Release 1.24.0 bis – 12 April 2021

[paolodamico]

Context:

• One of the main questions of the board meeting was startups vs enterprises. Key piece of the puzzle for that is VPC.
• Some questionmarks around data consistency for clickhouse last week
• Two new starters (Buddy and Sam)

Support hero:
Paolo

VPC

• Wrap up full automation of the helm chart. Set it up so that when you deploy the stack clickhouse is automatically started and wired up to our app in one step. This will be required for a one click deploy using cloudformation using EKS as well as GKE on GCP later
• Push for GCP Partner program (application submitted, there will probably be back and forth on Revenue)
• Setup cloudformation for EKS for one click deploy

Plugins

• Stabilise the plugin API. Last chance to change the plugin structure plugin-server#242 - imports, meta (Clean up extensions approach plugin-server#274), types, version requirements (Minimum PostHog version for plugins plugin-server#12), etc
• Figure out the architecture for queueing events for batch-uploading to an export destination... and then write a few proper data import/export plugins. S3 Plugin request: S3 plugin-repository#12. Postgres Plugin request: Postgres plugin-repository#11. Snowflake Plugin request: Snowflake plugin-repository#13. Mongodb. Etc.
• Plugin logs (Plugin log entries #3482)
• Remove plugins opt-in behavior (Enable plugins for everyone #3557)
• Optional: introducing plugins during onboarding flow Introduce plugins into the onboarding flow #3764

Core analytics

• Data issues: Retention + Funnel query returns suspect results #3728 + Filtering out test accounts not fully working? #3668 + refreshing dashboard

• Trailing DAU/WAU/MAU Add trailing DAU/WAU/MAU #3638

• Break down more than 20 values Break down more than 20 values #3589

• dashboard version history Dashboard Sharing Scope #3551

• Check on experiments

• For Sam/Buddy:

  • Emails (as suggested by paolo)
  • Perhaps Interconnect more analytics features #3765 - interconnect the app more?

Note: this is "1.24.0 bis" as we've decided to try monthly releases (per https://github.com/PostHog/ops/issues/207)

[paolodamico]

General discussion points

• Get emails working. Re-enable the ingestion event reminder (https://github.com/PostHog/posthog-cloud/pull/94) & weekly email report. As suggested by @macobo, happy to work with one of our new starters and/or @macobo. Rationale: the email reminder ingestion has proven successful in increasing our activation conversion (at least in 1 step of the process), and the weekly email report is a test to drive engagement up.
• @EDsCODE I was going to add related to dashboards a few things that I think are going to push better engagement: sharing dashboards via email, Slack previews, collaboration/comments [intertwined with the version history that you've prioritized]. Let me know if you want to work together on this.
• We have a few experiments running (i.e. remove-shownas, funnel-trends-1269, filter_by_session_props, 3275-formulas, new-onboarding-2822, save-cohort-on-modal) that have also been running for quite some time now. We need to check results and take relevant actions. I would like to encourage everyone who created an experiment to do a write up in the experiments repo (@kpthatsme has created a pretty useful template).

Myself

List up for discussion, not a todo list yet.

• Support hero instead of below?
• Tackle Super guided query running #2984. Rationale: this is a core feature (most used feature) that causes confusion some time, or can be hard to understand for newcomers. I believe that a significant improvement in this experience here can help drive both activation & overall retention. There's also the consideration that a solution here could help us better serve non-technical users.
• Toolbar improvements. General UI/UX. In-place stats (e.g. changes in WAUs/DAUs). Rationale: great engagement touchpoint right in our user's environment, could be a great driver of more engagement. Also a fairly used feature. Also, from sales calls we know that users do not understand this feature unless we walk them through it.
• Churn prevention. Investigate why are users drop us, and propose/implement solutions to address it. Rationale: one key drivers of retention and worrying signal is users who have been retained for a "long" time and then drop.
• Related to a point above, work with @macobo on filter_by_session_props & new-onboarding-2822 experiment results.
• Work with whomever picks it up on the features interconnection Interconnect more analytics features #3765
• Improvements/fixes from @corywatilo's list. Rationale: overall user experience, geared towards better retention.

[macobo]

General priorities

We will have two new people starting the next iteration. Would be great to hand them some high-impact projects that get them familiar with different parts of the product.

My suggestions:

• Emails (as suggested by paolo)
• Perhaps Interconnect more analytics features #3765 - interconnect the app more?

Karl

After last weeks plugins/ingestion are in a better place technically. I think it's time to get more people using them.

