Create sessions based on timestamp

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

I have some data from GA in which I have session Id and DateTime field. My requirement is to look at the session Id and if the created_timestamp has a time difference of more than 30 mins it started counting it as a seperate session.

For Eg. in the image: For session Id 264611 I have many created_timestamps but the two marked with reds have a time difference of more than 30 mins. So my requirement is if I count all the sessions for the that particular session_id in a day.

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

Take a look at my MTBF article, it has a similar kind of issue that it is trying to solve. You should be able to use it to create a column that flags a session as new based upon the duration from the previous row.

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Community-Blog/Mean-Time-Between-Failure-MTBF-and-Power-BI/ba-p/3395...

[Anonymous]

Hi @Greg_Deckler,

I tried something like this with the help of your article: 

and it retured me the below output. My question now is: How could I distinguish between 16th and 15th. Because for me there is a new session on 16th, if I calculate based on my >30 mins duration there is no session on 16th in that case.

new duration in min = 
VAR next = MINX(FILTER ('Talend_GA sessions';
                'Talend_GA sessions'[session_id] = EARLIER('Talend_GA sessions'[session_id]) &&
                'Talend_GA sessions'[created_timestamp] > EARLIER('Talend_GA sessions'[created_timestamp])
                );'Talend_GA sessions'[created_timestamp])
            RETURN (DATEDIFF('Talend_GA sessions'[created_timestamp];next;MINUTE))

[Anonymous]

Hi @Greg_Deckler,

The first solution works for me with some extra mesures.

After this step I defined a mesaure to count sessions:

count_sessions = CALCULATE( COUNT('Talend_GA sessions'[new duration in min]);FILTER('Talend_GA sessions';'Talend_GA sessions'[new duration in min]>30))

 That gave me a result like this:

After that I defined another measure to add up the lost session count as you can see in the image above, there are three sessions as per the definition but it counts only two.

count_sessions_final = [count_sessions] + [Total sessions]

Here Total sessions is a mesure which counts the distinct session_ids.

Please do let me know what I did is correct or not.

[Greg_Deckler]

If it works for you and gives you what you want, then it is correct! 🙂 

Glad my article could at least point you in the right direction!

[Anonymous]

Yeah it's working fine and I am getting correct results (as much I tested). thanks a lot for your help sir. Respect.

[Greg_Deckler]

You need to "flip" your logic. So, instead of going "bottom up" you need to go "top down"

new duration in min = 
VAR next = MAXX(FILTER ('Talend_GA sessions';
                'Talend_GA sessions'[session_id] = EARLIER('Talend_GA sessions'[session_id]) &&
                'Talend_GA sessions'[created_timestamp] < EARLIER('Talend_GA sessions'[created_timestamp])
                );'Talend_GA sessions'[created_timestamp])
            RETURN (DATEDIFF(next;'Talend_GA sessions'[created_timestamp];MINUTE))