Unspecified in Breakdowns

[V_Sirish_Kaushik]

I was going through two articles to understand 'unspecified' line item in conversion variable reports when breakdown one dimension by other for a particular success event.

Question: When we breakdown an evar1 (defined during success event hit) with other evar2 which is not defined in the hit where success event takes place (but defined before, and not yet expired), do we get the persisted value of evar2 as line item or unspecified for evar1->evar2 breakdown.

In the following article , 

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/technotes/unspecified.html?lang=en

point 3, states

• Breakdown reports where only one variable fired: When you apply a breakdown to a variable, every instance of that variable must be accounted for. If the second variable was not seen or if it persisted from a previous hit, the dimension item is “Unspecified”.

And this article,

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/analyze/reports-analytics/customize-reports/subrel...

towards the end, it states 

In essence, subrelations follow these steps to populate your report:

• Isolate the image requests containing the success event(s) you are viewing in the report.
• Return the persisted values from each conversion variable used in the subrelation.
• Organize the values based on the order of subrelation. If a variable does not have a persisted value (such as if an eVar was never defined or expired), it will be bucketed under ‘None’.

Confused a bit, what happens when the value persists. Does it come as unspecified or none or persisted value.

[V_Sirish_Kaushik]

I am aware Reports and Analytics will soon be sunset, but hoping the backend logic behind tackling the above use case might still remain same. If it has changed, would be glad to know.

[leocwlau · Accepted solution]

It will be persisted values as illustrated in the second URL you provided, given both evar are not expired yet. This is a consistent logic on how evar persistency across all Adobe Analytics products, no matter the sunsetting Reports and Analytics, or the current standard of Analysis Workspace, and even if you are using Data Warehouse to export data.

[V_Sirish_Kaushik]

Thank you for the help. got it. 
But one thing i am still confused about is what the first URL is saying, still dont understand why it is saying if value persists it will be Unspecified. 

• Breakdown reports where only one variable fired: When you apply a breakdown to a variable, every instance of that variable must be accounted for. If the second variable was not seen or if it persisted from a previous hit, the dimension item is “Unspecified”.
  

[leocwlau]

I failed to understand the meaning of this one. I feel the key is on the highlighted part and wondering if it refers to the upper-level (first) variable.

• Breakdown reports where only one variable fired: When you apply a breakdown to a variable, every instance of that variable must be accounted for. If the second variable was not seen or if it persisted from a previous hit, the dimension item is “Unspecified”

Let's see if others have any input on this one.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Honestly, that statement makes no sense to me either... if I am reading that correctly, then Workspaces definitely don't work like that!

This may be an old documentation (maybe based on Reports... maybe it had this behaviour)? Or maybe it's just wrong.... I will ask one of my contacts at Adobe (who handles documentation) to review that and see if it's in need of an update....

However, what I see in my data, looking at "Unspecified UTM" broken down by our "Internal ITM" eVars... I can clearly see:

Unspecified

       Unspecified

       Value 1

       Value 2

       ....

So all the "eVar2" that were set, even when eVar1 was not; do in fact show in the Workspace breakdown.

[Gigazelle]

Thanks for pointing this out!

For the bullet point in question, I believe the correct statement is: 

• Breakdown reports where only one dimension is present: When you apply a breakdown to a dimension, every occurrence of that dimension must be accounted for. If the breakdown dimension does not have a set or persisted value, the dimension item is "Unspecified".

Can you all confirm that is the behavior that you expect as well? I'll give this page a good review to make sure that it's up to date with all of our current terminology, so if there's any additional improvements that you'd like to see made to the page, I can include them.

[leocwlau]

Indeed, this sounds more logical and expected.