Exporting Data to Fit Your Needs

A lot of the work we do at ChartMogul centers around how we display and present your data in a clear and transparent way. We sweat the details to provide the best user experience possible and enhance the ways you can obtain insights from your data. We want people to have a great experience using ChartMogul.

As a consequence, something that is easy to overlook is how ChartMogul is a part of a larger ecosystem of tools that our customers use. 

The truth is that our customers’ lives do not revolve solely around ChartMogul, as much as we would like to imagine otherwise. Fortunately, ChartMogul’s value comes not only from the application itself, but the data we provide. To that end, getting the most out of that data means getting it out of ChartMogul. This is not something that applies only to us, but arguably more broadly within the industry.

As both our customers and we grow, so have the ways to see and use your data elsewhere.

CSVs – Simple yet effective

Sometimes the simplest ways are the best, and ChartMogul has long offered a wide range of CSV exports. You can export our data tables, activities, payment data, your subscriptions as well as a list of your customers. Not only that, but these exports can be combined with our filtering capabilities, so that you can focus on the data that is relevant for you. 

In the last year we have provided users the option to export all of their activities via our Data Output page, worked on increasing the scalability of our exports, and released a new export which allows users to see the MRR contributed by each customer for each month. This last one had long been a feature request, and it has become one of our most popular exports!

The Metrics API – Automate your outputs

Although CSVs are easy to download and incorporate into your reports, our Metrics API is better suited when it comes to automation of your data output needs. It allows you to retrieve your data on a regular basis, whether it is to create your own, easy-to-share dashboard, or sending your revenue data into your data warehouse. 

For example, some of our customers have been extracting their activities and combining them with their product analytics so that they can better assess which behaviours within their products are indicative of upcoming changes to MRR. In order to make it easier to keep the data in your data warehouse up to date, we have added the option to extract activities that took place within a specific time period, as well as narrowing it to a specific activity type. You can also get this information as a CSV as opposed to the usual JSON format.

Integrations with other tools – Embed seamlessly 

The above methods can give one a lot of flexibility, but it can be more work to incorporate into your existing tools. For this reason, we also offer some easier ways to send information into other existing products.

You can send data from ChartMogul directly to other tools with minimal effort, and so ensure that the data is accessible to your team. An individual customer’s MRR can be viewed directly in Zendesk, or if you want to see a zoomed out view, you can create an easy to share dashboard with Geckoboard. You can also send data to Slack, either by being notified of changes in MRR using Zapier, or obtaining scheduled summaries via Droyd. Our latest addition is the ability to view your ChartMogul data in Pitch, making those investor presentations or all-hands easier to keep up to date.

Different outputs for different needs

The different ways for extracting your ChartMogul data are a reflection of the myriad of use cases for using your data. No single solution is going to be able to cater to all needs, so a variety of options is important. Data output integrations are great, but you will never cater to all possible destinations. API endpoints are more versatile, but require more work and specialized know-how to start using them. Finally, we have the CSV exports that we started with, which are easy to use and flexible, but not always as convenient as the other two options.

The different approaches may tackle different needs, but what is striking is how many of our customers use all three approaches to put their data to work outside ChartMogul. It is a good reminder of the value people place on the data we provide. We don’t want to get in the way of that.