Segment
This page describes how to use Census with Segment.
In this guide, we will show you how to connect Segment to Census and create your first sync.
- Have your Segment account ready.
- Have the proper credentials to access to your data source. See our docs for each supported data source for further information:
- Create a new HTTP API Source in the Connections page of Segment (found under "Server")
- Name your connection and optionally label it (We recommend "Census" for ease of debugging)
- Copy your write key from the saved connection
- Navigate to the Connections Page of Census, click on the "Add Service" button and select Segment, and past the created token in the designated field
- Census will convert this right here and now you're all set with the Segment Connection!
Don't worry if the credential here is different!
Note: Census's permissions will be the same as this Segment token.
If you don't already have a data warehouse connected, follow one of our short guides depending on your data warehouse service:
You should now have a connection to Segment and to your data warehouse! Let's start syncing user data.
Here you will have to write SQL queries to select the data you want to join to a Segment User. Here are some ideas of data you should select.
- User with product usage properties
- User with the organization they are associated to
- User with the classification coming from a User Classification model
In the " What data do you want to sync?" section
- For the Connection, select the data warehouse you connected in step 2
- For the Source, select the model you created in step 3
Next up is the "Where do you want to sync data to?" section
- Pick the name of Segment service from step 1 as the Connection, right now the object we can sync to is limited to User****
For the " How should changes to the source be synced?" section
- Pick the right mapping key, we can sync based on userId from the Segment Identify call or to the device: AnonymousId
Finally, select the fields you want to update in the Mapper in the "Which Fields should be updated?" section.
- Here simply map the fields from your model to the Segment User Properties you want to sync to. You can specify specific properties or "Sync All Properties" such that new columns in the source table will be created on the Segment User object according to the normalization rule you apply🪄
The end result should look something like this:
Click the Next button to see the final preview which will have a recap of what will happen when you start the sync.
That's it! In 4 steps, you've connected Segment and started syncing user properties data from your warehouse 🎉
Segment support is pretty straight forward! Let us know if you want Census to support more objects for Segment.
Object Name | Supported? |
User | ✅ |
Track (Event) | ✅ |
Like most Events, Segment Track Events have the standard set of fields. Though the
event type field is the only required field, you should typically set at least all the standard event fields.event(required) - This is the event type fieldanonymousIdoruserId(one of these required) - This indicates which user caused or triggered the eventtimestamp- The time the event occurred. If not provided, Segment will use their server time when the event was received by them (which can be quite different from when it happened, particularly if you're using Census to backfill events).contextandintegrations- Optional event context and controls. See Arrays and Nested Objects for more information on how to create objects to map to these fields.
For more information on the meaning of different Segment fields, take a look at their documentation.
Behaviors | Supported? | Objects |
Update or Create | ✅ | User |
Append | ✅ | Track (Event) |