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Enable a user to create reports in Meltano combining 2+ sets of data

Problem to Solve

Meltano is helpful to users because we handle the ELT of data from their SaaS tools into our dashboards. However, a lot of users want to combine multiple data sets together to gain greater insights. Doing this can be tricky, as it may involve mapping on a particular field as the "join" and also may introduce multiple truths, exceptions, and orphaned data among other issues.

In this exploratory sprint, we will work to gain a shared understanding of the challenges facing users who want to do this today with Meltano and what we can do to make it easier.

Possible Solution

One possible approach for a 1 week MVC would be to chose 2 data sets (e.g. Zendesk + Salesforce) and create a working proof of concept, and then generalize from there. We should probably come with a few different MVC candidates and choose the best one.

Tasks to Complete Planning/Exploration Sprint

  • @dmor write opportunity assessment https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yyt89m0Y61Cfh00P-yB4BqcpjH18Z2BWWDcBQDCa8Ig/edit#
  • Write Product Requirements Doc that clearly spells out what needs to be built based on critical success factors
  • Scope the absolute minimum features necessary to satisfy Phase 1
  • discuss technical feasibility and additional scoping
  • come up with design/engineering plan (checklist) for 1 week MVC
  • make go / no-go decision for 1 week MVC
  • IFF decision is GO: discuss best engineer(s) to execute on the MVC, write and assign issue -> decision is to push for reevaluation in 2 - 3 milestones once the transform part if cleared out as it's considered a dependency

Opportunity Assessment

Summary

1. Exactly what problem will this solve? (value proposition)

The user wants to take data from Google Analytics + Salesforce and combine in a single report.

2. For whom do we solve that problem? (target market)

All our users who want to combine data sets.

3. How big is the opportunity? (market size)

Applies to all Meltano users in our target persona, because they all have more than one daa set.

4. What alternatives are out there? (competitive landscape)

To do this with Meltano, the user would need to first combine the data sources themselves in a spreadsheet or database and devise their own unique identifier to do so.

5. Why are we best suited to pursue this? (our differentiator)

We already have the data ingested from multiple sources, so this is a natural next step.

6. Why now? (market window)

This is coming up in many of our customer onboarding calls, including some that are linked here in the related issues section.

7. How will we get this product to market? (go-to-market strategy)

Through Meltano channels, blog, and the hosted SaaS offering

8. How will we measure success/make money from this product? (metrics/revenue strategy)

User retention increases because there is a more valuable unit of work to return to

9. What factors are critical to success? (solution requirements)

Ability to query across data sources from two different SaaS tools. For example, the user might want to see the journey of a user from first website visit to signup to first purchase and would need a combination of Google Analytics and Stripe (at minimum) to see this.

10. Given the above, what’s the recommendation? (go or no-go)

Go, this is coming up on almost every customer onboarding call

Edited by Douwe Maan