Cockpit FAQs

How do I understand the difference between CTA, Task, Playbook and Success Plan?

• Call to Action (CTA): A CTA is an alert which can be added manually by a user or automatically using business rules. There are five CTA types available by default: Risks, Opportunities/Expansions, Events/Lifecycle, Activities (from Timeline), and Objectives (for Success Plans). You can also create custom CTA types. Playbooks, a collection of pre-defined tasks, can be used in conjunction with CTAs to standardize the process a user follows when addressing a Call to Action.
• Task: the smallest item is a Task. Tasks cannot live alone, they should always be a part of CTA.
• Playbooks: are the pre-configured sets of Tasks, that can be dropped into a CTA. The only function of a Playbook is to set up those Tasks, so that they can be easily applied to a CTA; a Playbook does not have any other functionality on its own.
• Success Plan: CTAs when grouped together is a Success Plan, where you can also add information about the purpose of the plan in both standard fields and custom fields. The "Objective" Type of CTAs can only be added to a Success Plan; the "Objective" CTA Type is created specifically for this purpose (in any business plan, you’d want a series of objectives). Pre-configured sets of Objective CTAs can be dropped into a Success Plan. They are called Success Plan Templates.

How does Gainsight prevent duplicate CTAs, and/or update existing CTAs?

When a rule generates a CTA, Gainsight checks for any existing open CTAs containing several identifiers. Account, Type, and Reason are always used as Identifiers and optionally Name can be used as an identifier. If there is an open CTA with the same Identifiers, then the existing CTA is updated; otherwise, a new CTA is created. If there are multiple open CTAs with the same identifiers, then only one of the CTAs is updated. While updating, we update the priority, if the priority of the existing CTA is lower than the new CTA. Comments are updated based on the Comments setting in the rule (comments will not include the updated properties, it includes the comments that the rule is trying to post, based on settings like post once, always, or never). For Relationship level CTAs, Relationship will also be included in the default identifier.

What's the maximum number of CTAs I can view in Cockpit?

CTA's in Cockpit will max out at 1000 for each view. You can use the built in filters/groupings to narrow your search and it will still respect the 1000 views.

Are there any plans to hide/archive year old closed CTAs at some point?

We don't plan to archive or delete CTAs based on historical time periods. You can run a report on closed CTA's in the report builder.

Why can't I see closed CTA's if I group by Due Date, or filter to include them?

From Cockpit, if CTA's are grouped by Due Date, you will not see closed CTAs even if you filter to include them. This is because anything that is closed will not have an upcoming due date or be due today.

When grouped by Due Date, why does my CTA appear in the today group, even though the CTA due date is not today?

Cockpit will group CTA's by CTA due date unless a task is either due today or overdue. If the task is due today, it will move the CTA into the "today" grouping. If overdue, it will move the CTA into the "overdue" grouping. 

Is it possible to keep CTAs from firing while CSM is on vacation (vacation "snooze")?

No.  (While technically you could update every rule to say CSM not equal to <CSM on VA>, this is NOT recommended because you'd miss important CTAs for those customers AND it's not an efficient process).  We recommend having a backup CSM check the other person's Cockpit for new CTAs in their absence, by typing in their name right on the Cockpit screen.  Alternately, the CTAs will be there when the CSM returns from vacation.

Can a rule trigger a CTA with no due date, or no owner?

No. The system is designed to ensure CTAs do not get 'lost.'

If a CTA is snoozed, does it come back with the tasks as you left them (or re-set)?

They will appear as you left them.

Why do I see CTAs in my Cockpit List View that are assigned to another CSM?

This will happen when you are the owner of one or more of the tasks from your colleague's CTAs. The CTAs will appear in both people's Cockpit List Views.

Why does a recurring CTA appear to be closed in Cockpit, but open in a report?

CSMs can manually create recurring Event CTAs. The original or master CTA will remain in an open status, while some child instances of the recurring CTA may be closed. In reports, if you notice open CTAs that you expect to be closed, this may be the cause. To adjust the report, add a filter for IsReoccurring !=(not equal) to True. This will eliminate the master CTA's from the report so you only see the children (the real ones).

