Calendar Integration to Show Upcoming Planned Meetings - Create a "Gainsight Calendar"

@andreammelde this is an ongoing need for us too, and although it’s not ideal, we will likely be going the route of having a CSM log the activity when the meeting is scheduled with a new activity “status” field that they can set to “Scheduled.” Then, when the meeting comes up, they can open the already logged activity to add in their notes from the meeting and any additional fields. 

Have you all implemented a workaround like this? Would be interested to know what it was and how it’s going.

I guess don’t understand why leaders would need to see the exact time and date for a future scheduled meeting for every customer account.  Sounds kinda like they don’t trust their CSMs to be on top of things. Is tracking the conducted meetings MoM not enough to give them insight into how their CSMs are engaging?

that said, could you use a custom CTA type, setting due date as the date of the meeting and sync those to Google Calendar to show that a meeting is scheduled for that day and report on that specific CTA type/reason with future date and they can log a timeline entry within the CTA to capture minutes?

@darkknight our problem is that only showing completed activities is a lagging metric, and managers are looking for a leading indicator of progress to completing certain activities within the quarter. we have a CSM KPI that is based around completing a certain number of key activities within the quarter, and managers find it hard to know how the team is tracking to goal when they’re only able to see what happened in the past and not what is set to happen in the future.

@sarahmiracle not trying to be adversarial by any means, but how does tracking the number of meetings held equivocate to tracking success for the customer?  I have never been a fan of point-and-click KPIs. 

@darkknight agreed on just monitoring the number of meetings - but we have specific meeting structures we are looking to track. The meeting structure revolve around an SBR type where we review our customers KPIs with our tool - which having a strategic relationship built with customers is shown to have better renewal instead of just being ticket chasers.

@andreammelde I still don’t personally see how tracking scheduled meetings in advance is relevant to that, more so than being able to track that those SBR types have occurred.  Having been a CSM previously, if my leadership wanted to keep tabs on whether or not I have scheduled meetings with customers, I’d feel like they didn’t have any faith in my ability to do my job effectively.  But maybe that’s just me?

@darkknight it’s not just faith in your ability - it’s also coordinating with other team, data points that our BI team can use, etc. Using that date to trigger Journey Orchestrators to help provide information to the CSM so they don’t have to dig for it. 

@andreammelde it’s not my intention here to criticize - just looking at this from the CSM POV. 
I am curious though why you’d have to trigger JO emails to provide info to the CSM rather than creating self-serve dashboard(s) and/or Success Snapshots they can pull necessary data and details for upcoming meetings.  I’ve found that to be far more effective and less intrusive than emails.

@darkknight we do those as well. Often our team, especially as we expand, may not always know the resources they can self serve. We are trying to minimize the “hunt” for self service.

Regardless - having a better connection with our CSM’s calendar to timeline is helpful in general. If there is a question of an account having something on the books, it becomes self-service to the other teams to get the information rather than bugging our CSM who already has a full plate. CSMs could then also have notes pre-set from their calendar to the Timeline, saving them time on templates. We can look at data that can help us understand if the timeline for the meeting needs to be moved.

If this solution doesn’t work for your team, that is totally fine. This would be helpful for the needs and asks of our team

I also think it’s important to consider the maturity of your CS org. We’re new to the CS motions, a relatively young CS team and department. We’re working on building good habits for our CSMs right now -- and those good habits mean having regular touchpoints with your book of business. This isn’t going to be a forever motion, but it’s necessary to build our foundation so we can be more strategic moving forward.

@sarahmiracle I get that...but I don’t personally think asking Gainsight to build a feature that “isn’t going to be a forever motion” is the best use of engineering cycles when there are aspects of the platform that so desperately need more effort.  CTAs, although a bit heavier handed, could be used to track scheduled meetings in advance to get CSMs used to the motion.

@darkknight I don’t disagree! My post there was to provide more context into the ask. Regardless, I second @andreammelde with her justification and use cases here:

Regardless - having a better connection with our CSM’s calendar to timeline is helpful in general. If there is a question of an account having something on the books, it becomes self-service to the other teams to get the information rather than bugging our CSM who already has a full plate. CSMs could then also have notes pre-set from their calendar to the Timeline, saving them time on templates. We can look at data that can help us understand if the timeline for the meeting needs to be moved.

