Ptero School¶

Connect to Mixpanel¶

Initially, Ptero imports the previous 6 months of event data from your Mixpanel account. After that, new event data will be periodically imported to keep your Ptero analysis fresh. We do not modify any Mixpanel data in this process. Our integration is read-only.

1. Open your Mixpanel account page.

2. In the Projects tab, copy and paste your API Key and API Secret into Ptero’s form.

Create your first Scenario¶

Ptero automatically scans your data to guess at which events may be interesting to use in Scenario definitions. If any are found, the system will pre-populate your Ptero system with several scenarios. We suggest that you create at least one other Scenario at this time, especially if no scenarios are automatically detected or if the auto-scenarios are uninteresting.

If you’re fuzzy on what a Scenario is, take a moment to look at the What is a Scenario? section.

To create a scenario from your dashboard, simply choose both your start and target event and click “Explore” to save the scenario.

Now What?¶

After connecting to Mixpanel and creating a few scenarios, we will start to import data into Ptero. This process can take from a few minutes to a few hours depending on your event volume.

In the meantime, feel free to explore our documentation to learn more about the theory behind Ptero and discover ways you can maximize your use of this new type of behavioral analysis.

Introduction¶

The Scenario answers the question “What leads from A to B?”

Frequently, the “from A” part of the question is implied to be “from registration”, but Ptero Scenarios allow you to be more explicit.

We call A the start event because it specifies when we should start to care about users we’re trying to nudge along to that target event. The start event may be something simple like a registration event, but it can be very powerful to use other events as start events.

Finally, B can be any event which occurs in your app, game or product and is referred to as the target event for the Scenario. For instance, a trial-converted event would make sense as your target event.

With these example events, you’d have a Scenario to explore “What leads from registration to trial-converted?”.

To build any Scenario, you must simply choose a start event and target event. Ptero takes over from there.

Example Scenarios¶

Some Scenarios may be about the user acquisition and conversion process:

• For a web app with a trial, a scenario from trial start to trial conversion.
• For a fremium app, look at users who register and then later upgraded to a paid plan.
• For a mobile game, look at users who installed the app and then made an in-app purchase.

Or, Scenarios may be about adoption of particular features:

• For a chat app, look at users who added friends and then initiated a group chat.
• For a recipe sharing site, look at users who viewed a recipe and then submitted a recipe.
• For a fantasy sports app, look at users who joined a league and then voted on a trade.

Furthermore, you can create Scenarios with “bad” events as target events. This would allow you to understand the behaviors which lead to churn or cancellations.

Creating a New Scenario¶

To create a new scenario, simply choose a Start Event and a Target Event then click explore. To learn more about scenarios and see some examples, visit the What is a Scenario page.

Organizing Scenarios¶

Once you’ve created a scenario, it will automatically go into your My Recent Scenarios section. Additionally, you can see the scenarios that your team has created in the My Team’s Recent Scenarios section.

Pinning Scenarios¶

For Scenarios you want to keep front and center, you can pin them to the top of the dashboard by clicking the pin to the left of the Scenario. Pinned Scenarios are shared across your organization, so pinning/unpinning a Scenario from your dashboard will do the same for the rest of your team. Ptero displays the image of the person who pinned a specific Scenario to the right of the highlighted pin icon.

Changing Color¶

Ptero also allows you to change the color of a Scenario in order to create groupings. To do this, click on the colored bar to the left of the Scenario name and select a new color. One powerful way to use this functionality is as a way to group scenarios as positive outcomes (blue), negative outcomes (red), or adoption events (pink).

Adding & Removing Users¶

You can add or remove users from the Team tab in the Settings.

To add a new user, simply enter their email address and click Invite. Any user can invite another standard user (non-admin).

When inviting a new user, there is the option to designate that user as an admin. Abilities available to admins only:

• Adding, updating, or removing payment information
• Inviting or promoting other admins
• Removing users

To remove a user or designate as admin (admin only), simply locate the user under the Active Members section and click the corresponding button.

Changing Profile Info & Password¶

Users can change the name and email address they use to login by going to the Profile section in settings. Simply update the necessary fields and click Save Profile.

Users can change their password by going to the Security section in settings. Ptero will ask for you to confirm your current password before creating a new password.

