Chapter 3. Setup
You can track a gazillion events with ops.
However a far better strategy is by writing down all your operational pain points in a notepad.
If you’re just starting to build a SaaS business for instance, you might’ve not dealt with operational issues so here are some:
- When your server starts, you want to know what’s the node_env, database_url, and other variables.
- You want to understand who’s signing up. I need to know their *email, name and other bits
- You need to know if new signups have either finished their onboarding process and/or they have used at least a bit of the product.
- You want to know when user’s trial ends. When this happens I need to know how much **resources they consumed/processed.
- You need to know when someone pays for my product.
*You can also include form data. For instance, during your onboarding process ask your user how did they found your product. Then you can pass this information to ops.
**Resources could be anything. For instance, if you’re building a bookmarking app, a resource could be a bookmark. If you’re building an AI tool, a resource could be 1 api call to openAI; and so on.
Once you’ve compiled a list of issues, next step is to send events to use ops to solve these issues.
- When your server starts, you want to know what’s the node_env, and other variables.
Send a event to ops on on server start. Pass in important env vars(don’t add them all or it will look very confusing)
- You want to understand who’s signing up. You need to know their *email, name and other bits
Send a event to ops when someone signs up. Pass all important user data + any form data you’ve collected from them.
- You need to know if new signups have either finished their onboarding process and/or they have used at least a bit of the product.
Send a event to ops when someone signs up. Pass all important user data + any form data you’ve collected from them.
Hint: You can also combine similar events using contexts. Example:
- You want to know when user’s trial ends. When this happens you need to know how much resources they consumed/processed.
Send a event when a user’s trial finishes. Pass key metrics in the event. Ideally, pass actions here to ask high value users whether they would like to extend their trial, or ask for a review in exchange for a trial extension.