Event Explorer: View event streams in real time

Even with clean data, knowing which data to use in an analysis is not always as straightforward as we would like: taxonomies can sometimes be unclear or counterintuitive; out-of-date events can persist well after the point when they should have been deprecated; events can sometimes break unexpectedly.

Amplitude’s Event Explorer helps you overcome these and similar challenges by surfacing events and properties in real time for any user flow, so you can immediately see which data is relevant.

Simply find your test account ID and click through the area of your product you want to analyze. Event Explorer shows the events you’re firing as you fire them. You’ll know exactly which events correspond with the user actions you’re interested in analyzing, and you can immediately add them to any Amplitude chart.

Who should use Event Explorer?

Event Explorer will help Amplitude users who: 

• Worry about Amplitude end-users in your organization not knowing which events to use, or coming to incorrect conclusions using the wrong data
• Are part of a large organization with a centralized team doing most of the instrumentation that others must rely on for analysis
• Are dealing with poor or messy data and/or data dictionaries that are hard to keep current
• Want to conduct QA on instrumentation-related issues
• Help other team members determine which events to use in their analyses

Event Explorer use cases

In general, Event Explorer will be most useful in two situations:

• Help new and existing users choose the right events to answer their questions and self-serve the taxonomy questions currently being asked of the analytics team. For example, a company could use Event Explorer to help Amplitude users in their different organizations learn the taxonomy created by the central team, or use it to onboard new Amplitude users on how to make an accurate chart or find an event.
• Quickly verify and QA instrumentation in real time to identify any gaps or issues with events. An engineer could use Event Explorer to verify whether she has implemented a new event, or implemented it correctly. Data and Engineering teams can see in real-time if any given event is properly firing, either within a flow or on its own.

View a real-time event stream using Event Explorer

To use Event Explorer to view events as they are fired, follow these steps:

1. In any Amplitude chart, click Select events using your product.

2. Click the Add my user field. In the Search for my own user panel, enter your test user ID or device ID. You only need to do this step once.
3. Log into or open your product with your test user ID or device ID and begin using it. Watch as the events roll in, in near-real time.
   
   NOTE: You may experience event delays if you do not send data to Amplitude in real time. For example, if events are batched and sent every 5 minutes to Amplitude, you will experience a 5-minute delay. 

Once you’ve found the events that are most relevant to your analysis, you can add them directly to any Amplitude chart. To do so, follow these steps:

1. In Event Explorer, click the event you want to include. The properties of that event will appear in the right-hand frame.
   
   
   
2. Select any properties you want to include in your analysis. (This step is optional.)
3. Click Add to chart on the top right to add this event.

Find your user ID or device ID

Once you locate your ID, Amplitude will remember it for you; you will not need to find it again. This ID must have been active in your product during the last 30 days.

NOTE: There may be situations where you want to surface events in Event Explorer while logged out. To do this, we suggest you search by your device ID or IP address to locate yourself.

Methods you can use to locate your user ID include:

• Searching on any user property: click User ID and choose a different property from the dropdown (e.g. choose email and enter your email).
• Searching by device ID: click User ID and choose Device ID from the dropdown.
• Searching by IP address: click User ID and choose IP address from the dropdown.

Additional methods:

• The Instrumentation Explorer Chrome plugin, which works for our JS SDK, identifies your user ID.
• If you use Amplitude's iOS SDK or Android SDK, there is a tool to identify your user ID and device ID when running under a debug version.
• Your company may have an internal tool or method to find your ID. Consider asking someone in your organization for tips.
• Try firing some events that are unlikely to be fired by your users. Then use Filter by events on the User Lookup page to locate the ID that just fired those events. This will be your user ID.