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This update refers to the beta engagement dashboard and Salesforce import features.

Firstly, thanks to all of you who have been using the Engagement Dashboard and Salesforce account import integration in beta for the last months to measure your monthly active customers.

Unfortunately, we unintentionally introduced a severe defect in this feature which impacts the data that powers the engagement dashboard.

In this article you can learn more about the current situation, the impact on your analytics, and the steps we’re taking to solve the defect.

The problem: not all account data is imported and processed from Salesforce

Since Wednesday 18 August ~ 10:00 CEST (04:00 EDT; 01:00 PDT), we’ve been experiencing issues with importing accounts from Salesforce. This was an unintended result of some recent technical changes to the Salesforce integration.

In short, the import does not process all imported companies.

We’ve managed to solve this issue for communities on our EU server, but we’re still trying to tackle the problem for communities running on our US server.

The impact: inaccurate & incomplete data on the engagement dashboard and incomplete company data in the user export

You’ll notice the impact of this issue on the engagement dashboard and in the user export, stemming from the fact that not all companies are imported or processed, and therefore not all community members are linked to companies when they should be.

Specifically, the impact you’ll see:

  • Inaccurate number of total customers on the engagement dashboard, resulting in an incorrect % monthly active customers (e.g. sometimes overreporting your % monthly active customers, even over 100%).
  • Incomplete counts of active, and inactive customers on the engagement dashboard. This is a result of not all users being linked to companies.
  • Missing companies + company external Id values in the User export (same cause as above).

The impact is ongoing until we successfully solve the defect.

What we’ve done so far

We managed to address the issue for EU-based communities.

We’ve also identified (but not yet delivered) a solution for US-based communities, where we have a higher volume of Salesforce data to process.

What you can expect as next steps

We’re still currently working to resolve this for US-based communities.

Our aim is to retroactively fix the data on the engagement dashboard, meaning:

  1. We’ll retroactively fix the pageview data for any community members who weren’t linked to companies but should have been.
  2. We’ll also retroactively fix the total number of customers and % monthly active customers metrics for the months of August and September 2021.

Please note: the solution we are most confident in to fix the data problems on the engagement dashboard will mean that we’ll need to remove some functionality related to the Salesforce Import. For instance, we’ll be removing the Company Overview. We also need to remove the Company and Company External Id columns from the User Export.

We may consider bringing these functionalities back, but we need to reconsider the implementation of them. We’d welcome any feedback on this dropped functionality in the replies below (e.g. why you’d miss this data in the user export, or on the company overview). 

The Company Overview will be removed from Control.
The company and company_external_id columns will be removed from the user export.

 

Make sure you reply to this topic or hit the ‘Favorite’ button to get the latest updates as we progress with a solution

Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback in the replies.

Oh the joys of betas 😉 No major concerns here, though I did like having the company details on the user export I’m far more interested in having accurate and up-to-date data between inSided and Salesforce. 

📰 Update on resolving the defect

We’re in progress with rolling out a change to the query on the engagement dashboard → this is towards our aim to retroactively fix the data on the engagement dashboard.

We plan to make the engagement metrics backfill based on historical data

Pageview and other community interaction data will now be backfilled on the engagement dashboard. This means if a community member has been active (= viewed a page on the community) but was linked to a company at a later date, we take their historical engagement into account on the engagement dashboard.

For instance, if a user views a community page in August, but is only linked in September to a Company ‘Acme’, we’ll count the company ‘Acme’ as active in August. 

You might notice a bump in some of your active customer numbers once we roll this out, as we’ll be capturing a fuller picture of engagement data.

Temporarily, active customers & % monthly active customers cannot be viewed

Whilst we’re in an ‘in-between’ state of testing this with production data, the charts showing % and total active customers for your communities will look something like the example below (active customers not showing, % monthly active customers not visible). 

This will only affect you until tomorrow (Wed 8 September) - this is when we plan to roll out the change to the query that result in backfilled data.

Just to clarify: no data has been lost, we’re just changing the way we’re calculating/presenting the metrics.

Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback, and thanks for your ongoing patience!

Update - we’ve rolled out a fix 🎉

 

✅  We’ve retroactively fixed pageview data for any community members who weren’t linked to companies but should have been.

✅We’ve also retroactively fixed the total number of customers and % monthly active customers metrics for the months of August and September 2021.

As mentioned before, you may notice a bump in your active customers and % monthly active customers metrics, since we now attribute pageviews to companies even if the community member was linked after those pageviews.  For instance, if a user views a community page in August, but is only linked in September to a Company ‘Acme’, we’ll count the company ‘Acme’ as active in August. 

 

🔧Reminder: some features related to the Salesforce account import will be removed

  • We’ll be removing the company and company_external id columns from the user export.
  • We’ll be removing the company overview.

Thanks everyone for your patience on this, and sorry for the inconvenience caused.

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