Analytics Kotlin Mixpanel Plugin

Mixpanel is an event-tracking and segmentation platform for your web and mobile apps. By analyzing the actions your users perform, you can gain a better understanding to drive retention, engagement, and conversion. The client-side Mixpanel Destination code is open-source.

Segment’s Mixpanel destination plugin code is open source and available on GitHub.

Getting Started

1. From the Segment app Destinations page click on Add Destination.
2. Search for Mixpanel in the Destinations Catalog and confirm the Source to connect to.
3. Copy your Mixpanel “API Secret” and “Token”, and paste them into the Connection Settings in Segment.
4. Enable the destination to start sending your data to Mixpanel.

Adding the dependency

To install the Segment-Mixpanel integration, simply add this line to your gradle file:

implementation 'com.segment.analytics.kotlin.destinations:mixpanel:<latest_version>'

Or the following for Kotlin DSL

implementation('com.segment.analytics.kotlin.destinations:mixpanel:<latest_version>')

Using the Plugin in your App

Open the file where you setup and configure the Analytics-Kotlin library. Add this plugin to the list of imports.

import com.segment.analytics.kotlin.destinations.mixpanel.MixpanelDestination

Just under your Analytics-Kotlin library setup, call analytics.add(plugin = ...) to add an instance of the plugin to the Analytics timeline.

    analytics = Analytics("<YOUR WRITE KEY>", applicationContext) {
        this.flushAt = 3
        this.trackApplicationLifecycleEvents = true
    }
    analytics.add(plugin = MixpanelDestination(applicationContext))

Your events will now begin to flow to Mixpanel in device mode.

Identify

If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Identify method does. An example call would look like:

analytics.identify("user-123", buildJsonObject {
    put("username", "MisterWhiskers")
    put("email", "hello@test.com")
    put("plan", "premium")
});

The first thing you’ll want to do is to identify your users so Mixpanel knows who they are. You’ll use the Identify method to accomplish this which takes the unique userId of a user and any traits you know about them.

As soon as you have a userId for a visitor that was previously anonymous you’ll need to alias their old anonymous id to the new userId. In Mixpanel only one anonymous user history can be merged to one identified user. For that reason you should only call alias once, right after a user registered, but before the first identify.

When you call the Identify method from the client in either a browser using Analytics.js or one a mobile SDKs, several things occur: Segment recognizes and translates the special traits so that they fit the expectations of Mixpanel’s API. The table below shows the mappings. Pass the key on the left and Segment transforms it to the key on the right before sending to Mixpanel.

People

Segment doesn’t send data to Mixpanel People by default. To enable Mixpanel People, change the “Use Mixpanel People” setting in the Mixpanel Destination settings in Segment.

To add people properties in Mixpanel before you know the user’s unique database userId, you can identify traits without the userId.

Group

Group calls are sent to Mixpanel if, and only if,

1. The Group Identifier Traits setting has one or more traits saved in the destination settings for Mixpanel.
2. You have created a group key of the same name in your Mixpanel project settings.
3. A Group trait with the same name as one of the configured Group Identifier Traits is sent with the group call.

analytics.group("user-123", buildJsonObject {
    put("username", "MisterWhiskers")
    put("email", "hello@test.com")
    put("plan", "premium")
});

Mixpanel supports multiple definitions of groups. For more information see Mixpanel’s Group Analytics documentation.

If the group call does not have a group trait that matches the Group Identifier Traits setting, then the event will be ignored.

Register Super Properties

By default, each trait (that is, properties in an identify call) is registered as a super property. This doesn’t require passing a userId in the identify call. You can pass a traits object by itself and it will still register the traits as super properties.

Disable Set All Traits as Super Properties or People Properties By Default to disable the default behavior and register super properties explicitly. For more information, see Explicitly set People Properties and Super Properties.

Set People Properties

If you’ve enabled Mixpanel People in your Segment settings, Segment calls Mixpanel’s people.set with the same traits object. There’s no need for an additional API call to populate Mixpanel People.

Disable Set All Traits as Super Properties or People Properties By Default to disable the default behavior and register super properties explicitly. Segment automatically includes any trait on an identify that matches one of Mixpanel’s special properties, which you can see in the table above. For more information, see Explicitly set People Properties and Super Properties.

