Overview

Product events data gives you powerful insight into how customers are using your product — and that insight can transform your CS strategies. There are two ways to bring this data into Vitally: Individual Timestamped Events and Aggregate Traits. You may use one or both, depending on your tech stack and team preferences.

Individual timestamped events

With this approach, you send a discrete event each time something happens in your product. For example, orderSubmitted fires every time a user submits an order.

What you can do with it

View event counts directly in the Product Usage tab on any Account 360
View event trends on any Account 360 in the Metric Trends tab
Use Success Metrics to track usage filtered by event property — for example, tracking orderSubmitted where order_type = "enterprise" over time

Note: Top-level event counts (e.g., total orderSubmitted events with no property filtering) are straightforward to surface. For more granular filtering by a specific property, set up a Success Metric.

Best for: Teams who want flexible, time-series visualizations and plan to build Playbooks or Success Metrics with granular event data.

Aggregate traits

With this approach, instead of sending raw events, you send pre-calculated values as Account or User traits. For example, a rolling_7_day_orders trait that updates daily with the latest count.

What you can do with it

Use the trait value anywhere traits appear in Vitally — health scores, segments, and view filters
Track the trait over time by wrapping it in a Success Metric and viewing it in Metric Trends
Promote User-level traits to the Account level using Vitally's custom formula trait functionality — handy if your existing data lives at the user level

Note: Traits alone don't appear in Metric Trends. Only event counts, Success Metrics, and core Vitally traits (like ARR) do. If you want historical trend visualization, route through Success Metrics. Trait based Success Metrics will start calculating the day you created the Success Metric.

Best for: Teams who already compute aggregate metrics in their data pipeline and prefer to send clean, pre-processed values rather than raw event streams.

Quick comparison

	Timestamped events	Aggregate traits
Appears in Metric Trends	✅ Natively	⚠️ Via Success Metrics only
Supports dashboard visualization	⚠️ Via Success Metrics only	✅ Yes
Filter by property over time	⚠️ Via Success Metrics only	❌ No
Usable in health scores & segments	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Works at Account and User level	✅ Yes	✅ Yes

FAQs

Which method should I choose?

To choose between methods, consider your data pipeline and goals. If you can send raw events, timestamped events generally offer more flexibility — especially for visualizations and filtering. If your data pipeline already produces reliable aggregates and raw event volume is a concern, aggregate traits are a valid path. Just plan to use Success Metrics if you want trend views.

Can I use both methods at the same time?

Yes, you can use both methods at the same time. Many teams use a combination of both approaches depending on the use case — there's no requirement to choose just one.