Free Plan¶

Any company with fewer than 25,000 MAU will automatically be enrolled in the Ptero free plan.

Free Trial¶

If your application has more than 25,000 MAU, you will automatically begin your free 7 day free trial. You will always get 7 days of free trial, even if you upgrade early.

If you decide not to upgrade after your trial, you will not be able to run any additional scenarios or pull data. However, you will still be able to login and view your past scenario results. If you decide to upgrade in the future, you will be able to reactivate your account so that you don’t lose any of your previous work.

Paying Plan¶

Ptero is priced based on the number of MAU for your application based on data we pull from Mixpanel. The first 25,000 MAU are free and each additional increment of 25,000 MAU is $25 per month.

Billing for the Ptero paid plan occurs at the beginning of each 30 day period. 3 Days prior to your automatic renewal, we will send an email with your monthly amount due based on the number of MAU we’ve seen in the past 30 days.

Cancellations¶

You can cancel your Ptero account by sending an email to hi@pterohq.com. You will have full access through the end of your current 30 day pay period, after which you will have read only access.

Check our our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. git push

What is a ‘MAU (Monthly Active User)’?¶

A Monthly Active User (MAU) is any user of your application who triggered an event (that is tracked by Mixpanel) in the last 30 days. That is, to use Ptero you (currently) must be a Mixpanel user, so, any user who triggers an event you track using Mixpanel will count as an MAU.

Is Ptero free?¶

It sure is. If you have fewer than 25,000 MAUs, you can use all Ptero’s features – including unlimited data storage, seats, and Scenarios – for FREE. Once you exceed 25,000 MAUs (or if you have more than 25,000 MAUs at the time you register for Ptero) you will be entered into a 7-day free trial. At the end of the trial you will be prompted to pay for Ptero.

How much does Ptero cost if I have more than 25,000 MAUs?¶

It costs $25 to add another 25,000 MAUs to your Ptero account. So, if you have 90,000 MAUs the cost to you will be $75 per month. That is, 90,000 MAUs – 25,000 free MAUs = 65,000 MAUs. 3 “packs” of 25,000 MAUs will cover your MAU count in this case. Each “pack” is $25.

Do I have to pay for additional MAUs by credit card?¶

Yes. We can only accept credit card payments at this time.

How do I get my data into Ptero?¶

First, you will need to be a Mixpanel customer. Once you register, simply follow the 3-step instructions to activate the integration of your Mixpanel data into Ptero. It takes under 24 hours for the largest of data sets to process. You will receive an email when your data and first set of results are ready.

Why do I need a Mixpanel account in order to use Ptero?¶

We chose to integrate with Mixpanel because it has a large user base and it is very simple to import data from Mixpanel. More integrations will be announced in the near future.

How do I cancel my paid subscription?¶

To stop paying for additional MAUs, visit your account page and select ‘Cancel Subscription’. You will not be billed in the next month’s billing cycle. You will still be able to view your analytics in “read only” mode, but you won’t be able to run additional scenarios.

Check our our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Setting up your Environment¶

We use Sphinx with ReadTheDocs to makes it easy to create beautiful documentation. Assuming you have Python already, install Sphinx:

$ pip install sphinx sphinx-autobuild

Note: if you are using XCode 5.1 or higher, the above command might fail, due to breaking changes in the XCode version bump.Run this instead:

$ sudo ARCHFLAGS=-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future pip install sphinx sphinx-autobuild

Clone the documentation repo:

$ git clone git@github.com:pterohq/docs.git ptero-docs

Run the watch script to build and start a local docs server:

$ cd ptero-docs
$ ./watch.sh

Open the docs in a browser at http://localhost:8000

Making Edits¶

Sphinx uses markup called reStructuredText which provides many built-in features for documentation, including easy linking, glossaries, and more.

You can either reference existing docs to get document syntax, or review the Sphinx reference docs directly.

Submitting Changes¶

Normal git branching and Github pull requests should be used to propose changes and additions. For contributors who do not have write access to the PteroHQ org on Github, please fork the docs repo and pull request from your fork.

When new commits are pushed to master on Github, the docs will automatically be built by ReadTheDocs and deployed to the live Ptero Docs.