In this video, I’ll show you how to use the flow visualization in Analysis Workspace. A flow visualization is useful for understanding customer journeys stemming from or leading to a conversion event on your digital properties. It traces a path through dimensions, dimension items, or metrics, and lets you configure the start or end of the path of interest. Likewise, you can analyze all paths that flow through a specific dimension or dimension item. These are the areas I’ll cover in this video. Add the flow visualization component to Analysis Workspace. Anchor your flow visualization using Starts With, Contains, and Ends With. Configure advanced settings. Drill down and filter columns. Use contextual options. Add multi-dimensional touchpoints. From Workspace, I’m going to Create Project in the upper right to get started. I’ll select Blank Project from the template list, and then Create in the lower right corner. Now I’ll drag and drop the flow visualization from the Visualization panel to the Freeform panel. I have three options for building this report. I can place a dimension in the entry node, the middle node, or the exit node, depending on how I want to anchor the report. For example, if I wanted to look at what preceded and followed a specific page on my digital property, I’d locate that page value and drop it in the middle zone. I’m going to click on Page under Dimensions and drag and drop Purchase Step 1 to the center node. Next, I’ll click on Build underneath. The visualization includes the top pages that lead into the start of my purchase flow to the left and the top pages that go out from the start of my purchase flow to the right. As I hover over different parts of the flow, I’ll see more data points. For example, when I hover over the left side of the anchor page, I see the number of visitors that came to that page in the selected time frame. The number and percentage or exits from that page and a color-coded list of the top five links to this point. Notice the color of the entry pages change to align with the top five paths. When I hover over the right side of the anchor page, I see the same type of data points for the next page, as well as changes to the colors used for those pages. Now, this flow is very interactive. I can click on any node to the left or right of the anchor page and it’ll expand the flow accordingly. For example, I’ll click on the first product page in the left node and this builds out a list of pages that precede it. On the left and right ends, notice there’s a plus symbol. This will expand the flow in the direction indicated by its position. I’ll click on the plus sign on the right end to expand the flow by an additional column. Now I’ll draw your attention to the settings for this visualization. Across the top, there’s a summary line that gives you a quick view of the settings used for the flow visualization. I’ll click on the pencil above the flow to go into edit mode. This displays the current settings for the report by default. I’ll click on the show advanced settings link. Wrap labels saves screen real estate by truncating the values. When checked, it’s enabled. Include repeat instances gives you the option to include or exclude repeated instances of the same value. If I was pathing on an EVAR or a listvar, persistence will be removed from the flow. In contrast, instances can also repeat. An example of this is page reloads. By default, repeat instances are excluded. Limit to first last occurrence will limit paths to those that start or end with the first or last occurrence of an item. It’s not available to change given I’m using the middle node for my current example. Number of columns and items expanded per column can only be updated when you rebuild the flow visualization by selecting the reset command. These settings govern the number of columns and items per column that are displayed. Flow container lets you switch between visit and visitor. It defaults to visitor, which allows you to see the flow for visitors across visits. There are additional actions you can perform for each touch point using the context menu, which is displayed by a right click. I won’t necessarily cover all of these, but I’ll include some highlights. Let’s say I notice the first column contains a page that has noise in my flow, and I don’t want to show it. I’ll hover over App Details, and then I’ll right click. From the context menu, I’ll select Exclude Item, and notice it’s removed from the visualization. Now, if I change my mind about excluding that item, I can right click in the same column and select Restore Excluded Items if that’s what I wanted to do. But I don’t, so I won’t. Also notice the filter icon above that column. When I click on it, it shows me I’ve done something to filter the data. I can restore the item I just removed from here if I want. Focus on this node would change this column to the center node and rebuild the report accordingly. Segment from this point in flow takes you into the Segment Builder. I’ll click on this to quickly show you how it builds the logic automatically. You can name the segment, give it a description, and even publish it to the Experience Cloud so that it could be used in other Adobe solutions. I’m going to click on the Cancel command, as I’m not going to save it right now. Breakdown lets you break down the node by available dimensions, metrics, or time. Let me show you an example. First, I’ll right click on the first item in the second node to get the context menu, and then I’ll select Breakdown. I’ll click on Dimensions from there. Instead of scrolling the list of available metrics, I’ll search for it since I know what I want to use. I’ll enter weekday in the search box, and then I’ll select weekday weekend. This adds a freeform table above the visualization. Trend will create a trended line diagram for the node. This adds the diagram above the flow visualization for the time period selected. There’s easy access to filter any column in addition to using the context menu. When I hover to the right of any given column, I’ll see the filter icon appear. Now let’s say I only want to focus on flows resulting in an order in the last column. I’ll enter the page value for order, which is purchase. Thank you. I’ll show you another flow visualization example. First, I’ll go into my current flow settings by clicking on the pencil at the top, and I’ll select Reset. Under Dimensions, I’ll drag and drop Marketing Channel to the first node, Starts With. I’ll leave all of the other settings as is and then click on the Build command. This shows me the top marketing channels that people have entered my site from. I can continue to expand this out to see the next marketing channel engagement. Next, I’ll show you an example of a multidimensional flow. This lets you examine visitor paths across various dimension types. I’m going to right-click on the last column and select Hide Column from the context menu. I have the original version of the initial marketing channel flow displayed, which shows the top entry marketing channels people use. Now I want to see which pages those campaigns are driving traffic to. So I’ll drag the page dimension to the right of the flow. Make sure you see the blue vertical line at the right side before releasing your mouse button. The resulting visualization shows me exactly which pages those campaigns are driving traffic to, and that’s the beauty of having the flexibility to mix dimensions within the same flow visualization. You should now feel comfortable creating and configuring your own flow visualization report. Good luck!