Product concepts

Events

An event is a named action recorded against a distinct_id. In Sankofa, events are sent with:

• event_name
• distinct_id
• properties
• default_properties
• lib_version

Typical examples are page views, signups, purchases, invite accepts, onboarding steps, and API failure markers.

People profiles

People data is stored separately from the event stream. The people transport updates the profile record for a distinct_id using a flat string property map.

Aliases

Aliases let you connect an anonymous identifier to a known user identifier. The SDKs automatically queue an alias when identify() changes the active identity from the anonymous ID to the user ID.

Default properties

Default properties are the contextual fields the SDKs collect and send beside event-specific properties. The engine later promotes high-value defaults into indexed fields such as city, region, country, OS, and device model.

Sessions

The SDKs store and refresh a session ID locally. It injects $session_id into every tracked event. The engine promotes that property into a session-level field for query correlation and session-based analysis.

Why this matters in the dashboard

Those four concepts drive the rest of the product surface:

• events power trend, funnel, flow, and retention queries
• people profiles and aliases support identity stitching
• default properties make geography and device segmentation easier
• session IDs connect analytics events within a single user visit