Use cases for using Date Ranges in Segments

[Kanno_Kuramoto]

For the life of me, I cannot think of a use case where Date Ranges (purple) are useful in a segment. I don't mean the (orange) dimensions like Day or Month. Would love to hear any ways in which others have used them. 

And if not, I suggest removing them from the Segment Creator UI, as users often get confused.

[Andrey_Osadchuk]

Hey Kanno,

Consider a scenario when you want to have a metric that returns number of visits for the last 7 days. This requires a metric with a segment. The metric will work regardless of what date range is set in the panel. 

A step forward would be to have a metric that returns by how much the traffic changed last week vs a prior week (MoM, YoY, etc.)

Best wishes,
Andrey Osadchuk | Inspect Launch Implementation, Automate Classifications & Data Sources, Essential Bookmarks

[jeff_bloomer]

@Kanno_Kuramoto,
Honestly, it really all comes down to how granular you want to have your components in your report.  However, having a date range in a segment also makes it immediately handy.  For instance, say you have it set to last week.  Regardless of the date range set in your report, the segment you just used just applied an automatic date range along with an additional filter without you flipping any additional filters.  You can think of segments as your utility belt of shortcuts.  In Adobe Analytics Workspace, you don't get macros, so instead, you can use Segments and calculated metrics as your alternative.  Make sense?

[Kanno_Kuramoto · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your responses, @jeff_bloomer and @Andrey_Osadchuk . I understand how Date Ranges can by used in Segments. However, I have not encountered any real world situations where I've seen them being useful. Especially since applying a segment in one freeform table will change the whole panel's date applied date range, not to mention the ambiguous naming, their use within segments generally leads to end user confusion. To your example, I typically recommend users apply the dynamic date range directly to their table without wrapping it in a segment.

This has been my experience, however I would love to hear of any ingenious applications where people have used Date Ranges in Segments. 

[emwolleat]

I have a current scenario for you. On day one of our fiscal year, we had a data anomalies where our UV number is wrong (so in any reports that use this metric, we have to add it manually in our reports). We then had the next 83 days where we're using a special metric for UV because of another data issue. Our issue was then fixed and we could use the out of the box UV metric. I'd like to create a calculated metric for UV where, for a our fiscal year, a user could use one metric that includes all 3 of the above scenarios. For example, I have a date range that is mixed of all 3 scenarios above, I can then use this new UV metric and know that I don't have to do any special calculations later to make sure everything is correct. Essentially my calculated metric would be something like: FY23 UV metric = (8/29/2022=9876543) + (date between 8/30/2022 & 11/20/2022 uv w/anomalies fix metric) + (date between 11/21/2022 & 9/3/2023 uv metric)

[novice_mg]

i am also looking for something similar , i created calculated metric due to implemetation issue , now issue is fixed because of which my calulated metric is not giving correct number , it would be great if metric can be created based on date ranges and mereged. to single metric