Events
The event data type: an action at a point in time. Its fields, what counts as an event and how events join people and groups.
Last reviewed September 15, 2026
An event is a record of an action at a point in time. Examples are a page view, a purchase, an email open and a custom action that you track.
Fields
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
event_name | Yes | Name of the event, for example purchase, page_view or email_sent |
timestamp | Yes | When the event occurred |
user_id | No | The person who did the event. Some system events have no person. |
group_id | No | The group that the event belongs to, for example an account |
idempotency_key | No | A key from the provider that Vendo uses to remove duplicate events |
properties | No | Other data: amounts, product lists, UTM parameters, email content and more |
To link events to people, map at least one identity field. For example, map a user ID, an email address, a phone number or a device ID.
What Counts as an Event
- Page views and track calls from Web Tracking and the Web Tracking SDK
- Commerce events, for example orders, checkouts and refunds from Shopify or Stripe
- Email messages. The message details and content are in
properties. - Revenue. Events record purchases and charges. Vendo calculates revenue totals in Metrics.
Example
{
"event_name": "purchase",
"timestamp": "2026-05-20T14:32:00Z",
"user_id": "cust_abc123",
"properties": {
"order_id": "ord_987",
"currency": "USD",
"amount": 129.99,
"sku_id": "SKU-001",
"utm_source": "facebook"
}
}How Events Relate to Other Data
| Related to | How |
|---|---|
| Users | The identifier on the event joins the identity graph, and then the profile (vuid). Vendo makes this join when a query runs, so earlier anonymous events join a person after the person identifies. |
| Groups | An event property, or the key of a group type, joins a group row. In the example, sku_id joins the vendo_product group. One query can join more than one group type. |
| Ad data | Reports relate events to ad data through the date and the UTM values. |
| Attribution | Sessions with click IDs or utm_source become touchpoints. Conversion events get credit from those touchpoints. See Attribution. |
See Data Model for the complete relationship model.
In the App
- Find event tables in the Data Catalog.
- Set up first-party collection in Web Tracking.
- Map source columns to the event fields in the semantic mappings of each source. See Custom Tables.
Related
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