What is difference between "Parent author Role Name" and "User Role Name" in analytics?

Jocelyn · 2025-02-19T20:43:26+00:00

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I am refering to the post data source. I am confused between "Parent author Role Name" and "User Role Name". The documentation doesn't say anything about "Parent Author Role Name" - https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/1520-data-source-posts

I also noticed something called "Discussion Author Role Name " in Q&A source.

What is the difference and why it doesn't have consistent naming?

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paddykelly

Hey @Jocelyn. We recently rolled out a feature to allow users to reply in threads. Which means that instead of quoting your comment I can reply in a thread. That would make you the Parent Author to my comment, even though you were replying to a Discussion Author. I'm 99% sure that what's that this is. The reason the documentation is not up to date is because it is such a new feature.

As for why there is Discussion Author data in Q&A, I don't know if that is new. A Question is just another type of Discussion. Discussion Authors are people who start threads — Original Posters (or OP), as they call them in some communities.

Jocelyn

@paddykelly Thanks. How can I then see original discussion author of the post generated datasource? My goal is to export the data in excel to find out users who are not original posters of the question and help answer the question. I plan to do it by combination of analytics export and excel manipulation to find those users.

Branwyn T

Heyo @Jocelyn!

Discussion author is just the top-level author of a thread. It's the same data whether the post is a discussion, question, or idea, so it all bears the same name.

As for the rest of your question, we may need product to weigh in.

It does strike me that a couple of API calls might ultimately be your best approach here, rather than trying to coax analytics into providing this specific data point.