Inclusive Filtering & Direct Add From Stream

Our first official changelog. Let’s try this on for size. This release has one big thing, one kind of big thing, and a bunch of small things.

Inclusive Filtering

When we first designed streams, we built them primarily around the following of Accounts or Contacts and then to be filtered down by excluding different Event Types. This might work fine if you aren't exactly sure what you want, but if you know the Event Types you're looking to follow, it doesn't make much sense to have to exclude all the ones you don't want instead of just including the ones you do. To fix that, we have streamlined the way Streams work. You no longer have to include between Account Streams and Event Type Streams, and instead, you just choose what to Follow. If it's an Account or Contact, it automatically goes into the Following tab. If it's an Event Type, it automatically becomes a filter for those Accounts or Contacts you're following.

If you're more familiar with querying data, here's how we described it in our Docs:

Not all Follows are the same. While you can follow an Account, Contact, or Event Type, what happens when you click the button is slightly different for each. For the most part you shouldn't have to think about this, but technically what's happening is that your core Stream filters (it's like writing a query that says "show me all events from Account A or Account B or Account C"). When you layer on an Event Type (say Clicked Pricing Option event), that then becomes a filter for the whole stream. So now the stream query is more like "show me Clicked Pricing Option events from Account A or Account B or Account C)."

With this addition you should now be able to make just about any Stream you need fairly quickly. You can decide to have a Stream that shows all Events for a specific set of Accounts, a or one that shows only a small set of Events for a specific set of Accounts, and you can still always hide anything you no long want to see in your Stream.

A few other changes that came with this:

• No more default Stream: now you always choose which Stream you're following to when you click the button

• Redirect to last viewed Stream: when you sign into Variance.com you will be sent to the Stream you viewed last

Direct Add from Stream

You can still add Follows and Filter By's by hitting the button, but now you can also add them directly in the Stream.

Other Updates Big & Small

New Buttons

Follow buttons now show how many Streams that Account/Contact/Event Type is being followed in.

We also added a little preview overlay on the Streams page so you can see what that Stream has flowing into it.

New Tuning Menu

We updated the Stream tuning options menu that you can click on each event. It's contextual to that event and gives you everything you might need to keep your Stream in order.

New Empty States

We cleaned up our empty states a bit to make them look nicer and add some more contextual help.

Last But Not Least

A few more small things worth noting:

• Cleaned up the design of the left nav

• Made the event property toggles case insensitive (if you want to see the Plan property on your Clicked Choose Pricing events, you probably also want to see the plan property).

• We moved away from purple links because it didn't have high enough contrast levels

Since We Didn't Do a Release Note Last Week

We also added:

• Ability to close the 3rd pane

• Moved the reserved account and contact traits (name, email, etc.) to the top of the properties list

• Ability to close toasts

• Some scrolling fixes

Thanks! If you have any questions just reach out.

- Team Variance