Release 1.23.0 – 15 March 2021

[paolodamico]

Priorities

• Plugins: still some stuff to do, obvious prio
• Retention analysis: priority b/c we need to know what our activation metric is, then maybe build into posthog
• VPC: within a week sales we'll be bottlenecked by this. Few more coming down the pipeline. (Billing etc not a prio)
• Dashboard collaboration / sharing metrics: Dashboard collaboration / sharing metrics #3344. Prio b/c it'll increase retention

Plugins: Michael/Karl second week
Prio: Get plugins out of beta

• Access control for plugins on the cloud (in progress) - Access control for plugins on cloud #3328
• Lazy VMs / Improve Reloads / Rolling Restarts - Lazy VMs / Improve reloads plugin-server#59
• GeoIP plugin on cloud - Automatic GeoIP Plugin plugin-server#115

Retention analysis: Eric/Paolo

• Find users that really retain: PostHog/retention#12

VPC: James G/Tim

• Wrap up backing up for Cloud
• Terraform scripts done
• Maybe put in license app

Dashboard collab/sharing: Tim/Eric (and Paolo support)

• Spec out highest impact 1-2 features & build it

Support hero: Marius

Notes from the meeting

• In retro we'll talk about 'icing on cake' we got done, also check if we got the prioritization right

[paolodamico]

New Features

The past release I worked with the help of the rest of you on exploring different ideas for what we can build next. I'm still finishing up research on each of the options, but I want to put forward an initial prioritization review based on our new prioritization strategy, without considering revenue numbers just yet. As I mentioned on the stand-up, I'd love to pair up with someone on each of the features we actually prioritize for building, so we can work out together everything from initial wireframes, user research, feature specs, design and actual build.

Initial Prioritization

1. Churn prediction & prevention: Allow analyzing cohorts (new users, active users, slipping away users) #3032
   • Target role: Non-technical roles + Analysts
   • Target company size: Startup (3) & Scaleup (3.5)
   • Revenue consideration: Likely no direct additional revenue, but would potentially increase retention & engagement, indirectly influencing revenue.
   • Preliminary result: From a strict customer perspective, it's probably a don't build right now. However, adding the additional consideration that this could probably drive our retention up in a substantial way, I would at least like to explore it further.
2. Retention leaderboard**: Idea: Retention leaderboard #2828
   • Target role: Non-technical PMs (more involved technical roles could definitely benefit from this, but based on customer calls, this doesn't seem like a top priority for most technical roles)
   • Target company size: Startup (3) & Scaleup (3.5)
   • Revenue consideration: Likely no direct additional revenue, but would potentially increase retention & engagement, indirectly influencing revenue.
   • Preliminary result: Probably don't build right now. There's one consideration around dogfooding which might change this.
3. Trigger-based workflow: Workflow triggers feature #3357
   • Target role: Technical engineers/PMs.
   • Target company size: Enthusiast (1) & Startup (3) (based too on the assumption that larger companies have already other workflows in place, or more complex requirements that we wouldn't initially address).
   • Revenue consideration: Likely no direct additional revenue, but would potentially increase retention & engagement, indirectly influencing revenue.
   • Preliminary result: Don't build right now (also consider more details on the issue)
4. Data taxonomy**: Taxonomy #3228
   • Target role: Technical engineers/PMs + Analysts.
   • Target company size: Scaleup (3.5) & Enterprise (3) (some startups have expressed interest but seems like the exception).
   • Revenue consideration: Could bring immediate new revenue stream (can be a premium feature, it's also commonly billed separately). Worth noting that while this would mean higher long-term value for customers, by design this feature would probably reduce event usage (eliminating redundancies, malformed events, up to turning off autocapture).
   • Preliminary result: Build
5. Dashboard collaboration / sharing metrics: Dashboard collaboration / sharing metrics #3344
   • Target role: Non-technical roles, enterprise procurement.
   • Target company size: Startup (3), Scaleup (3.5) & Enterprise (3).
   • Revenue consideration: Likely no direct additional revenue, but would potentially increase retention & engagement, indirectly influencing revenue.
   • Preliminary result: Build
6. Full A/B testing suite**: Feature Concept: Full A/B testing suite #3431
   • Target role: Technical roles.
   • Target company size: Startup (3), Scaleup (3.5) (enterprise likely has their own in-house system or highly complex requirements)
   • Revenue consideration: Could bring immediate new revenue stream (usage would directly generate more usage and hence, revenue), it is also an anchor feature that could stand-alone bring new customers.
   • Preliminary result: Build

** = initial ideas are on the issue, but full research is still pending.

In addition to the above, I would like to put forward some stuff that has come up in previous releases in case someone wants to pick it up (definitely keen on collaborating on this too),

