Friday Update - October 1st
Hey! We are back on track after last week's offsite, and we are happy to share with you two weeks of news. Lots of stuff have happened
Users journey
We've spent the last month having short interviews with our users and receiving feedback. Thanks to all for your help and support. We've noticed something that we definitely have to work on: many users did not know that Alphacast is not only about downloading data, but also about exploring, automating work, and creating and sharing data, charts, and insights.
To that extent, we are now working on improving the overall user journey: Helping the visitors in the learning and self-discovery process.
We want to help you answer the "What now?" question once you perform an action in Alphacast. So let's say you have just downloaded a csv or a xlsx of a dataset. What now?
- Would you like to save this for later? We will invite you to favorite this dataset and head to "your assets" home page.
- Would you like to find new data? We are improving the search experience with categories, trends, etc. Also, we are testing a new Recommendation System. Like Netflix but for datasets!
- Do you know that you can keep this dataset always updated on excel? A new simplified connection is ready. No add-ins. Just follow these steps.
- Create a chart based on this data! We are working on simplified chart creations (see below or follow this link)
- Would you like to explore ideas and charts based on this data? We are working on a new more organized "Insights Home / Wall" to follow users, get recommendations and discover new ideas.
- Let me know when there is something new: Mails notifications are coming down the road.
New Webinar. Wednesday 10/6. 18:00
Next Wednesday 10/6 at 18:00 we will have a new webinar with news of the month. Sign up for free here:
https://forms.gle/3NbY5uNpcwqmtPo28
- Simplified connection to Excel
- Simplified creation of Charts
- Search improvements
- Pipelines, interpolation, and aggregations
- New datasets
Easy charts
Creating charts is now MUCH EASIER. It no longer requires 15 clicks. In the dataset view, a preview chart will show up each time you select a variable and you can create the chart directly there. 30 seconds max.
Express Alphacast Contest...Alphaton!!!!
This week we launched a flash twitter contest with amazing responses from the users. @pablocomiranda, winner of the contest, created a Twitter Bot that reads data from Alphacast and publishes it on a daily basis. Here Is the python code to do it.
Stay tuned for more contests soon!
Improved performance & other minor fixed
- We've performed multiple changes under the hood to improve performance.. Charts now load much faster, pipelines and data uploads get processes much faster, search results take much less time.
- You can now delete insights, pipelines, charts, repositories.
- Insights are now private or public based on the Repository they are in. If private you can create a share link.
- Invite links for teams
- When saving insights you can now save or save & view.
- "Create New" button directly on the left side Menu
New Datasets
Argentina
Monetary - Argentina - BCRA - Monetary Aggregates
Colombia
BOP - Colombia - DANE - Traditional And Non-traditional Exports
BOP - Colombia - DANE - Imports By Categories
BOP - Colombia - DANE - External Trade
