Systems and methods are disclosed for processing events having raw machine data associated with a timestamp using one or more pivot identifiers and one or more step identifiers to generate one or more journey instances. Based on the one or more pivot identifier field, the system can relate events that have a common field value for the pivot identifier field. Based on the one or more step identifiers, the system can group the related events into a subset of events. Using the subset of events, the system can build a journey instance.