# Pathways

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A pathway shows the routes users take through your product—the sequence of views they move through before or after a page you choose. Product Analytics renders these journeys as a Sankey diagram, so you can see the most common paths into and out of a view, follow how users flow from one page to the next, and spot where they leave along the way.

Pathways are built on the sessions and views your RUM SDK collects. See [the data model](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/product-analytics/getting-started.md#the-data-model) for how these events work.

Funnels or Pathways?

Use a [funnel](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/product-analytics/funnels.md) when you already know the flow you want to measure—you define its steps and track conversion and drop-off across them. Reach for a pathway when you don't—you anchor on one view and let Product Analytics surface the routes users actually take around it.

## What you need[​](#what-you-need "Direct link to What you need")

* The [`PRODUCT-ANALYTICS:READ`](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/aaa/access-control/permissions/permissions-list.md) permission.
* A Coralogix application instrumented with the [Real User Monitoring](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/rum/getting-started/real-user-monitoring.md) SDK, generating view events for the pages you want to trace.

## Trace a pathway[​](#trace-a-pathway "Direct link to Trace a pathway")

1. In **Product Analytics**, open **Pathways**, and select the application to analyze from the selector at the top. A pathway traces one application at a time.
2. Set the **Path direction**—**After** to follow the paths users take *from* a view, or **Before** to trace the paths that led *to* it. The view picker is labeled **Starting point** when tracing after and **End point** when tracing before.
3. Select the **Starting point** (or **End point**) to open the view picker, then choose the single view to anchor the pathway on. The picker lists the application's views with their session counts and is searchable—type to find a view. A pathway is always anchored on one view.
4. Set **Steps to trace** (1–7) to control how many steps out from the anchor the Sankey extends.
5. Set **Paths per step** (**Top 1**–**Top 8**) to control how many of the most common paths appear at each step.
6. Set the period to analyze with the time range picker.

The Sankey renders as you adjust the controls.

[![Opening Pathways from the Product Analytics menu to trace a pathway](/docs/assets/images/pathways-overview-b333cf0ea6d045f284c2d76449ecf7e8.webp)](https://coralogix.com/docs/assets/images/pathways-overview-b333cf0ea6d045f284c2d76449ecf7e8.webp)

## Read the Sankey[​](#read-the-sankey "Direct link to Read the Sankey")

Each column is a step out from the anchor view. Tracing **after**, the columns read **Starting point**, then **Step +1**, **Step +2**, and so on; tracing **before**, they read **End point**, then **Step -1**, **Step -2**. Each node is a view, and the width of the flow between two nodes is the number of sessions that moved from one to the next—so the thickest ribbons are the most-traveled paths. Hover a node or flow to see its view and session count.

## See where users drop off[​](#see-where-users-drop-off "Direct link to See where users drop off")

Where sessions leave the path rather than continue to the next step, a **Drop-off** node absorbs them, so you can see how many users abandon the journey at each step. When tracing before, its mirror—a **Session start** node—marks the sessions that began at that point with no earlier page.

## Narrow the data[​](#narrow-the-data "Direct link to Narrow the data")

Narrow the sessions a pathway includes with the global filter, the same one used by heatmaps and funnels. Select an attribute and the values to keep, and the Sankey recomputes over the matching sessions. The available attributes are **Browser**, **OS**, **Device type**, **Platform**, **Country**, **City**, **URL path**, **URL domain**, **URL host**, **Referrer URL**, **User email**, **Account ID**, **Account name**, **App version**, and **Environment**.

## Next steps[​](#next-steps "Direct link to Next steps")

* Measure conversion across a defined flow: [Funnels](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/product-analytics/funnels.md).
* See where users click and scroll on a page: [Heatmaps](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/product-analytics/heatmaps.md).