Why can't our Sales users see tasks in SFDC, even though our CSMs are syncing their Gainsight tasks to SFDC?

Non-Gainsight Users who want to view tasks created by Gainsight need to have at least read access into the Call to Action object in order to view CTAs and tasks from the Account page. If they don't have read or write access, then they will get an insufficient permissions error in SFDC when they try to view them.

How can we assign CTAs to our pooled CSM team?

Different organizations will have different solutions to this, and we plan to share more configuration options soon. One simple way is to have a "Customer Success Team" user that represents your pooled CSM team. The pooled team members then check Cockpit for CTAs owned by "Customer Success Team," and re-assign CTAs to themselves, so the CTAs show up in their personal Cockpits.

Why do Salesforce users without Gainsight licenses appear as possible CTA or Task owners in Cockpit?

In the Cockpit Owners menu, you will see all SFDC users with licence = 'Salesforce' or 'Salesforce Platform', even if they don't have a Gainsight license. If a CTA is assigned to the user, the user will receive a notification, but they won't be able to take any action. We are working on addressing this issue.

Can I search my closed tasks in Cockpit?

We do not have the ability to search based on tasks in Cockpit. If you wanted to search based on closed CTAs, then we only return up to 100 closed CTAs in Cockpit. 

An Admin could also use the report builder to search for closed tasks, with "contains" searching the task subject to look for a particular key word.

When should I use Email Assist tasks in Cockpit?

Gainsight offers a semi-automated email feature called Email Assist, which is accessible to CSMs using Calls to action in the Cockpit. We recommend using Email Assist tasks (instead of the complete Journey Orchestrator solution) when your CSMs need more control over the scheduling and contents of the email. Email Assist tasks utilize Journey Orchestrator email templates, but your CSM selects individual contacts to send the email to, and the email contents can be customized as needed. See Configure Email Tasks to Send from Cockpit for more info.

How do I build a report that shows the open and closed CTAs for a given time period?

Using the Call to action object, and fields for Created CTAs, and Closed CTAs, you can create reports on these CTAs for a particular date or date range. The image below is an example report:

Why do I receive an error message when I mark the CTA element sections (CTA type/reason/status/priority) as Inactive?

This will happen when you don't configure Remote site settings. Salesforce would make calls to an external (remote) site and accept responses only if it is known and trusted. While Gainsight application already knows to trust and makes calls to Gainsight's MDA, Gainsight has few application areas that call MDA via Salesforce. For all these functions to work correctly and for SFDC to trust MDA, you need to add https://app.gainsight.com as Remote Site. To add Gainsight's MDA as a Remote Site, refer to Add External Sites in Remote Site Settings. 

Should we be using CTAs for day-to-day tasks or more targeted notifications?

CTAs are best utilized as low-frequency, high-value alerts regarding your customers. While you can definitely use CTAs and Tasks to track your daily activities, we recommend that you keep CTAs at a high level to help you better manage your customers.

Should we use Cockpit differently for high-touch and low-touch customers?

Yes, you should absolutely be using Cockpit in different ways. For example, in the case of low-touch customers: 1. We recommend a greater use of Cockpit over Email Assist for automated emails 2. We recommend a more limited number of CTAs (with a focus on risk and lifecycle CTAs) 3. We recommend prescribing more simplified Playbooks that are tailored to the low-touch segment

What can I do if I have too many CTAs and Tasks?

It is important to keep Cockpit clean, so that your team can focus on the right activities. Your Gainsight Admin can help cut down on less relevant CTAs and make Playbooks leaner. Admins can also lead system-wide clean-ups and even implement mechanisms to auto-close CTAs after a set number of days. CSMs can also do their part to keep their Cockpits tidy, so that the CTAs do not pile up. To learn more about how to keep your Cockpit clean, refer to Managing Your Cockpit Effectively.

What can I do if I have too few CTAs and Tasks?

If you have so few CTAs that you are not seeing value in using Cockpit, then your team should explore:

• Making the current CTAs more prevalent and/or relevant
  • How do you make them appear more frequently?
  • How do you make them more useful?
• Implementing new ways to use CTAs
  • What other types of CTAs can you implement?
• Reminding the team about current processes around CTAs How do you promote usage of Cockpit?