Frequently Asked Questions on legacy segments
Answers frequent questions on best practices for managing legacy segments - segments created prior to 2014.
Managing Legacy Segments legacy
Your existing segments will continue to work as they did before. Any reports that have these segments applied will continue to work correctly. More…
Most former pre-defined and suite segments will be migrated over as segment templates into the Segment Builder. Segment templates are used to quickly build custom segments with common audiences. Segment templates can’t be applied to a report directly, but they can be easily saved to a custom segment.
Segment templates are marked with a special icon in Segment Builder:
Scheduled reports continue to run properly with the segments that you defined.
When you delete a segment, scheduled reports and dashboards that have this segment applied continue to work normally, i.e. the segment or dashboard continues to use the deleted segment.
Scheduled reports do not update when you edit a segment with the same name. Here is an example: Let’s suppose you have 2 segments with the same name in different report suites:
You have a bookmark that references the segment for the mainprod report suite. Then you delete that segment because it’s a duplicate. The bookmark will continue to run, referencing the definition of the deleted segment. If you change the segment definition for the maindev segment to include Catalina Island and Tijuana Mexico, the segment applied to the bookmark will not change. It will use the old definition. To fix this, update the bookmark to reference the new definition. If you are unsure whether a bookmark, dashboard or scheduled report is using a deleted segment, you could change the name of the remaining segment so it’s more clear whether the bookmark is using the remaining segment.
All existing Data Warehouse segments still work in Data Warehouse. Most Data Warehouse segments will also work in other components such as Analysis Workspace.
You can create or edit a new Data Warehouse segments in the segment builder/manager. The Product Compatibility mechanism in the Segment Builder automatically determines whether a segment is compatible with Data Warehouse.
- Single Page Visits
- Visits from Mobile Devices
- Visits from Natural Search
- Visits from Paid Search
- Visits with Visitor ID Cookie
These segments will be migrated over as segment templates into the Segment Builder. Existing reports that have these segments applied will continue to work correctly.
- Non-Purchasers
- Purchasers
- First Time Visits
- Visits from Social Sites
- Visits of More than 10 Minutes*
- Visits with 5+ Previous Visits*
- Visits from Facebook*
Most of these segments (except the ones marked with an asterisk *) were migrated over as segment templates into the segment builder. Additionally, several new segment templates have been added.
Existing reports that have these segments applied continue to work correctly.
Admin segments will be migrated into the new segment interface and will show up as segments shared with everyone.
The owner of these segments is set to the admin with the oldest account in the login company’s list of admin users, however, all Admins can delete, edit and share these segments.
The segment management interface in the Admin Console where Admins created and managed these global segments is no longer available. Admins should now use the new segment builder to create segments and share them with appropriate groups or individuals or with everyone.
Existing segments that use logic that has changed as described in this document continue to work correctly, though they must be updated before they can be saved again. For example, if you have an existing segment where US States contains ‘New York’, it continues to work correctly, though the next time you edit the segment you’ll need to update it to use the enumerated type with an equals condition.
Now that segments work in multiple report suites, you might find that you have multiple segments with the same name. We recommend that you either
- Rename segments that have the same name, but different definitions, or
- Delete segments that are no longer necessary.
- Tag all segments with legacy tag.
- Review the segments that you have.
- Add them to the segment library where applicable.
- Approve segments that are canonical.
- Tag segments according to best practices.
Migration tips
The following tips will help you migrate common dimensions:
- Geo-city/region/country - search for and select specific cities, regions or countries instead of using a partial match.
- Browsers - use the Browser Types dimension to get all browsers in a type, e.g. Google Chrome
- Operating Systems - use the OS Types dimensions to get all operating systems in a type, e.g. Microsoft Windows.
- Refer to “New and Renamed Dimensions” (see below)
New and Renamed Dimensions renamed
The following table contains a list of dimensions that were renamed in Segment Builder.
Changes to String-Based Dimensions that have Known Values string-based-dims
String-based dimensions that have a known set of values were changed to enumerated types. When creating a segment using these dimensions, the list is pre-populated with all known values and the only operator supported is equals. This lets you quickly segment the exact values you were looking for without selecting unintended values when using less restrictive matching.
The following dimensions were changed to enumerated lists:
Changes to Integer-Based Dimensions that have Known Values integer-based-dims
Integer-based dimensions (such as browser width) with a known set of values were split into enumerated ranges so you can quickly define segments for a specific range. These enumerated lists are appended with " - Bucketed" after the dimension name. The following screen shows how these dimensions are segmented using the previous and new segment builder interfaces:
The less than, greater than, and similar operators are now compatible with Data Warehouse segments only. Segments intended to be compatible with all reporting interfaces should use the “Bucketed” version of the metric with the equals operator.