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Segmentation chart user property missing


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Background of chart:
Using the Segmentation chart, I have a basic event that only triggers past the stage a user has authenticated and is identified. When I group by a user property (user_type), there is about 20-30% of users grouped as `none`.

The problem

When I download those users to CSV and see their user property in question, it’s set to a value and not actually `none` at all. (When I use the user look up tool, they’re also set.) 

Why does the chart show as none?
Does anyone have any advice on how to trouble shoot and increase confidence in this data?

Extra details
Screenshots attached (CSV download of “none” users), chart results and query criteria. It’s consistent if I group by under the event on the user property or the global chart grouped by option.

Screenshots.

 

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Best answer by Zhenia Semenina 1 June 2022, 12:17

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3 replies

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I”ve read this post
 

But when that event fired “Viewed page” path = /dashboard, they would have definitely had a user_type user property set. 🤔

I’ve also read in those comments and this documentation conflicting explanations to how this works:

https://help.amplitude.com/hc/en-us/articles/207108327
 

Like event properties, charts will return the user property value at the time of an event.
User properties are stored in a separate table and applied to events according to the process described here. When a user's user property values update, the user property values attached to historical events will not change.


vs

User properties: A user property is a characteristic or trait of a user. Typically, user properties describe things like location, status (paying user vs free user, for example), details of how they access your product (device type, device family, operating system, etc). Because many user properties can change over time, they will always reflect the most-recently known state of that user. In other words, if a user most recently logged in from Mexico, that will be reflected in their location properties—even if that user typically logs in from a different country.


https://help.amplitude.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016257391-FAQ-Why-is-this-user-counted-under-none-or-an-unexpected-value-#User-Properties

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Hey Steve,

thanks for writing in!

When you export your chart/ users in csv - what you are looking at is their latest User properties that are drawn from their most recent event.

That’s exactly what this last article you sent refers to: 

 

User properties: A user property is a characteristic or trait of a user. Typically, user properties describe things like location, status (paying user vs free user, for example), details of how they access your product (device type, device family, operating system, etc). Because many user properties can change over time, they will always reflect the most-recently known state of that user. 

 

Check out this demo user I have in my project and it’s properties: 

I have a city set, company set, country set, and all of these are properties that are the most recently known properties for this user that are fetched from my latest event: 

However, let’s take a look at some event that this same user has done previously: 

I don’t have any custom User properties anymore, and why? Because at the time of this specific event (‘User ID set!’ event) I did not have them set yet.

 

So if you see any ‘none’ values - you have those properties as ‘none’ at some point in your user event stream, probably associated with some older events.

 

Hope this helps! 

 

Best,

Zhenia

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Thanks @Zhenia Semenina that makes sense, so we’re using the time series event stream data for the user properties at that time like the documentation says. The download csv is a different query providing the info as at now. I’ll come back here if I can find an example where the property has been set but isn’t being displayed… thanks again for resolving.

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