Releasing rolling averages

[EDsCODE]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Please describe.
Currently, we have conflicting implementations of rolling averages. One option exists in the entity aggregation "weekly active" or "monthly active". The second option exists behind a feature flag as "smoothing". The second option was intended to replace the first option however, it leaves out functionality that the first option enables.

Describe the solution you'd like

Steps in addressing this feature:

1. Decide where the filter should live

It seems that the filter should not be a chart option because you may want to compare a specific rolling average trend line to another type of aggregation. Therefore, the smoothing filter should exist alongside event aggregation.

2. Deprecation plan

Weekly active/monthly active event aggregation + smoothing filter options should be mapped to a separate per entity filter.

3. Support breakdowns and compare

The current rolling averages support breakdown handling so this functionality should not be lost in the transition

Describe alternatives you've considered

• just releasing as is. We will either lose functionality or have overlapping functionality that has different levels support

Additional context

Thank you for your feature request – we love each and every one!

[amacneil]

Is it possible to get "smoothing" enabled on our account? I am looking to calculate rolling average 7 day and 28 day DAUs.

[Twixes]

Rolled out to Foxglove @amacneil :) Do note that it's still a beta feature though.

[amacneil]

Thank you! Dumb question though - where do I find this smoothing feature? Can't see it anywhere on the new insight page.

[Twixes]

Ah, apologies, I accidentally set the rollout condition incorrectly so it didn't take effect. Now you should be able to see it above the graph. @amacneil

[amacneil]

Awesome, this is perfect! It even has both 7 day and 28 day 😄

[amacneil]

Still loving this feature. It would be even better if it were available on a per-series basis (then you would be able to deprecate/remove the existing WAU/MAU feature).

[amacneil]

Apparently I am the only person in the world using this feature, but I want to remind the good folks at PostHog that I love it and use it every day. I hope it reaches GA someday.

In the meantime I want to report two bugs:

1. If I set the grouped by to day with a 7-day smoothing, then switch to month without first removing the smoothing, I get a smoothed month view, despite the smoothing option now being removed. The workaround is that I must remember to remove the smoothing before switching to month. This is pretty bad as it leads to incorrect data being displayed.
   
   

2. Smoothing only acts on data visible in my chart, when it should start calculating prior to the visible time range. For example, if I view last 30 days with 7 day smoothing, then the first 7 out of 30 days are incorrect because they only represent a 1 through 7 day rolling average respectively (e.g. day 3 only represents a 3 day average). The correct thing to do would be for PostHog to fetch data starting 7 days prior to my visible time range, calculate the rolling average, then discard the first 7 datapoints so that the first day on my chart represents a true 7 day rolling average (looking back 7 days prior to the start of my chart).

   E.g. this chart has a wild swing during the first 7 days, when in fact it should be smooth:
   

[Twixes]

Rolling averages have been rolled out for some time!

[amacneil]

Bug 1 above appears to be fixed but bug 2 is still an issue.