Pendo has several ways of processing data depending on how data is received and processing is triggered. Each method of processing has a different wait period until data is visible in analytics and usable in segments. New or edited tagged features or pages, existing tags or track events, events used for guide targeting, and API calls are all processed at different rates. Processed data is not visible in reports in real time. Some methods have faster processing than others, but there may be a time delay as data is received by Pendo and processed before appearing in the Pendo UI. Pendo admins can view real-time raw events in the Raw Events tab in App Settings to review and verify event data as it's collected.
To understand data processing, it helps to be familiar with the events collected by Pendo. Pendo captures all user behavior, starting when the snippet is installed and initialized. Your visitor's product usage is stored as a raw event, which includes the necessary code and metadata to tag the event. This is how most data is transmitted to Pendo. It is also possible to send data directly to Pendo with the API. For example, server-side track events or metadata updates can be sent directly to Pendo using the Pendo API. All of these events are categorized and stored in a database for your subscription. Data processing refers to Pendo looking through these events, matching tagging rules to usage events or mapping API events, and making those events visible in the UI.
Tagging a new page or feature or editing an existing tag
Data processing
Data is processed in reverse chronological order, starting with today's events and going backward in time.
Tagging a new page or feature immediately begins processing event data starting with today's events and progressing in reverse chronological order. Editing an existing tag clears the previous tagged events and reprocesses the tag using the new tagging rule. In some cases, you can add additional tagging rules to an existing tag. In these situations, the previous tagged events are cleared from the UI and all tagging rules are processed at the same time as if it were a new tag.
Visibility
When a tag is processing and no event data is visible, the tag will indicate that processing is in progress on the list view for pages or features, on the details page for that tag, and in the Visual Design Studio.
Data becomes visible in the Pendo UI and usable in segments as soon as the previous 90 days are processed. This typically takes less than 1 hour to process unless your subscription collects a large volume of events.
After the first 90-day period is processed, data becomes visible as each preceding day processes. A banner at the top of the tagged page or feature details page indicates the oldest date with visible data. The banner is present and older data becomes visible continuously until all events are processed.
Processing all historical data typically takes 1 hour to complete but can take as long as 4 hours for large subscriptions with many events. Very active subscriptions with several years of high event volume may take longer. Allow up to 24 hours for processing to finish before contacting Pendo support. Reports, widgets, and segments that use data that precedes the oldest processed day are incomplete until data processing catches up with their selected date range.
Current usage for existing pages, features, and track events
Pendo continuously collects events as visitors use your product and you send track events. These events are processed in bulk every hour at the top of the hour. It can take as long as 15 minutes for new usage data to appear in the UI. This only impacts reports and segments where the date range includes "Today".
Processing data used for guide-targeting segments
Certain data is eligible for use in segments that activate guides. In some cases, this data is time-sensitive. For example, "page viewed ever" can be used to include a visitor in a segment and deploy a guide when they visit a page for the first time or in combination with other usage triggers. For the best user experience, the guide should deploy when the visitor becomes eligible. After Pendo processes data for the guide-targeting segment, the visitor must refresh the page or programmatically load guides, e.g. calling pendo.loadGuides(), for the guide to display.
A separate processing fast-track makes this tagged usage data available for guide eligibility calculations before it is visible in the analytics UI. This faster processing takes less than 5 seconds.
If you change rules in a guide-targeting segment, it takes up to 15 seconds for the guide to appear for the updated segment.
If you tag a new page or feature and use it in a guide-targeting segment, the tag must process before it is used by the guide eligibility calculation. This sequence of processing events is highly variable. You should not expect your guide targeting segment to behave as expected until the page or feature tag finishes processing.
Learn more about segments and guide targeting in the Segments article.
POST to the Pendo API
Subscriptions with access to the Pendo API can send some data directly to Pendo. For example, a POST to the metadata endpoint can add or update metadata for an existing visitor or account at any time. Data sent to Pendo using the API is visible almost immediately, as soon as it's completed the necessary processing to appear in the UI.