Introduction to Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a web and mobile analytics platform that helps businesses track and analyze user interactions with their digital products. Ex Libris will use Mixpanel to receive anonymous real-time data about user behavior in Primo discovery. This will allow libraries to make data-driven decisions and improve user engagement and retention by using robust Mixpanel capabilities like understanding the user journey, identifying pain points and drop-off points, locating the access points to Primo and more.
Primo usage data is collected by Ex Libris and anonymously provided to Mixpanel. Ex Libris does not share any personal data with Mixpanel or make personal data accessible to Mixpanel in any way.
Even though Mixpanel will not process any personal data, it is important to note that Ex Libris' customers make the decision to use Mixpanel. Through the Primo configuration, Ex Libris’ customers can set whether events will be sent to Mixpanel or not.
Data Model Used in Mixpanel
Mixpanel's data model is built on the following key concepts:
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Events—An event is a data point representing an interaction between a user and your Primo VE interface. Events can be a wide range of interactions—for example, search action, using a facet, navigating a menu, etc. For more details, see .
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Users—A user is a specific individual who completed an interaction with your Primo VE interface. Because each user is unique, Mixpanel tracks which users completed which events and joins the two distinct data points. For more details, see.
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Properties—Properties are attributes that help you define the specifics of an Event or a User. An Event Property describes an event. For example, a property can be a facet type for a facet usage event. For more details, see .
Overview of the Mixpanel Process
All Events and Properties (excluding personal data) are sent to Mixpanel from our servers in an encrypted manner. This approach allows us to fully control the data sent to Mixpanel, enabling us to transfer only the relevant data to Mixpanel. Customers can set whether events will be sent to Mixpanel through Primo configuration.
What is Sent to Mixpanel?
The Primo VE server will send to Mixpanel the following customer user data that is included in every Event, subject to updates based on meetings with customer focus groups:
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User ID—The User ID will be anonymized as follows:
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The user ID is hashed with a one-way encryption function for signed-in users, ensuring that the encrypted IDs cannot be reversed or sent back to the Primo VE server in the original, unencrypted form. As a result, Mixpanel cannot connect the information it has received to a particular user. This encrypted ID is essential to present the user journey and calculate user retention in Mixpanel.
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Guest users will receive a random, unique ID in every session, which is not connected to any personal data of the user.
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Session ID—a randomly generated number that will be created each time a user starts the session. The Session ID expires when the session ends.
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User group—indicates the high-level group of the user (such as Graduate, Faculty, Staff, etc.).This will enable the library to find patterns based on user groups.
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On campus—whether the user is accessing Primo VE in or outside the library.
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User country—based on the end user’s IP. This is calculated in Primo VE server, and only the name of the user’s country is sent to Mixpanel.
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Institution Code—Alma Institution Code, i.e., a code assigned to each institution, will be present in every event. This aims to identify all the events tracked by the user base of a particular institution. Each institution can access and analyze its Events and Properties data.
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OS & browser details—This information includes the user’s browser type, operating system, and screen resolution. This information is not considered to be personal data.
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Referrals—Referrer data will help understand the source(s) that lead users to Primo VE. For example, Primo VE users may come from the Library Portal, Libguides, Google Scholar, LMS systems and more.
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Additional properties related to an event—
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There are general properties relevant to all events, like the page name.
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Each event has specific properties. For instance, a Search Event will contain search-related information like the Search Term, Number of Results, Search Type, and Search Scope.
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Data Storage Locations
We have two data storage locations for Mixpanel: the EU (in the Netherlands) and North America (NA). We plan to store EU customers' data at the EU location and all other customers' data at the NA location.
Mixpanel Terminology
The following table lists the most commonly used terms in Mixpanel.
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
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Board |
A Board is a collection of reports, text, images or videos that allows you to view all your most important metrics at a glance. Insights, Flows, Funnels, and Retention reports can be added to a board to track those metrics both regularly and simultaneously. |
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Cohorts |
A cohort is a group of users who share a certain set of properties or have performed a particular combination or frequency of events. You can create a cohort on the Users page by generating filtering criteria. Once a cohort is created, you can save it and use it to group and filter data in other Mixpanel reports. |
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Data View |
Data Views allow you to manage data access for a group of users within a single Mixpanel project. Project Owners and Admins can create and edit Data Views and determine access for privacy and productivity purposes. Each team can have its own Data View to filter relevant information for its team. This is useful for consortia. |
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Events |
Events are the core of Mixpanel’s Data Model. All events should have an Event Name, a Timestamp indicating when that event occurred, and a Distinct ID (Mixpanel’s identifier for a user) to identify all events belonging to the same user. Events can optionally have a set of properties that describe them in more detail.
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Flows |
Flows identify the most frequent paths taken by users to or from any event. Flows are used to understand how your users sequentially perform events in your product and analyze drop-offs or unsuccessful behavior. |
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Funnels |
Funnels allow you to examine how end-users perform events in a series. Funnels calculate and display conversions from one event to another within a particular time window. This allows you to identify where your users drop off, what segments convert the most, and other important facets of the user journey. |
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Insights |
Insights is a powerful and flexible reporting tool that allows you to analyze user behavior on your platforms easily. You can analyze events, cohorts and user profiles and display the data in a variety of chart types. |
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Lexicon |
Lexicon is a data dictionary that stores descriptions of events and their properties. Project owners and admins can add/manage descriptions for all events and properties and organize data for clarity and discoverability. Event and property definitions help your entire team understand what your data means, so everyone stays on the same page. |
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Organization |
An Organization is the controlling entity that links projects, users, and a plan together. Each organization has a single Mixpanel plan associated with it, and that plan determines the data volume limits and features available across all projects in the organization. |
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Project |
A Project is a container for your product’s analytics data, including saved entities like custom events or saved reports. Projects house the events, properties and user profiles sent to them, which can then be queried with Mixpanel’s web interface and APIs. A single organization can contain multiple projects, and each project’s data tallies are summed together to give the organization-level usage. |
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Properties |
Properties are attributes that help you define the specifics of an Event, a User, or a Group. |
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Retention |
The Retention report in Mixpanel is designed to assess user engagement over a specified period of time. Retention of your users is critical to achieving product-market fit and sustainable long-term growth, and this report will help you understand how long users continue to come back and find value from your product. |
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Team |
A Team is a group of users in your organization that shares the same project access permission, which makes it easier to manage roles and permissions for a group of users. A team contains a roster of users, the projects they are assigned to, the role permissions in each project, Data View access, and Classified Data access. |
Accessing Mixpanel
Access to Mixpanel is done using a dedicated URL per institution. When clicked, it goes to a Mixpanel project, which is unique per institution, identified by a unique number, for example:
Currently, you cannot access Mixpanel directly from within Alma or Primo VE but rather by using the URL explained above.
To gain access, users must be invited to a project. Once the invitation email is accepted, the user will receive another email that contains a link to access Mixpanel for the project. If users have configured a permanent password in their settings, they will receive a login screen. Otherwise, users must log in using an authentication link sent to their email each time.
Ex Libris recommends setting up a username and password for easier access.