Understand Real Time Cohorts

Note:

Real Time Cohorts is a Beta feature. Contact support@whatfix.com to enable the feature.

Introduction

Cohorts enable you to group users based on specific criteria or behaviors, compare them with other groups, and uncover insights that can guide actions. You can use these Cohorts as Visibility Rules (Beta) to target Whatfix content to specific user groups based on their behavior.

By default, when you add a Cohort as a Visibility Rule, Whatfix refreshes Cohorts once every 24 hours. Hence, when users are added to a Cohort or removed from a Cohort, Whatfix updates the Cohort once every 24 hours and displays Whatfix content after the periodic refresh. It causes a delay in targeting content and taking action.

When you enable Real Time Cohorts, and use the Real Time Cohorts as Visibility Rules, Whatfix refreshes such Cohorts in real time and displays Whatfix content immediately. When a user is added to or removed from a Real Time Cohort, Whatfix immediately evaluates the visibility of widgets for the user.

Note:

As a prerequisite, you need to enable the Cohorts as a Visibility Rule feature before enabling the Real Time Cohorts feature.

Use Real Time Cohorts

For example, consider that you want to show an “Advanced Features” Pop-up to users who complete the “Product Tour Flow”.

Perform the following steps to use Real Time Cohorts to target Whatfix content in real time.

1. Enable the Cohorts as Visibility rules feature and then enable the Real Time Cohorts feature. To enable the features, contact support@whatfix.com.

2. Create a Cohort of users who complete the “Product Tour” Flow.

3. Create and configure the Pop-up.

4. Add the created Cohort as a Visibility Rule.

5. Preview the Flow and the Pop-up to see if they’re working as expected. Complete the Flow and check if the Pop-up appears as expected.

6. Publish the changes.

Conditions for Real Time Cohorts

When you add certain rules to a Cohort, the Cohort becomes a Real Time Cohort when applied to Visibility Rules.

Note:

• Whatfix considers a Cohort as a Real Time Cohort only if all the specified conditions within the Cohort match the criteria mentioned below. Even if one condition in the Cohort does not evaluate in real time, Whatfix does not consider it as a Real Time Cohort.

• Whatfix shows content using Real Time Cohorts only to Identified users. This means the Cohort must include identified users, not unidentified ones. Even if a Cohort qualifies as a Real Time Cohort, any unidentified users in it won’t see Whatfix content.

The following table shows the Cohort rules that enables Whatfix to qualify a Cohort as a Real Time Cohort:

Info:

For more information on the various Cohort rules, see Create a Cohort.

Note:

If your Real Time Cohort uses the Last X days time filter, Whatfix may take up to one hour to process past user activity (backfilling) after you add the Cohort to Visibility Rules.

Example: Suppose you create a Real Time Cohort of users who clicked a “Submit” button more than twice in the last 5 days, and you add the Cohort as a Visibility Rule for a Pop-up that offers tips for faster submission. Whatfix may take up to an hour to identify all users who clicked the “Submit” button in the last five days and backfill the data before displaying the Pop-up to them.