Microscope is a feature that allows you to dig deeper into a specific data point and is accessible in all of Amplitude's charts except Pathfinder and the Custom Formulas in the Event Segmentation chart. When you hover over a data point of some charts, a black pop-up will prompt you to inspect the users who make up that particular data point. Depending on your Amplitude plan, Microscope will display up to six options, detailed below.
What you will learn in this article
This article is an in-depth guide of how to use Microscope within Amplitude. Use this article to understand how to use this feature and to understand what information is available in the View User Streams and Show User Paths sections.
Prerequisites
- Annotations can only be created by users with the permission level of Manager and Admin
- The events highlighted in Microscope streams don't currently respect the "where" filter from the chart query. In addition, only events selected in the left module of the chart control panel that occur during the date range selected will be highlighted.
- The View Groups feature is only available to Enterprise customers who have purchased the Accounts add on
- The Download Groups feature is only available to Enterprise customers who have purchased the Accounts add on
Table of Contents
- Add Annotation
- Show User Paths
- View Users
- Create Cohort
- Analyze Events Performed Between Funnel Steps
- Download Users
Add Annotation
The "Add Annotation" option adds a global date annotation on the specific date of the data point. This feature helps you annotate important dates, such as feature releases and marketing campaigns, in all of your organization's charts with a horizontal axis of calendar dates. Annotation names are limited to 60 characters, and you can add an optional description to the annotation.
Once you create an annotation, it will appear as a purple vertical line in the chart, as seen in the below image. You can remove or modify an annotation in your project's Settings page.
Show User Paths
The "Show User Paths" option shows the top event paths taken by the users who make up the selected data point. Specifically, this option runs a Pathfinder Users report based on the users' activity for the selected data point. This is useful for when you want to quickly see the top event paths users take after a specific event or on a particular day. For example, you can view users who dropped off after a specific event or step in a Funnel Analysis chart and see what were the top paths the dropped off users performed, instead of successfully completing the funnel. Please note that the maximum date range for "Show Streams" is 30 days.
The below image shows an example purchase conversion funnel. If we want to analyze what users are doing instead of triggering the 'Purchase Song or Video' event, we can click on the drop-off data point for the 'Purchase Song or Video' event and use Microscope's "Show User Paths" feature to view the top event paths users take after the 'Add Friends' event.
The "Show User Paths" feature shows that, after the 'Add Friends' event, many users either exit the app or trigger the 'PlaySong' event. This information informs allows us to hypothesize ways to improve the product's purchase flow. For example, we can try to send users an in-app message to purchase a subscription right after they add some friends, to see if that would improve conversion.
View Users
The "View Users" option displays an exportable list of users who make up the selected data point. You can click on any of the User IDs to open their user profile in the User Activity tab or you can download the list of IDs as a CSV file if you are an Enterprise customer.
View User Streams
In Amplitude's Event Segmentation chart, you will see an option to "View User Streams". This option in Microscope will allow you to see individual user streams in aggregate. It will show all of a user's events within the date range of the data point and will also show up to 25 events before the beginning of the time range and up to 50 events after the start of the time range. If you have a specific event selected, then the event will be highlighted in the user's stream. You can also choose to show certain event properties as well. You also have the ability to click into the user by clicking on their ID or by clicking on any event in their stream. This will bring you to their profile in the User Activity tab.
View Groups (Enterprise)
If you are an Enterprise customer and you have set up account-level reporting, you can view the groups in a data point through Microscope as well. You will be able to see a list of all the groups that make up that data point. Clicking on any of the groups will show you a list of the users in that group in the User Activity tab.
Create Cohort
For Scholarship, Growth, and Enterprise plans only, the "Create Cohort" option creates a cohort of the users that make up the selected data point. You can then further analyze this set of users by applying this cohort to other charts in Amplitude. When a "group" is applied in the right module, you are also able to use Microscope Create Cohort to create a group cohort.
Analyze Events Performed Between Funnel Steps
Within each Funnels chart, you can click into any of the steps after the initial event for a "Investigate Conversion Drivers" option, which allows you to look at the events performed between funnel steps for converted and dropped-off users.
Within Conversion Drivers, the top controller allows you to choose the steps of the funnel that you want to look between. The conversion and drop-off numbers show you the rates between the two selected steps.
Below the step controller, there is a table of the events your users have performed between the two selected steps. There are two metrics visible. Adoption is defined as the percentage of converted/dropped-off users who performed a particular event between the two steps selected. Engagement is defined as the average number of times your converted/dropped-off users performed a particular event between the two steps selected.
In the example below, 100% of converted users performed the "Main Landing Screen" between step 1 and step 2, while only 78.6% of dropped-off users performed this event. The ratio of adoption between converted users over dropped-off users is 1.27.
For users who are considered converted, we look at the events performed between the timestamps of the two selected funnel steps. For users who are considered dropped-off, we look at the timestamps of the first selected funnel step, and their entry into the funnel plus the conversion window.
Imagine a funnel defined as A --> B --> C, and you wanted to investigate drivers of conversion at step C. The time periods analyzed each set of users is shown below, where t() represents the timestamp of the event performed:
| Converted | Dropped-off |
| t(b), t(c) | t(b), t(a)+ conversion window |
Download Users
The "Download Users" option downloads the users (up to 1 million users) that make up the selected data point. This CSV file will also contain a user's most recent user property values. For example, we can download the users who never completed the 'PurchaseSubscription' event and send them an email explaining the benefits of purchasing a subscription.
Download Groups (Enterprise)
If you are performing account-level reporting analysis, then you will have the option to download the groups in a certain data point or in a bucket. When you download a CSV file from "Download Groups", the CSV file will contain the following four columns:
- group_id: The unique ID of a particular group name (much like Amplitude ID). When Amplitude sees a new group value or group name, Amplitude assigns a unique group_id to the unique group name.
- group_name: The group property value (like the User ID). For example, if your "count by" was for the group "Company", then the group_name could be "Amplitude". The group_name values are set by you.
- first_time: The Unix timestamp of when we first saw that group. Essentially, the start time of this "user" where the user is a group.
- creator_amplitude_id: The amplitude_id that sent the event creating the group.