I know I commented on another post about this, but this is enough of a change that more than 2 weeks notice really needs to be given for intrusive changes like this.





It takes time and planning to prep end users for changes to get them used to a new UI, especially as we are still rolling out and training new users on the existing platform - as well as presently installing a second instance of GS in another SFDC org.  In the future, I would hope to have much more advance notice than 2 weeks.





Fortunately for us, we have auto-updates turned off and have some control over rolling this out, but that may not be applicable for most customers.  We like to stay as up to date as possible, but now due to the timing of this update, it may be a few months before we're able to make the switch to accomodate the change.





As an additional note, I shared the Video Preview for CSMs with one of our Top performing CSMs and here was her feedback:





"I think it's good that we can hold this release until later in the year.   Our CSM's are just getting used to things in the current view and I'm afraid this change, at this time, could throw some for a loop.   There are more changes than I expected and I know for me personally, it's going to take me longer to do my job until I can figure out the new interface.    On a scale of 1-10 of impact (1 being low and 10 being high), my opinion  would be this would be a 3 or 4 to a CSM - which takes focus off the customer and more on the tool."

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Understand the concern and the change - you can see some of the feedback shared from users and customers that participated in our Early Access program.  We did also incorporate a number of the key suggested changes from these customers and our internal team.  


https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/very-positive-feedback


https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/topics/overall-review-so-far-looks-great





The suggested changes are also here in this category from the Early Access customers (looks like you found this category as well):


https://community.gainsight.com/gainsight/categories/gainsight_50_ui_feedback

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This is not about the quality of work or effort Denise.  It is about the timing for notification of broad rollout.  If we had known two months ago this was coming in July, we would have had more time to plan.  In enterprise environments (where we are supporting and currently rolling out to teams across the globe) you don't just flip a switch and roll out a new UI. Now, we'll be behind on updates by several months because we have to plan to roll this out.

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We attempted to give an early heads up on our new UI and seems we may have missed the mark in some cases.  We are always looking for better ways to do this so welcome suggestions on this kind of change that affects all of your end users. Âi]





The approaches we took were: include early heads up and preview video of the new UI in our May release email (5/19) to our Admins and Adoption Champions, use it ourselves heavily, show it to lots of customers at Pulse, involve a set of volunteer customers in an Early Access program to work any major kinks, expose the early access feedback to all in Community - are there additional avenues/communications you would suggest to help you and other customers best prepare and feel prepared?  Or help make the upcoming change more visible?

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Again - this is not about how early you gave access for customers to be able to test it out...it is  about how much advance notice you gave for announcing when it was being released into production.  





Perhaps I am not making my concern clear enough.   Happy to have a phone chat if it will help clarify.





Incidentally - how long will you continue to support the 4.4x release?

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Hi


Can you provide the precise time the new UI will be deployed on Thursday and how long it may take ? 


A large part of our sales teams are in EMEA and Asia and I would like to forewarn them of expected downtime if this happens during their working day.


Many thanks


Ian

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Ian,





My advice would be to put in a support ticket and schedule a time for this upgrade. Would this minimize the impact of a global organization if we could do this?





Thanks,


Steve Davis

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Hi Steve





It may help but with offices open 24/7 one of the regions will have to bear the load on that.





Is it possible to schedule the upgrade for my org at a particular time or is it a one size fits all ?





Alternatively if you can tell me "the upgrade will happen between 10am and 12pm BST" then I can advise Sales teams accordingly





Thanks





Ian

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Ian, 





If you want to schedule an upgrade we can, but it won't be for same time that we are performing the other upgrades. As it pertains to the bulk upgrade process here is the feedback from engineering. 





The upgrade process will start at 10:00 a.m IST (12:30 A.M EDT/EST) on 7 July. It will be a bulk upgrade of all opt-in customers ti]from a common previous major / latest patch release  i]to 5.1.1. 





This process will likely take several hours for us to complete as we will be upgrading our entire customer base. This should give you an idea of at least a ball park time.

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Hi 


Not seeing Lila's update nor my reply to her on here but for the record I'll stick with the common window of 12:30 A.M to 6:30 A.M EST.


Many thanks


Ian

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The videos would be more helpful if they were broken up a bit.  For example, separate the new features (which some customers may opt not to implement right away or at all) from the new UI navigation.  I cannot use the CSM training video as is because it includes navigation into areas we don't make visible for our CSMs, i.e. playbooks, surveys and the GSnap feature inclusion (which we are not planning to use right away).  If these were split up, then customers could choose which videos to share with their end users as it pertains to their particular environment.





You may think "well the end users can just ignore the parts that don't apply to them" but it leads to a lot of questions and explanation (why don't I have access?  why can't we use that now? etc)  and adds extra noise for the ops team to sort through.

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Hi Jeff,





This 5-minute video contains only the UI changes from our July release that pertain to CSMs, without reference to Gsnap or Surveys. I also removed the explanation of Playbooks, but there is still a brief glimpse of the Playbooks page. 





For additional July release material that you can easily customize and share with your CSMs, I also recommend this PPT. You can just delete the slides that don't pertain to your org.





Cheers,


Lila 

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Thanks Lila, this is helpful!

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