Understanding the Difference Between Participants and Unique Participants

Question

What is the difference between the value in participants and unique participants in Tech Insights Analytics?

Answer

The meaning of these two terms depends on the data being examined:

Per Meeting

In a per-meeting context, the Unique Participant is the entity that participated in the meeting, regardless of how many times they joined and left. In the same context, any call into the meeting will count as a Participant - for example:

Example: A meeting takes place with 8 people; there are therefore 8 Unique Participants. During the course of the call, two people dropped their connections and rejoined. There were therefore 10 Participants, but still only 8 Unique Participants.

Data Covering a Time Interval

When dealing with data specified by a time interval, the term Unique Participant refers to each party seen once or more times during the interval.

Participant, however, refers to the total count of parties (whether repeated or not) over the time interval.