+1 for this request. Our Managers and others would like to have visibility to future meetings in GS along with other things they have visibility for.

Current Calendar integration is limited in visibility to the specific user itself.

This is to provide visibility to upcoming engagements with customers and what is being planned vs what is adhoc. Also, helps us manage time and personnel in various segments of customers.

If there is a way to allow CSMs to sync specific calendar events into timeline and automatically update them as they change or get rescheduled, that would be ideal scenario for us.

Have you considered creating a new activity to track scheduled meetings?

You don’t want to use the standard “Meeting” activity as it will skew reporting on meetings/touchpoints unless you’re reports are date filtered (less than ‘today’?).

Consider creating an activity type “Meeting Scheduled”, then you can report/track that activity. CSMs can use “Log to Timeline” from GS Assist to log the email to the timeline, then edit that entry to the new Activity Type “Scheduled Meeting”.

I wrote up a CTA-based way to achieve this:
 

This request in general feels like it was borne from not having I personally think Timeline is not the place to record future events/meetings for a few reasons.

• It clutters up an already cluttered Timeline view and people would have to pay close attention to the dates to determine if it's a past or future event
• If the event/activity doesn’t occur, the user has to remember to go delete the entry (lest it be misleading)
  • If you’re exporting Timeline data out to an external data warehouse, and then you delete the source record because it never occurred, it can introduce confusion/complexities with the data
• If/when the user who created the future events leaves the company or the account gets reassigned to a new CSM, no one but the original creator (or admin) can edit those entries

I don’t think changing the Timeline functionality is the solution, because Timeline is really a point-in-time record of customer interactions and engagements that have already occurred where Cockpit/CTAs is the “to do” list of things that have yet to occur.  

What I heard from a couple of CSMs on that VCAM was that they want/need to be able to see what’s coming and what has happened all in a single view. Creating a separate view in Timeline for upcoming meetings (introducing another place people have to consult) doesn't sit right with me as a solution.


I wrote up this community post a while back on how to use CTAs and the sync-to-calendar function to track upcoming meetings and future events. Not a perfect solution (especially bc you end up with TWO calendar entries - one for the CTA and one for the actual meeting you scheduled) but one that (again IMO) aligns the right feature to the right solution.

My suggestion to Gainsight on that VCAM was to create a special Meeting CTA type that integrates with Calendars so that when a user creates a Meeting CTA:

• they have the option to see their calendar, add attendees, and send the invite all in tandem with creating the CTA
• the CTA Due Date defaults to the meeting scheduled date
• It shows up in their cockpit like every other item on their “to-do” list
• only one calendar entry is created on the calendar
• adding an activity to that meeting through Home Calendar links it to the CTA

Also incorporate bi-directional integration so that if the meeting gets moved, the Due Date on the CTA changes + the ability to create a CTA when creating a Meeting through calendar (similar to creating a Timeline entry when sending an email through email client). The CSMs on the call seemed to like this idea better.

hate that you can’t edit comments in these posts anymore.  Started to add a sentence at the beginning of that last comment, but then abandoned it but forgot to delete the fragment.

Agreed that I wouldn’t want future events to be on the timeline, timeline is a record of things that HAVE happened, not are due to. 

If this is to sit anywhere I would have them as CTA’s and then log to timeline from that CTA auto-filling out some details (like the calendar widget on Home does) 

Or create something new that isn’t trying to shoe-horn in to existing infrastructure not designed for the purpose...

@anirbandutta agree with @darkknight. Can we be allowed to edit (I know we discussed it)? 

I like @darkknight’s CTA suggestion for this. I’m personally occasionally guilty of the offense, mostly because I wear many hats and I need to keep up. A CTA that would tell CSMs, hey’s you’re having/had this meeting, log an activity sounds sensible to me. 

Yes currently a limitation but I have mentioned it to the PM of our Digital Hub Ideas module.

@Abinash to put the Planned Meetings on calendar item on your radar.

Just adding that I’m aligned with those who view CTAs as things that should happen and Timeline Activities as things that have happened

I certainly don’t want to detract from those who have use cases for timeline activities in the future, but I wouldn’t want any of this functionality to be mandatory

Thank you everyone for your valuable feedback.

I am actively working with our team to incorporate it into our roadmap.
I will keep you informed about the progress.