

Changing the default tier is helpful. For example, if you create a data plan with many new event types and most of them won’t be needed for real-time evaluations, you could assign them to the Preserve or Connect tier by default.

To change the default event tier for a workspace:

1. In the left-hand navigation of the relevant mParticle workspace, click the org name at the top to display Settings.
2. Click Settings.
3. From the list of workspaces, click a workspace name to display its Edit Workspace page dialog.
4. Open Defaults and use the drop-down in the Event Tiers section to choose a new default tier.
5. Save your changes.

After you set a default tier, all new events of all types seen in mParticle are assigned the new default tier. You can override the default tier assignment of an event type in Data Master > Catalog. For example, you could change the default tier to Connect in the workspace setting and also set the tier for event type MyEvent to Personalize. Then, all new and existing events of type MyEvent are assigned the Personalize tier, while all other new events are given the new default, Connect.

Event Volume Report

The event volume report, accessible from Data Master > Catalog, is a CSV file that lists all the events used in calculated attributes and audiences. It also shows data volumes for the time range you specify.

The Event Volume Report displays an approximate count of each event type ingested from your inputs within a certain date range. You can use these metrics to identify event types to change to a different event tier, or event types to exclude from calculated attributes and audience definitions.

Event Volume Report and value-based pricing

There are differences between the Event Volume Report and your Monthly Credit Usage Report, which is a record of the billable items you are charged for. To learn how billable items are calculated, see Usage metering for value-based pricing (VBP).

The two reports present different views of your data ingestion:

• The Monthly Credit Usage Report provides a retrospective view of the services your account is charged for according to the billing logic documented in Usage metering for value-based pricing.
• The Event Volume Report provides a view of how data is being ingested at the time the report is generated, and should be used to help you select your event tier assignments.

Differences between the Event Volume Report and Monthly Credit Usage Report

Following is a list of differences between the Event Volume Report and Monthly Credit Usage Report:

• The Event Volume Report doesn’t include events added or dropped as a result of Rules, but those events are included in the Credit Usage Report.

• The Event Volume Report displays event tier assignments at the time the report is generated, but the Credit Usage Report displays event tier assignments for events at the time they were ingested and processed. For example, imagine the following scenario:

  • Day 1 of your billing period: you ingest one million events with the Screen View event type in the Connect event tier.
  • Day 5 of your billing period: you change the event tier for Screen View from Connect to Preserve and you ingest another one million events.
  • Day 6 of your billing period: you download your Event Volume Report and see two million Screen View events in the Preserve event tier. However, your Credit Usage Report will show one million events in the Connect tier and one million events in the Preserve tier.
• The Event Volume Report includes automatically generated events like the batch.SystemNotifications, which could include events like ConsentGranted and ConsentDenied. However, automatically generated events are not included in the Monthly Credit Report, because they are not billable items.
• If you download an Event Volume Report before a batch of events is processed, they will not be reflected in the Event Volume Report, but they will be reflected in the Credit Usage Report.

• Events timestamped 72 hours prior to when they are ingested are not be reflected in the Event Volume Report.

  • For example: Imagine that on February 24, 2022 at 11:00 UTC, you ingest an event that is timestamped at February 21, 2022 at 10:00 UTC. An Event Volume Report report created on February 21st will not reflect that event. However, it will be reflected in your Monthly Credit Report.