How to historically snapshot data to the MDA


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Hi everyone -



Have you ever wanted to historically report on a customer's ARR over time, only to find that it's actually really hard to find that information since there's no historical record of it? How about trying to figure out the average amount of days your customers are in a certain lifecycle stage? Or trying to figure out who all the named CSMs have been on an account over the course of a year or two?



The easiest way in Gainsight to keep track of such information is by creating a snapshot table in the MDA. In this video, I explain how to set up an MDA object as well as a rule that can load to such a table. Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.







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@spencer_engel Thanks for sharing this here! Its has got great clarity on the use-case and awesome explanation. You are welcome to share a few more like this.



@All, Adding a few articles for your information.



https://support.gainsight.com/Data_Management/Managing_Data_In_Gainsight/Gainsight_Data_Management#Create_a_Gainsight_Object_manually



https://support.gainsight.com/Data_Management/Gainsight_Standard_Objects/Gainsight_Objects


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@All, Please let know if at all you have a use-case in your mind? we can guide you here!


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Thank you @spencer_engel ! I have a follow up question - I want to snapshot my Onboarding Scorecard at the time the stage switches from Onboarding to the next. I want to display this on a dashboard, but I want it to still look like a scorecard, as in with the colors and features when a unified scorecard object is displayed, how do I do this? Is there a type of field I have to select when creating the field to load to? We are looking to display on our Dashboard a component of ‘onboarded clients’ scorecards at the time they left onboarding stage. Thank you!

cc: @sdrostgainsightcom 

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Thank you@spencer_engel ! I have a follow up question - I want to snapshot my Onboarding Scorecard at the time the stage switches from Onboarding to the next. I want to display this on a dashboard, but I want it to still look like a scorecard, as in with the colors and features when a unified scorecard object is displayed, how do I do this? Is there a type of field I have to select when creating the field to load to? We are looking to display on our Dashboard a component of ‘onboarded clients’ scorecards at the time they left onboarding stage. Thank you!

cc:@sdrostgainsightcom 

Hi @ml2019 - Scorecard data is a little different because it’s actually set up to snapshot automatically in the MDA. You should be able to access this data via the Account Scorecard History object: 
https://support.gainsight.com/SFDC_Edition/Administration_and_Permissions/General_Administration/Scorecards_2.0_Module_Objects#Account_Scorecard_History_Object

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Thank you @spencer_engel . Would I be able to make scorecard history of our onboarding scorecard look like the scorecard fact with the colors? Is there a way to display only the snapshots from the date the scorecard was switched (or the date the stage was changed)?

current live onboarding scorecard:

 

scorecard history report:

 

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Thank you @spencer_engel . Would I be able to make scorecard history of our onboarding scorecard look like the scorecard fact with the colors? Is there a way to display only the snapshots from the date the scorecard was switched (or the date the stage was changed)?

current live onboarding scorecard:

 

scorecard history report:

 

Are you able to change the aggregation to MAX your snapshot date? (click on the gear icon of snapshot date and choose MAX).

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@spencer_engel yes, I can agregate the max of snapshot date but then it makes me agregate all of the other fields, which doesn’t make sense to do if I want to see the score on that date. The other issue is it looks like the snapshot is only weekly, is there a way to make it daily? I think the best would be to use rules engine like we talked about and work on loading the scores to the mda based on a date. 

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@spencer_engel yes, I can agregate the max of snapshot date but then it makes me agregate all of the other fields, which doesn’t make sense to do if I want to see the score on that date. The other issue is it looks like the snapshot is only weekly, is there a way to make it daily? I think the best would be to use rules engine like we talked about and work on loading the scores to the mda based on a date. 

Yeah, you’ll likely want to go the rules route. The system only automatically snapshots scores weekly and monthly. There is no option for daily.

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Thanks @spencer_engel, good to know, thank you for confirming!

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@spencer_engel is there a way to use this solution to grab a date in the past?  I want to see how which CSM accounts were assigned to a certain ARR amount on January 1st of this year.  Is this possible with this solution? Or maybe you have another to do this?

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@spencer_engelis there a way to use this solution to grab a date in the past?  I want to see how which CSM accounts were assigned to a certain ARR amount on January 1st of this year.  Is this possible with this solution? Or maybe you have another to do this?

@ablnsj If you have been snapshotting your ARR since January 1st (using this solution), then yes, absolutely you can see which CSM accounts were assigned to which ARR levels back then by filtering on the date. If you have not been snapshotting - whether in Gainsight or elsewhere - up to this point, then you’re likely out of luck unfortunately.

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@spencer_engel I am trying to snapshot a date a specific usage metric was achieved. But once that snapshot date is there, I do not want it to get overwritten. This is all just a single row of data per account/subscription vs. a new snapshot every time the rule runs. Any ideas how I can get it to work like that? 

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Yeah, then you would just have two dates. So think of the “snapshot date” as its own entity unique to the snapshot table. This will be one of your identifiers. The other date related to the usage data would be treated just like the other usage-related metrics.

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@spencer_engel I think the roadblock I am running into is in the same rule I am snapshotting dates for 6 different metrics. So if I use the date as an identifier, it will not update the other metrics. And if I create separate actions for each metric, or different rules for each metric it will then create new rows based on each metric vs one row per subscription with all the metrics listed. 

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at 5:13 you mention the rule operation being of type: UPSERT.

Pardon me for asking:

I assumed the intent was to write each day a new record regarding the status of the customer stage while setting the rule to run daily.

Why not set the operation type as INSERT ?

Guess what I’m asking is why would you want an update element in there as well?

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