How do you document what you build in Gainsight?

S
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There’s a lot you can build with Gainsight, and it can get very weedy very fast. There’s a discussion in the community about rules, but I’m curious on how folks document other things?

For instance, right now I’m creating a Success Plan Template catalog for my team. I wish I could link directly to templates! But, for now, I’m including a screenshot of the top half of the CTA and pasting the copy from the success criteria into my Confluence doc. 

What other things do y’all do to internally document the things that are built in Gainsight?

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sarahmiracle
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@Scotty at Calendly I just joined a new org, and I’m blown away by how well documented things are. It’s been a crash course for me in documentation best practices. We also use Confluence, which is really handy for linking out tickets for a change log.

Here’s some things we document:

  • Known issues (system limitations or known bugs with support ticket links/references)
  • Internal processes
    • Engaging with GS support
    • X-org migration
    • Adding new users
    • Release strategy & release notes
  • Data Architecture
    • Active Rules
    • Primary Objects & fields definitions
    • Active Connectors
    • Active Data Designs
    • Custom API processes
    • Data Ingestion Methods
  • Features
    • JO Programs
    • Reports & Dashboards
    • C360 Layouts
    • Health Score
    • Surveys
    • Playbooks
Customer Success Systems Admin @ Amplitude, 2x Gainsight CS Ops Product Council Member
S
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Oh wow, that’s pretty neat. I imagine it’s hard to keep a handle on reports and dashboards. Do you catalog everyone’s, or is this for Official Reports?

sarahmiracle
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@Scotty at Calendly I should have just said “Dashboards” 😂 the documentation for those is more about the permission settings for the dashboards & the business case/purpose for them. We don’t currently document individual reports. But in my last org, I did for reports that were used cross-functionally by the RevOps & Finance teams for a portion of CSM variable comp.

Customer Success Systems Admin @ Amplitude, 2x Gainsight CS Ops Product Council Member
angela_domenichelli
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Great topic!  We use a mix of Jira and Confluence.  In Jira, we document the details and include the Jira number in the description of whatever we have built in Gainsight.  Our workflows (how to use Jira, how to QA, best practices for consistency in building different features, and the like) and meeting notes are linked in Confluence.  I love the 2-way lookup between Confluence and Jira, it makes it easy to see which meeting(s) the card(s) were discussed at and who was present.  As and Admin, this makes it easier to go back and see why we built something the way we did if we need to troubleshoot months or years later.

 

That said, we find it challenging to catalog and keep up to date things like Playbooks and Email Templates, and have never published the logic behind our rules in a comprehensive for end users.  When there is a specific question, we can usually direct to the release notes based on the Jira card trail, but we are challenged when asked how many playbooks address x topic and need to do several keyword searches.  If I could start over, I would use better naming conventions and associate to specific CTA Types more often.  We have made several attempts in this area to be more transparent to end users.  We do have a “Gainsight Playbook Test” account where we load our new and updated playbooks to a CTA for our end users to review, but I don’t get the feeling it is used much.  Would love to hear more about this topic!

Angela Domenichelli (She/Her/Hers)
S
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That said, we find it challenging to catalog and keep up to date things like Playbooks and Email Templates, and have never published the logic behind our rules in a comprehensive for end users.  When there is a specific question, we can usually direct to the release notes based on the Jira card trail, but we are challenged when asked how many playbooks address x topic and need to do several keyword searches.  If I could start over, I would use better naming conventions and associate to specific CTA Types more often.  

Playbooks and templates are somehow problematic to catalog, I think it’s because you can’t link directly to a playbook, the same applies to a Success Plan template. 

 

Email templates are sort of like reports, right now I don’t have an inventory of everything we have made (yet) and we’re making more every day.

 

A Gainsight “showroom floor” or a demonstration account is a really good idea. We did something similar for some CTAs we were rolling out that did some very specific things (rules hanging off of the status, things like that).

 

As far as the JIRA component, I’ve been trying to keep things in the same system, so I’m trying to use CTAs on an organization that I had my Revops create just for my team. In there if I need someone on the team to build something (or do something specific that is not related to precisely any one customer) I use a CTA so all their work can be prioritized in one place.

 

 

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