Priorities (plugins):

1. Plugins 1.0 - increase adoption Get more people familiar with plugins on cloud by introducing them during onboarding flow Introduce plugins into the onboarding flow #3764
2. Performance We don't have a large-size posthog postgres installation - let's create one via a plugin https://github.com/PostHog/posthog/issues/3762
3. Plugins 1.0 Downsampling plugin Plugin for pilots/trials that downsamples data #3365
4. Plugins 1.0 Figure out architecture for retries in plugin server: Kafka last mile batching & retrying processEvent plugin-server#273

Session recording:

1. Use plugin (1) to finally do Multi-day date filter in sessions #3471 (multi-day filter in sessions) and verify it works on larger instances by default. This has been a frequently requested feature.

Other:

1. Actions on self-hosted can be a pain on moderately-sized instances after recent changes. A user did a lot of debugging for us, would be worth taking a look: Re-calculating action events can be a costly operation #3753, verifying and adding some indexes.

[mariusandra]

If I'll be working on Plugins, then these are the most important things to get done:

1. Stabilise the plugin API. Last chance to change the plugin structure plugin-server#242 - imports, meta (Clean up extensions approach plugin-server#274), types, version requirements (Minimum PostHog version for plugins plugin-server#12), etc
2. Maybe deferred by Add index to events.created_at #3767? Action mapping in the plugin server Match actions to events on the fly plugin-server#235 - The async action mapping is a problem for a lot of self hosted users. I've also been hearing problems with webhooks for a while. We should fix this once and for all.
3. Figure out the architecture for queueing events for batch-uploading to an export destination... and then write a few proper data import/export plugins. S3 Plugin request: S3 plugin-repository#12. Postgres Plugin request: Postgres plugin-repository#11. Snowflake Plugin request: Snowflake plugin-repository#13. Mongodb. Etc.

Other integrations:

• Package.swift problem still with iOS - Error importing with SPM posthog-ios#13 (comment)
• Ruby update request (get_distinct_id) add the function of get distinct id posthog-ruby#3 -- could also get feature flag support

I'd also like to tack on a few things I promised to look at for some customers (or at least make issues for them):

• Custom columns in the events table Closes #1534 Adds events column config field in user model. #2268
• Make actions that filter with just properties and don't require specifying an event name
• "Save as action" for any set of filters.
• Toolbar heatmap URL wildcards (show all elements for /user/*, not just /user/123) Aggregate statistics for pages with similar URLs on the toolbar #1411

[EDsCODE]

Misc issues:

• clickhouse data integrity issues
• funnel query suspect results Funnel query returns suspect results #3728
• filter test accounts Filtering out test accounts not fully working? #3668

Dashboards:

• refresh problems Refresh all dashboard items #3609
• dashboard version history Dashboard Sharing Scope #3551
• dashboard insight presentation view Dashboard Sharing Scope #3551

[timgl]

I'm going to take myself out of availability. I didn't manage to allocate enough time to programming this sprint to be productive and with 2 new starters next week I don't think that'll improve.

Core analytics:
Some parity stuff:

• Trailing DAU/MAU/WAU (requested by beeperhq and two other tickets): Add trailing DAU/WAU/MAU #3638
• Roll out formulas to everyone
• Figure out some discrepancies in data

[Twixes]

Myself:

• Plugin logs (Plugin log entries #3482) (got dropped this sprint because of a rework of GeoIP jumping in its place - which did ship Add built-in GeoIP capabilities plugin-server#247)
• Remove plugins opt-in behavior (Enable plugins for everyone #3557) - but possibly still keeping them as beta?
• Ship "a member joined your organization" email ("New member joined your organization" email #3509)

And then happy to work on take on some stuff listed by people above.

[kpthatsme]

For me this sprint on the product side–

I'm going to be focused on a few things:

• Helping folks get in-flight experiments written up, resolved and logged in the experiment repo - thanks @paolodamico for helping push this forward!
• Do some digging around cloud stability and its impact on business metrics
• Work w/ you all to understand why this ingestion dip occurred (likely an email issue) and make sure we get back to where we've been

[fuziontech]

For me on this sprint:

VPC VPC VPC:

• Wrap up full automation of the helm chart. Set it up so that when you deploy the stack clickhouse is automatically started and wired up to our app in one step. This will be required for a one click deploy using cloudformation using EKS as well as GKE on GCP later
• Push for GCP Partner program (application submitted, there will probably be back and forth on Revenue)
• Setup cloudformation for EKS for one click deploy

[paolodamico]

This has been released, closing.