feat: create experiment from a funnel

[joshsny]

Problem

If a user creates an insight to track a metric, it's likely they want to improve that metric if they can. This supports creating an experiment from an insight. Right now we surface this option for a funnel only, and will track engagement.

Changes

• Add a create experiment button to an insight if it can be mapped to an experiment metric directly
• Prefill the metric when creating the experiment

Loom: https://www.loom.com/share/ba32c35e3a794e08ab35eb28f8a80e56

👉 Stay up-to-date with PostHog coding conventions for a smoother review.

Does this work well for both Cloud and self-hosted?

Yes

How did you test this code?

Tested for 3 scenarios:

• Creating from a funnels query
• Check button does not show for an invalid query
• Test an insight that fails to load
• Test an insight that has an incorrect metric for experiments
• Edit all fields that are changeable from the insight page to see that they map to the experiment

[posthog-bot]

📸 UI snapshots have been updated

99 snapshot changes in total. 0 added, 99 modified, 0 deleted:

• chromium: 0 added, 56 modified, 0 deleted (diff for shard 1, diff for shard 2)
• webkit: 0 added, 43 modified, 0 deleted (diff for shard 2)

Triggered by this commit.

👉 Review this PR's diff of snapshots.

[github-actions]

Size Change: +33 B (0%)

Total Size: 1.16 MB

ℹ️ View Unchanged

Filename	Size	Change
frontend/dist/toolbar.js	1.16 MB	+33 B (0%)

_{compressed-size-action}

[posthog-bot]

📸 UI snapshots have been updated

97 snapshot changes in total. 0 added, 97 modified, 0 deleted:

• chromium: 0 added, 54 modified, 0 deleted (diff for shard 2)
• webkit: 0 added, 43 modified, 0 deleted (diff for shard 2)

Triggered by this commit.

👉 Review this PR's diff of snapshots.

[posthog-bot]

📸 UI snapshots have been updated

28 snapshot changes in total. 0 added, 28 modified, 0 deleted:

• chromium: 0 added, 14 modified, 0 deleted (diff for shard 1, diff for shard 2)
• webkit: 0 added, 14 modified, 0 deleted (diff for shard 2)

Triggered by this commit.

👉 Review this PR's diff of snapshots.

[joshsny]

@jurajmajerik I've stripped out any properties that aren't currently available in the experiments UI to avoid a situation where the user can't change the metric

[jurajmajerik]

Cool feature, thanks for taking this on! 🙂 A few things to address:

[jurajmajerik]

General feedback: when adding a UI feature, please add screenshots and/or a Loom, makes it much easier to see how the thing should be tested.

[jurajmajerik]

Right now we surface this option for a funnel only, and will track engagement.

Why not add it for both right away? The code to do this is already there, so should be straightforward.

Also, I see that you tested for the Trends option too?

• Creating from a trends query

[jurajmajerik]

Currently the insight value is null for me when navigating to the form from an insight. As a result, the desired metric doesn't get populated. The issue seems to be that somehow, the insight ID doesn't end up in the URL, from which it should be retrieved.

IMO, whenever the intention is to create an experiment from an insight, but we fail to load the insight, we should throw. Otherwise the experiment gets saved without the metric which is poor user experience.

[jurajmajerik]

I personally like the position of this button, as it's prominent and will likely drive adoption for experiments. But I'd check with @PostHog/team-product-analytics if it's a good idea to put it there. Perhaps the intent of this panel is to only show properties related to the chart, so better to double check with them.

[joshsny]

@jurajmajerik Addressed your comments here, thanks for these. Also added a Loom showing functionality locally: loom.com/share/ba32c35e3a794e08ab35eb28f8a80e56

[jurajmajerik]

Thanks @joshsny, working great! A few more comments:

• Great idea auto-populating the experiment name
• I really think the "Run experiment" option should be always visible in an insight, not just when the insight is saved. As a user, I personally don't save Insights that often. But I might want to run an experiment on them regardless.
• Please add a tooltip to the "Run experiment" button explaining what it does (e.g. "open the experiment creation form where the metric is already prepopulated").
• When creating an experiment from an insight, it might be worth adding an info banner at the top of the experiment form. It's not super clear when/how the metric gets added to the experiment. There's no indication of the metric itself in the experiment form. So a banner explaining "please fill in these fields, click save and the experiment with your metric will be created" would be great.
• Are you planning to add the usage event too?

[zlwaterfield]

Awesome, this looks great :)

I'll fall to @jurajmajerik for approval - I like his suggestions for the tooltip and banner :)

[posthog-bot]

📸 UI snapshots have been updated

4 snapshot changes in total. 0 added, 4 modified, 0 deleted:

• chromium: 0 added, 2 modified, 0 deleted (diff for shard 2)
• webkit: 0 added, 2 modified, 0 deleted (diff for shard 2)

Triggered by this commit.

👉 Review this PR's diff of snapshots.

[joshsny]

@jurajmajerik thanks for these suggestions!

I really think the "Run experiment" option should be always visible in an insight, not just when the insight is saved. As a user, I personally don't save Insights that often. But I might want to run an experiment on them regardless.

I agree, have refactored the logic to pass metric instead of rely on insight.

Please add a tooltip to the "Run experiment" button explaining what it does (e.g. "open the experiment creation form where the metric is already prepopulated").

Done

When creating an experiment from an insight, it might be worth adding an info banner at the top of the experiment form. It's not super clear when/how the metric gets added to the experiment. There's no indication of the metric itself in the experiment form. So a banner explaining "please fill in these fields, click save and the experiment with your metric will be created" would be great.

Done, great suggestion. I don't love the UX for this page with having the metric on the next page, but it's out of scope of this PR to try and change that so the banner at least communicates something to the user.

Are you planning to add the usage event too?

Was waiting on this to merge, since that's done now I've added tracking for the cross sell.

Updated loom demo: https://www.loom.com/share/42aa7fcc2136495fb3302cdfdd58b19c?sid=dcad2565-d000-42ae-a23a-125ef560e674

[jurajmajerik]

Nice work! 🙌

[posthog-bot]

📸 UI snapshots have been updated

24 snapshot changes in total. 0 added, 24 modified, 0 deleted:

• chromium: 0 added, 12 modified, 0 deleted (diff for shard 2)
• webkit: 0 added, 12 modified, 0 deleted (diff for shard 2)

Triggered by this commit.

👉 Review this PR's diff of snapshots.