Track Properties
Properties (attributes) are an excellent way of getting to know your users. They can contain user information and state.
All properties can be used to search, filter and sort your users in Contacts. The more you track, the better you can understand your users.
How many different custom properties can I track?
Take some time to think about the name you give to your properties. You can name them anything you like, but it's best to use a clear, concise name.
Each GoSquared project can track up to 1000 custom properties. Above this limit, properties with new names will be ignored.
Reserved property names
GoSquared defines a list of common properties that are useful to track:
| Name | Description | Type | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
email | The email address and unique identifier of this user. | String | email@example.com |
name | The full name of the user (automatically derived from first_name and last_name if this isn't set). | String | Simon Tabor |
first_name | First name, concatenated with last_name. | String | Simon |
last_name | Last name, concatenated with first_name. | String | Tabor |
username | The username for this person. | String | simontabor |
description | A short description for the user. Defaults to their Twitter bio if we can find it. | String | Simon is a developer at GoSquared |
avatar | The absolute URL of the avatar for this person. Defaults to the gravatar for email. | String | https://profile-img.com/simon.png |
phone | The phone number for this person. | String | +447901229693 |
created_at | Set the date that the user first signed up for your service – ISO 8601 timestamp. | String | 2016-06-07T15:44:20Z |
id | An alternate option for the unique identifier of this user. | String | 253552 |
company | An object containing company details (name, size etc). | Object | { "name": "GoSquared" } |
company_name | The name of the company the user works at. | String | GoSquared |
company_size | The size of the company. | Number | 12 |
company_industry | The industry of the company. | String | Analytics |
company_position | The position of this user within the company. | String | Developer |
custom | An object of any other properties (custom properties) | Object | { "plan": "pro" } |
Some of these special properties are used by GoSquared to provide powerful functionality. For example, email is used to look up additional information about an individual from publicly available sources.
Custom properties
Besides special properties, you can track any property of any data type and GoSquared will make that data searchable, sortable and filterable. Place your custom properties under the custom property.
Contacts needs to know about what kind of data each custom property contains – whether the property is text, a number, or a date etc. Therefore, when you track a custom property, it is automatically assigned a “type” based on the value you send. Contacts can then make sure the data is searched, sorted and filtered in the correct way for that data. Possible types are Text, Number, Date, Boolean and Null.
For example, if you send a subscription_created property with a value like 2015-03-03T15:00:00+00:00, it will be assigned the date type. Alternatively, if you send a subscription_value property with a value like 49.99, it will be assigned the number type. Date detection is fairly lenient, so long as it resembles at least a portion of an ISO 8601 string.
Contacts will always try its best to figure out the most appropriate type for your custom properties. Sometimes it’s not always possible to get it exactly right, such as if you send a numeric Unix timestamp and want it treated as a date. In those cases, you can manually correct the property type by heading to Settings > Current Project > Contacts.
If you know the ID of the visitor, it is safer to use the Identify function as it will ensure that the ID is properly set.
You can set properties on unidentified visitors and they'll be merged into the identified profile as soon as they become identified.
Usage
_gs('properties', {
name: 'Example User',
email: 'email@example.com',
// all custom props go in the "custom" object
custom: {
stringy_thing: 'thingy', // string type
floaty_thing: 5.0, // numeric type
integery_thing: 23 // numeric type
}
});