Core Concepts: The Cano Analytics Data Model Explained

Before you instrument your first event or build your first dashboard, it pays to understand how Cano Analytics models your data. Cano’s design is intentionally simple: a small set of well-defined concepts fits together in predictable ways, so the skills you learn on one part of the platform transfer everywhere. This page walks through each concept, explains how they relate, and points you toward the practical guides that put them to use.

Workspace

A workspace is the top-level organizational unit in Cano Analytics. Every piece of data — events, users, dashboards, reports, and API keys — belongs to exactly one workspace. Workspaces are completely isolated from one another, so teams or projects that need a strict data boundary should each have their own. You can invite multiple members to a workspace and assign them roles (Admin, Editor, or Viewer) to control what they can see and change. Most organizations create one workspace per product environment (e.g. Acme Production and Acme Staging) to keep live and test data separate.

Events

An event is a record of something that happened in your product. Every event has three required fields:

Field	Description
`name`	A snake_case string identifying the action (e.g. `page_viewed`, `purchase_completed`).
`timestamp`	The UTC time the action occurred. Set automatically by the SDK, or provided by you.
`user_id`	The identifier of the user who performed the action.

Events are immutable once written — they represent a factual record of what happened. You send events to Cano using the track() method in any SDK or by posting to the Events API endpoint.

Tracking an Event

cano.track('purchase_completed', {
  userId: 'usr_456',
  properties: {
    order_id: 'ord_789',
    amount: 149.00,
    currency: 'USD',
    items: 3,
  },
});

Users

A user in Cano represents a person (or account) that interacts with your product. You create and update user records by calling identify(), which associates a stable user_id with a set of traits — descriptive attributes like name, email, plan, or signup date.

Identifying a User

cano.identify(
    user_id='usr_456',
    traits={
        'name': 'Jordan Lee',
        'email': '[email protected]',
        'plan': 'pro',
        'signed_up_at': '2024-01-15T09:00:00Z',
    }
)

Once you call identify(), Cano automatically links every future (and past) event that carries the same user_id to that user profile. This lets you segment event data by user traits — for example, “show me all purchase_completed events from users on the Pro plan.”

You don’t need to call identify() before sending events. If Cano receives an event for an unknown user_id, it creates an anonymous user record automatically. You can enrich it with traits later.

Properties

Properties are key-value pairs attached to events and users that add context to raw actions. They’re the primary way you answer “who did what, and under what circumstances?” Cano supports four property types:

Type	Example Value	Use Case
String	`"pro"`, `"organic"`	Plans, sources, categories
Number	`149.00`, `3`	Revenue, counts, scores
Boolean	`true`, `false`	Feature flags, consent status
Date (ISO 8601)	`"2024-05-10T14:32:07Z"`	Timestamps, trial end dates

Properties on events describe the action itself (amount, currency, page_url). Properties on users (called traits) describe the person (plan, country, company_size). Both are queried the same way in the dashboard.

Dashboards

A dashboard is a collection of charts, each powered by a query against your event data. Dashboards update in real time as new events arrive, and you can pin any number of them to your workspace home screen for at-a-glance monitoring. Each chart on a dashboard is defined by:

An event name to query (e.g. purchase_completed)
Optional filters on event or user properties (e.g. plan = 'pro')
A visualization type (line, bar, funnel, pie, or number)
A time range and granularity (hourly, daily, weekly)

Dashboards are shareable — you can give anyone on your team a direct link, or embed a read-only view in an internal tool.

Data Sources

Data sources are external systems connected to Cano so their data can enrich your event analytics. Instead of rebuilding everything inside Cano, you bring in context from where it already lives. Cano supports three categories of data source:

Databases — PostgreSQL, MySQL, BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift
SaaS Tools — Stripe, Salesforce, HubSpot, Intercom
Cloud Storage — Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage (CSV/JSON imports)

Once connected, data source tables appear alongside your event data in the query builder, enabling joins like “show me revenue per user segment from Stripe, broken down by sign-up source from Cano events.”

Reports

A report is a saved query or a snapshot of a dashboard, designed for sharing and scheduling. Where dashboards show live data, reports capture a point-in-time view that can be reproduced, versioned, and delivered automatically. You can:

Schedule a report to run daily, weekly, or monthly and deliver it via email or Slack
Share a report link with stakeholders who don’t have a Cano login
Export report data as CSV or JSON for use in other tools

Reports reference the same underlying event data and data sources as dashboards, so there’s no duplication of setup work.

How Events, Users, and Properties Relate

The table below summarizes the relationship between the three core data objects you’ll work with most often.

Concept	Belongs To	Linked Via	Example
Event	Workspace	`user_id`	`purchase_completed` by `usr_456`
User	Workspace	`user_id`	`usr_456` with trait `plan: "pro"`
Event Property	Event	Event record	`amount: 149.00` on `purchase_completed`
User Trait	User	User record	`country: "US"` on `usr_456`

Every event is linked to a user through the shared user_id. This join is what lets Cano answer questions like “how many Pro-plan users completed a purchase this week?” — it’s reading event records and filtering by the traits stored on the linked user profiles.

Data Retention: By default, Cano retains raw event data for 24 months. Aggregated chart data is retained indefinitely. You can configure custom retention windows in Settings → Data Management. Deleting a workspace permanently removes all associated events, users, and reports.

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Learn the full track() API: naming conventions, property types, batching, and error handling.

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Core Concepts: The Cano Analytics Data Model Explained

Workspace

Events

Users

Properties

Dashboards

Data Sources

Reports

How Events, Users, and Properties Relate

Keep Going

Quick Start

Event Tracking

​Workspace

​Events

​Users

​Properties

​Dashboards

​Data Sources

​Reports

​How Events, Users, and Properties Relate

​Keep Going

Quick Start

Event Tracking

Workspace

Events

Users

Properties

Dashboards

Data Sources

Reports

How Events, Users, and Properties Relate

Keep Going