FAQs

The following are some of the frequently asked questions posed by developers working with our good-natured ass-kickers.

Analytics

Content Reporting (Export API)

Terminology

Question	Answer
What is a channel?	It’s a technical API name for an Experience.

Data Accuracy

Question	Answer
How can I get the right numbers from the data?	Please see our query suggestions available at Example Queries.
Exported data doesn't match the Online Platform	The Showpad Online Platform is a live view of the data. Downloads are usually implemented as a snapshot in time. If you like to validate UI and Export API data match, you need to ensure the same timing for the data view. Simple validation of metrics for the past months will not work (see below). You can for example work with Showpad UI CSV downloads to take snapshots of time from UI. Showpad can adjust metrics for the past time due to “late arriving” data from mobile devices that were used offline. For example, events arriving in May from Showpad usage in April, will be populated to April results. With data from the Online Platform and API export (request parameters), the timezone of the user is taken into account, which can influence data you see in the UI and what you get from the API. You can see the timezone that is currently used at the bottom of the analytics UI as well as in the export API response.
User ID values changed from previous API download	Showpad has a reporting anonymization feature. When a user is added or removed from the anonymized user group, the PII data such as name, email and user ID is masked or hashed to make sure the employer cannot track individual users' activity. You cannot lookup a user via the hashed ID in other Showpad APIs. Note that anonymization applied during the report generation (runtime) based on user group setting is reversible.
How do I recreate a User engagement report?	Note that the user engagement report includes both Coach and Content data, while the Content Reporting (Export) API contains only Showpad Content data. For Showpad Coach reporting, there is a separate API service.
Where can I find more information on the fields used in the events table?	Information about all fields can be found on the Lookup Relations Table page.

Download Data

Question	Answer
How can I download data incrementally (only differences since last download)	Everything other than the Events table should always be fully downloaded. The Events table can be downloaded incrementally using the loggedBeforeand loggedAfter parameters. Note: If you're using the user anonymization feature and you're changing user assignment to the anonymous user group(s), the entire Event table should be updated since the old events will be linked to user ID A and newer events will be linked to user ID B (hashed/anonymized user). Events with user ID A will no longer have a match when the Users data is refreshed. It will only contain the anonymized user ID B.
How do I pull batches of data larger than 500 events?	By default, the maximum number of returned items with the Events call is set to 500. You can use the limit parameter to change this to any value between 50 and 1000. For larger volumes of data, we include a header in the response, called X-Showpad-Scroll-Id which contains a token. If you make the same request again but set this header on your second request, the Events call will return the second batch of requests. See Control Returned Items.

Errors

Question	Answer
Why do I get 500 errors when querying the Events table?	Be sure to always use the X-Showpad-scroll-id header from the response for the next request. For more information, see Control Returned Items.