ServerOwl™ Accounts, Campaigns & Properties - What's the difference?

Last modified: March 10, 2019

ServerOwl supports three levels of Hierarchical objects. The top most objects are referred to as Accounts. The direct descendants of Accounts are Campaigns and the subordinate of the Campaigns are called Properties.

To get the most out of your ServerOwl account, you should structure your accounts to best match your own personal structure, and to do that, you should have a good understanding of what these objects are and how to best adapt them.

Accounts

At the top most level is Accounts. Accounts can have multiple site users and any site user may have access to multiple Accounts. This m:n relationship between site users and Accounts is the main consideration when structuring your data, as you have the ability to give another site user access to one Account and not another.

There is quite a bit of overlap between Accounts and Campaigns, as both can have attached servers to monitor for example. They both have the ability to collect site traffic information and both can be used to monitor online advertising.

When determining whether or not to create another Account or a Campaign, the main difference is the site user access, and the fact that Accounts can have many descendants and giving a site user access to the Account will also give them access to all of its children. The second most prevalent distinction is the fact that Account can have Account like children, while Campaigns cannot and if you are thinking of adding similar functional children, if you use an Campaign to represent the data, then you'll be prevented from doing so.

Campaigns

Campaigns are similar to both Accounts and Properties at the same time, and therefore a Campaign can act as an Account or as a Property. This means that Campaigns sit in-between Accounts and Properties.

The main design use of a Campaign is to represent an advertising campaign or to represent an online advertiser such as Facebook or Google. If you have an online ad, you can separate the different ads by creating a different Campaign, and then be able to compare the metrics from each Campaign.

A Campaign can also represent a subordinate server in a clustered or as a sub level website. For example if you have many websites and represent your main public website as the Account, then the Campaign could represent a different website on a separate sub-domain, or potentially an individual server within the cluster.

Properties

Properties are designed to be different from Accounts and Campaigns by the fact that they are unable to attach a server. They are similar to Campaigns in the fact that they can separate information from the Campaign level in a similar way that Campaigns do for Accounts.

If the parent Account is designed to monitor the online advertising of a Client, then the Campaign would be designed to monitor each separate ad or online advertiser. In that case the Properties would be designed to separate different advertising groups, such as different keywords or different advertising image sizes or different defined audience lists.

If the parent Campaign is designed to monitor a server, then the use of Properties is to differentiate between difference operations on that single server. For example if you are using scripts to perform different periodical operations, such as backing up your database, or to synchronise files to a subordinate server, then you can use the ServerOwl RESTful API to record the success or failure of the operation and be notified of any change or absence of calls.

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