Sending Events in Group Analytics: User Profile Attachment Required?
in group analytics, can I send event only for the group or it must be attached to a user profile?
in group analytics, can I send event only for the group or it must be attached to a user profile?
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You can send events that are only associated to a group, but they will still have a distinct_id (user identifier) at ingestion time.From the docs: - Group Analytics works by adding a group key (e.g. company_id) and group id (e.g. acme_123) as event properties; any event that has the group key property will be attributed to that group. [Group Analytics; Implementation – tracking events]
- It does not require that the user have a user profile or that the group be stored on the user profile; in fact, the FAQ explicitly notes that having the group key on a user profile does not attribute that user’s events to the group—only the event property matters. [Group FAQ]So: - Every event still has a distinct_id (that’s how Mixpanel ingests events), but
- For group-level analysis, the only requirement is that the event includes the group key property; it does not need to be “attached” to a user profile or have group info on the profile.
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but how do i create report of all the school courses and for each course it's activity? how do i see there courses with no activity at all?
?
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Mixpanel’s docs describe how to model and attribute events to groups (like “courses”), but they do not fully describe a built‑in way to list all groups including those with zero events. I’ll outline what is clearly supported, and where the docs are silent.
1. Model “course” as a Group
1. In Project Settings → Group Keys, add a group key, e.g. course_id. [Group Analytics impl]
2. For every event that should count as “activity on a course”, include:
- course_id: "<course identifier> " as an event property. [Group Analytics; Tracking events for a group]Example (Python SDK): LBKSmp.track('user_123', 'Lesson Viewed', { 'course_id': 'course_42', 'lesson_id': 'lesson_7' })LBKSAny event with course_id will then be attributable to that course group.
2. See “each course and its activity”
Once course_id is a group key and is present on events: - In reports (e.g. Insights), you can change the identifier from Users to your group key (e.g. Courses) so metrics aggregate per course instead of per user. [Group Analytics]
- You can open a Group Profile for a specific course to see its event activity feed and properties. [Group Analytics]This lets you answer “for each course, what is its activity?” for courses that have at least one attributed event.
3. Courses with no activity
This is where the docs are limited: - Mixpanel only shows groups whose events contain the group key; events missing the group key are not in any group. [Group FAQ]
- The docs do not explicitly describe a UI report that lists all group profiles including those with zero events, nor a way to join an external “master list of courses” to Mixpanel’s event data.What you can do, based on the docs: - Create Group Profiles for courses (via the Groups APIs/SDKs) even if they have no events yet, by setting group properties for each course_id. [Python SDK group_set; Go SDK GroupSet; Node.js groups.set]
- Those profiles will exist in Mixpanel, but the docs do not clearly state whether there is a standard report that surfaces “all groups including those with zero events” vs. only those with activity.Because of that, I cannot confidently say, from the provided docs alone, that you can build a single in‑product report that: - Lists every course (from a master list), and
- Shows zero for those with no events.You can: - Analyze active courses by using course_id as the group identifier in reports.
- Inspect individual course group profiles (including ones you created via group_set() even before they have events).If you need a guaranteed “all courses including zero‑activity ones” table, you may need to combine Mixpanel data with your own course catalog outside Mixpanel (e.g. via export), but the knowledge sources here do not document that workflow.
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