Track

If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Track method does. An example call would look like:

analytics.track("View Product", buildJsonObject {
    put("productId", 123)
    put("productName" "Striped trousers")
});

Because Mixpanel is an event tracking analytics tool, you’ll want to track your user’s actions. The more useful events you track, the better Mixpanel becomes.

You should use the track method to accomplish this. The Segment track method maps events and event properties directly to Mixpanel events and event properties.

Track Charge

If Mixpanel People is enabled in your Segment settings and you include an event property called revenue, Segment tracks a charge to the current user.

Reserved Properties

There are two strings to avoid when naming event properties that will be sent to Mixpanel: length and bucket. length is interpreted as the JavaScript .length method, which causes the mixpanel.track call to fail silently. bucket is a reserved property that was used in the early days of Mixpanel. If you include a property called bucket in your events, it will not show up in the UI. However, it will not cause the mixpanel.track call to fail.

Explicitly Set People Properties and Super Properties

Previously, Segment set all traits and properties as both Super Properties and People Properties (If you had Mixpanel People enabled). Now Mixpanel allows you to segment your reports by both People Properties and Super Properties. To give you better precision and control over what property or trait gets set as a Super Property or People Property, you can disable Set All Traits as Super Properties or People Properties By Default and pass in the properties or traits that you want to send to Mixpanel as People or Super Properties as shown below. Segment passes through all of Mixpanel’s special traits as People Properties so you only need to add the ones that aren’t on this list.

Incrementing events

You don’t need to add extra code to increment event counts for Mixpanel people, as long as they are “known users”. Supply the events that should be incremented.

You can find this in the Advanced Options of your Mixpanel settings on your Segment Destinations page.

For each event name listed, Segment calls Mixpanel increment, and set a user trait of Last + .

For example, if you add Logged In to the list of increment events, Segment increments a user trait called Logged In and set a trait called Last Logged In with the current date and time.

If you’d like to add an increment for viewing a specific page or screen, ensure you have the setting “Track Named Pages” selected and use the dynamically generated event name under “Events to Increment in People.” For example, .page('Signup') would translate to “Viewed Signup Page” and .screen('Listing') would translate to “Viewed Listing Screen”.

Remember, Segment sends one event per page call.

Incrementing properties

To increment at the property level, tell Segment which properties you want to increment using the Properties to increment setting and Segment calls Mixpanel’s increment for you when you attach a number to the property (for example, 'items purchased': 5)

Screen

When you use the Mixpanel destination in Device-mode, Segment sends Screen events to Mixpanel as follows:

• If you select “Track all Pages to Mixpanel”, all screen calls regardless of how you have customized it will send a Loaded A Screen. Even if you have the other options enabled, Segment sends this call to prevent double counting your pageviews.

• If you select “Track Categorized Pages to Mixpanel”, Segment sends a Viewed [category] Screen event.

• If you select “Track Named Pages to Mixpanel”, Segment sends a Viewed [name] Screen event.

In short, Segment sends one event to Mixpanel per screen call.

When Will I See Data from my Mobile App?

If you already have an app deployed with the Segment library, and you just enabled Mixpanel mobile, it can take up to an hour for all your mobile users to refresh their Segment settings cache, and learn about the new service that you want to send to.

After the settings cache refreshes, the library starts to send data to Mixpanel.

Also worth noting, Mixpanel’s SDK only submits requests to the Mixpanel servers when the app is backgrounded. That means you may see events in your Segment debugger while testing, but those requests won’t actually be forwarded to Mixpanel until the app gets sent to the background.

If you’re testing in Xcode remember you must first background the app, then the events will show up in Mixpanel. If you terminate the session without backgrounding those events will be lost.

I’m seeing events come into Mixpanel but not people.

1. You’ll need to make sure you’re using identify. A Mixpanel track doesn’t create users in Mixpanel People.
2. Make sure to turn on the “People” setting so that all of your identify calls will be sent to Mixpanel’s People feature.
3. Make sure you disable the default filter in the Mixpanel People Explore tab.

Push Notifications

Push notifications are only available for projects bundling the Segment-Mixpanel SDK.