Linking Swarmia as a source
This source is currently in alpha. The interface and available tables may change.
The Swarmia connector syncs your engineering effectiveness reports – pull request metrics, DORA metrics, investment balance, software capitalization, and effort reporting – into the PostHog Data Warehouse, so you can blend engineering metrics with your product, finance, and headcount data.
Prerequisites
You need a Swarmia account with permission to create API tokens. Some reports (investment balance, software capitalization, effort) map to Swarmia features that may not be enabled on every plan – tables your token can't access are flagged in the table picker.
Adding a data source
- In PostHog, go to the Sources tab of the data pipeline section.
- Click + New source and click Link next to this source.
- Enter your credentials (see Configuration below) and click Next.
- Select the tables you want to sync, choose a sync method and frequency, then click Import.
Once the syncs are complete, you can start querying this data in PostHog.
When linking Swarmia, you'll need:
- API token – create one in your Swarmia workspace under Settings → API tokens.
Sync modes
Each table can be synced in one of several modes, depending on what the source supports:
- Webhook (when available) – the source pushes changes to PostHog in real time. Fastest freshness, lowest ongoing cost, and the only mode that reliably captures updates and deletes.
- Incremental – only new or updated rows are synced on each run, using a cursor field (such as an
updated_attimestamp). Cheaper than a full refresh, but deletes aren't captured. - Append only – new rows are appended using a cursor field; existing rows are never updated. Ideal for immutable, append-only tables like event logs.
- Full refresh – the whole table is reloaded on every sync. Use it when a table has no reliable cursor or when you need deletions reflected.
See sync methods for a full explanation of how each mode works and how to choose between them.
Swarmia's export API returns time-windowed aggregate reports rather than individual records, so each table is built from complete reporting windows: ISO weeks for pull request and DORA metrics, calendar months for investment, capitalization, and effort. The current (incomplete) week or month is only synced once it has ended.
Swarmia generates FTE-based data (investment, capitalization, effort) around the 10th day of the following month, so the most recent month can lag. Incremental tables re-read a trailing window on each sync to pick up late or regenerated data.
Configuration
| Option | Type | Required |
|---|---|---|
API token | password | Yes |
Supported tables
| Table | Description | Sync method | Incremental field | Primary key |
|---|---|---|---|---|
pull_requests | Per-team pull request metrics (cycle time, review rate, merge time), one row per team per complete ISO week | Incremental, Full refresh | end_date | — |
dora | Organization-level DORA metrics (deployment frequency, change lead time, change failure rate, MTTR), one row per complete ISO week | Incremental, Full refresh | end_date | — |
investment | Investment balance (FTE months per investment category), one row per category per complete calendar month. Data for a month is available around the 10th of the following month | Incremental, Full refresh | end_date | — |
capex | Software capitalization report, one row per employee per capitalizable issue per complete calendar month. Full refresh only: Swarmia regenerates FTE data and the issue title is not a stable identifier | Full refresh | — | — |
capex_employees | Total FTEs per employee per month for software capitalization, unpivoted to one row per employee per month | Full refresh | — | — |
fte | Effort report (FTE per author per issue), one row per author per issue per complete calendar month. Full refresh only: Swarmia regenerates FTE data for past months | Full refresh | — | — |
Troubleshooting
If a table fails to sync with a permissions error, your Swarmia API token can't access that report. This usually means the matching Swarmia feature (for example investment balance or software capitalization) isn't enabled for your organization or plan.
If your sync is failing or data looks wrong, see the Data warehouse troubleshooting guide. If that doesn't help, contact support – we're happy to help.