Date range in People segment overwriting Events date range

[JaniceAk]

Hi all, there's something I've noticed within segments that doesn't correspond with the logic in which containers are supposed to be interpreted within Segments...wondering if anyone has insight...

When I create a segment at the "People" level, and within that segment I define events within a specific date range (i.e. People who have had events from x to y date) ...when I use it as a filter over any metric to look at events for those People after the segment date range, it only filters my event results by the date range within the Event container within the People segment, and NOT the date range of the panel. See image attached.

From my understanding, creating a People segment with any criteria (event or session) and using it in workspace will only filter events by People who met that criteria, not necessarily the actual event criteria used in the segment. What is the explanation for this? Is there a workaround? This is preventing me from evaluating events beyond what's been defined for the People in the segment.

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

It's like this in Adobe Analytics too... it didn't use to be... before Adobe introduced the "Make date range components relative to panel calendar" the order of operations use to be:

Run the Segment first, then apply the panel contraint

Now, the panel date is run in the segment (regardless of being relative) first... so the date range inside the segment supersedes the panel range

This has made it impossible to get some data back... like "get me all users who have ever purchased a subscription" then showing how many of those users are active this month....

It's frustrating... but I am still trying to work on the Adobe folks to get a happy medium between relative dates and looking at all time data or date ranges inside the segment; so that we can get what we need.

[JaniceAk]

Got it--so segment date range even at a People level, overrides the panel. 

This is definitely a blocker especially in use cases of understanding pre & post behavior. Do you think there's a way to apply date range within a derived field instead to segment people, to avoid the conflicting panel/segment date ranges in actual workspace?

Hoping Adobe implements a change, or new solution for this soon. Thanks for your information!

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I don't have CJA (or the people metric/scope), but I have tried everything I can think of to get something that worked like before... with no luck...

I was talking to a product person at Adobe about some new features and mentioned offhand about how the way Visitor segments changed, he seemed unaware... so I expanded what I was saying a bit, and hopefully he is going to look into it... they want me to test out some scenarios on the new feature they are working on anyway, so I will follow up with him on the segment issue....

Hopefully this will get some traction.