• The toolbar is a feature that has a fair amount of usage, almost as much as session recording (around 10% of WAUs), but it has one key advantage too, it creates a very natural loop to get users back to PostHog from outside the product. Think it's now worth working on improving the UI, UX and functionality, Toolbar UI/UX improvements #2370, Discussion: Toolbar renaming #2349, Toolbar feedback: Improvements on creating actions #1530, design.
• Email stuff to test re-engagement strategies, Improve processing for weekly email report #1938 Email-related housekeeping #1983.
• Analytics by group/teams #2247 aggregated analytics by team/company keeps coming up from user's requests and we could definitely use it ourselves (particularly working on https://github.com/PostHog/retention/issues/12).

Myself

• This release I'd like to pair up with @EDsCODE & @kpthatsme to work on https://github.com/PostHog/retention/issues/12 and really nail down the activation & habit moments, retention breakdowns and engagement understanding. This I believe could be our biggest blocker today for increasing retention, so I would make it my 🔍 Focus for the sprint.
• I'd also like to pair up with someone to work on 1 or 2 of the suggested features above, depending on if someone wants to pick up any of the features in this release sprint.
• I'm happy to work with @kpthatsme on building VPC billing (https://github.com/PostHog/ops/issues/178), but based on our priorities I'd push this to release 24.

[timgl]

Potential list to work on:

• Show properties from the person's initial event in their person properties #2866
• Improve UX for formulas in trends #3375

[macobo]

Note for planning session: I'll be off next week, Eric and James off the week afterwards + Paolo away for 2 days.

Perhaps it makes sense to make this sprint slightly longer given that?

[mariusandra]

Plugins should get a good development sprint now that the base ingestion is done:

Things to definitely work on:

• Access control for plugins on the cloud (in progress) - Access control for plugins on cloud #3328
• Secret keys in plugins (almost done) - Secret keys in plugins #3082
• Deprecate Python ingestion - Make PLUGIN_SERVER_INGESTION True by default #3485
• Lazy VMs / Improve Reloads / Rolling Restarts - Lazy VMs / Improve reloads plugin-server#59
• Plugin logs - Stream console.log output somewhere plugin-server#72 & Plugin log entries #3482
• GeoIP plugin on cloud - Automatic GeoIP Plugin plugin-server#115
• Downsampling plugin - Plugin for pilots/trials that downsamples data #3365
• Misc cleanup - Effectively monitor batch processing times. plugin-server#156 Even more graceful shutdown plugin-server#210 Minimum PostHog version for plugins plugin-server#12 Fix flaky tests plugin-server#219
• Improve BigQuery plugin for EE customer

Is this a priority?

• Do action matching in the plugin server - Do action matching in plugin server plugin-server#157
• Outgoing webhooks - Outgoing webhooks plugin-server#145
• Improve the plugins interface in app

Bigger tasks that we will not get to:

• UI/Frontend plugins - UI Plugins #2965
• Incoming webhooks in plugins - https://github.com/PostHog/plugin-server/issues/8
• posthog-js plugins - Allow extending posthog.js via plugins #3504
• Better plugin source editing & testing experience - Plugin Editor needs a built-in testing tool #2768
• TypeScript support - Native TypeScript support plugin-server#221

[EDsCODE]

1 week for me

• primarily keen on pairing with Paolo to do more thorough retention analysis. also can work on product planning/prioritization

[macobo]

I'm... not sure since I will be off next week.

Some ideas that might make sense to do one of the following:

• Pair up with Paolo, picking up where Eric leaves off
• Pair up with Paolo, start with dashboard collaboration tooling (would roll over for sure) Dashboard collaboration / sharing metrics #3344
• Take the time to actually work on email/demo data this time Improve processing for weekly email report #1938 Email-related housekeeping #1983 Improve onboarding demo data #3175
• Join plugins team and help with:
  • Allow extending posthog.js via plugins #3504 different kind of plugin to do surveys and/or product announcements seems interesting and fun.
  • Outgoing webhooks and action matching? Outgoing webhooks plugin-server#145 Do action matching in plugin server plugin-server#157

[Twixes]

Personal priorities:

• finish access control for plugins on the cloud - issue Access control for plugins on cloud #3328 / PR Plugins access control #3486
• finish plugin logs implementation (or change approach, feedback needed here) - issue Stream console.log output somewhere plugin-server#72 / PR Plugin log entries #3482
• rework GeoIP - issue Automatic GeoIP Plugin plugin-server#115
• merge enhanced organization settings - PR Add organization settings #3324
• write a light engineering blog post on automating releases with GH Actions

[paolodamico]

This has been released, closing.