Question 1

Which file format should I use for Plain data?

Accepted Answer

It depends on whether you care about nesting. Plain represents labels as arrays and thread custom fields as arrays of typed objects, and the formats treat that differently. Parquet preserves typed nested data where the type is supported, so it is the safest choice for anything you plan to query later. JSON and JSON Lines keep nested arrays and objects intact as well. CSV works, but nested values are JSON encoded into a single cell, so downstream tooling has to parse them back out.

Question 2

Why export Plain to object storage rather than a database?

Accepted Answer

Two reasons usually. Retention, where you want conversation history preserved on your own terms and independent of what the support tool keeps. And staging, where the files feed a lake or a query engine you already run and a database in the middle would only add a hop. Because the export is ordinary ETL on a schedule, the archive stays current rather than being a one time dump someone has to remember to repeat.

Question 3

How is the exported data organized?

Accepted Answer

By object, not as one merged file. Threads export as one record each, while timeline activity goes out separately with one sparse row per event carrying the parent thread identifier and an entry type. Messages, notes, attachments, message components, thread links and discussions each get their own output. That structure is the same regardless of destination, so the files reassemble into a relational model cleanly when you load them somewhere else.

Question 4

Does every export rewrite everything?

Accepted Answer

Not for the main objects. Threads, customers, companies, tenants and several of Plain's reports read incrementally against Plain's updated timestamp, so a scheduled run handles only what changed and then collects child records for the affected threads. Other objects are read in full each time. The incremental window overlaps by ten minutes to avoid losing records at a boundary, so expect some repetition between consecutive runs.

Connect Plain with Amazon S3

Connect Plain and Amazon S3 with Polytomic

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