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Custom events are used to track important customer behaviors and system events throughout your app. In Atlas, they can be used in three places:

In this article, we'll review best practices for: 

common events for different business models

Sending events via the client typically provides more context, while sending events via the server is typically more reliable.

information isn't stored in your database (eg, page views, button clicks, page scroll length, etc.)

it's easier to send information from the client (eg, UTM tag, device, user agent, etc.)

There are six different event types you can call with Atlas: 

. Each one answers a different question about a customer:

: which page (web) / screen (app) are they on?

Use the "Object-Action" naming convention for events when possible. For instance, "Account Created," "Customer Signed Up," and "Product Searched."

When naming properties, use snake case (eg, 

Common events for different business models

Two common business models we encounter are ecommerce and B2B SaaS. Here are some common events for each type of business:

 Products Searched, Product List Viewed, Product List Filtered

 Product Clicked, Product Viewed, Product Added, Product Removed, Cart Viewed, Checkout Started, Checkout Step Viewed, Checkout Step Completed, Payment Info Entered, Order Completed, Order Updated, Order Refunded, Order Cancelled

 Coupon Entered, Coupon Applied, Coupon Denied, Coupon Removed

 Product Added to Wishlist, Product Removed from Wishlist, WIshlist Product Added to Cart

Account Created, Account Deleted, Signed Up, Signed In, Signed Out, Invite Sent, Account Added User, Account Removed User, Trial Started, Trial Ended

Best practices for custom event types, naming, when to use JS vs API, and common events

Custom Events: Best Practices

Custom events provide a generic structure that allows you to send key events in your customers’ journey to Atlas so that it can be visualized in the customer timeline, used as a trigger for workflows (eg, in Chatbots), and used as a search filter criteria.

This article will explain the structure of custom events and give a brief primer on how you add them. For instrumentation best practices for custom events for your product, take a look at 

. For technical details on how to implement custom events, see 

Custom events have the following basic structure:

# Atlas event
{
    // Atlas object type to be associated with the event
    "objectType": "CUSTOMER", 
    
    // Atlas object ID
    "objectId": "c19a7d78-37a1-4ee4-9e68-aae0d4c93f7e",

    // ID of the Atlas Objects within any system of record - eg - CRM, Application Database
    "externalId": "12123", 
    
    // expressive action name that can capture the esssence of the tracked activity
    "name": "Employee Paid", 
    
    // description of event hown in the main body of the event
    // could be formatted using HTML
    "description": "<p>🎉 Congratulations, today is your payday! <i>$5,393.17</i> was deposited into your bank account.<p>",

    // optional: details about the tracked activity
    "payload": { 
          "shifts_completed": 22,
          "overtime_accumulated": 0,
          "tax_at_source": 12,
    },
    
    // optional: URL or unicode character that can be rendered in the agent timeline so that your agents can recognize the type of event effortlessly
    "icon": "url",
}

The above event would show up in the customer timeline like the following:

Custom events can also be shown in the timeline and info pane of session recordings.

There are two ways to add an event to Atlas:

 create a custom event  that can be sent through a web request

(If you are new to instrumenting your app with events, take a look at our 

 page where you can specify where they are shown and get a quick read on their structure.

If you’ve got any questions about how to best setup events for your company, feel free to reach out to us via chat or email at support@getatlas.io.

Custom Events

Dynamic Custom Fields populate dropdowns dynamically with data pulled from your database or CRM. 

You can also define field behavior, labels, and access rules directly in the Custom Fields section of the app.

Choose a dynamic field type (e.g., DynamicMultiSelect or DynamicList)

Dynamic Custom Fields work great in different industries. E-commerce businesses can show a "Product Category" field when customers report order issues. SaaS companies can display a "Platform Version" field for technical bug reports. EdTech platforms can add a "Course Name" field when students ask about specific classes.