A customer of mine wants to be able to send reports to her boss. The use case is pretty straightforward: Right now, the exec is sent an Excel spreadsheet every Friday with a list of their accounts and key attributes. This exec does not have access to Gainsight, so simply having the exec viewing a dashboard will not work. So what my customer wanted to do is automate a report that would be sent out to the Exec. Initially, I figured this would be straightforward, only to discover that all the potential solutions solve about 75% of the use case. Send a program - Can't do this because every recipient has to be associated with an account ID. Even if the exec were assigned to a dummy account (which is apparently our suggestion?), the exec still wouldn't be able to get the report that spans across the whole customer base. Send an outreach - At least with an outreach, you are still allowed to send to internal users without associating them to a dummy account. (Which begs the question: why can we not do this with programs anymore?) However, I recently discovered that we cannot attach reports to these outreaches, so I can't achieve this use case. Share a dashboard - I suppose I can do this, but not in an automated fashion. I'd love to hear if I'm missing something obvious here or if product has anything to add here with suggestions for how to achieve an important use case like this.

There's no way to automate reports to internal Execs in Gainsight

A customer of mine wants to be able to send reports to her boss. The use case is pretty straightforward: Right now, the exec is sent an Excel spreadsheet every Friday with a list of their accounts and key attributes. This exec does not have access to Gainsight, so simply having the exec viewing a dashboard will not work.

So what my customer wanted to do is automate a report that would be sent out to the Exec. Initially, I figured this would be straightforward, only to discover that all the potential solutions solve about 75% of the use case.

Send a program - Can't do this because every recipient has to be associated with an account ID. Even if the exec were assigned to a dummy account (which is apparently our suggestion?), the exec still wouldn't be able to get the report that spans across the whole customer base.
Send an outreach - At least with an outreach, you are still allowed to send to internal users without associating them to a dummy account. (Which begs the question: why can we not do this with programs anymore?) However, I recently discovered that we cannot attach reports to these outreaches, so I can't achieve this use case.
Share a dashboard - I suppose I can do this, but not in an automated fashion.

I'd love to hear if I'm missing something obvious here or if product has anything to add here with suggestions for how to achieve an important use case like this.

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This is a common ask in our environment too. In fact, I was asked this again today. "Salesforce can do it, why can't Gainsight?"

Sending a dashboard - even if scheduled - is a non-starter for us because it's in a powerpoint format which is usless.

Sending a program would be overkill for something like this, not to mention cluttering up the list of programs.

Would love to see a scheduler built in, similar to Salesforce, that would send an exported version of the report OR send a link to the report on a dashboard.

Couldn't you use the User-level filter in a Program? Or would that only work if the user is on the customer record (like a CSM)? https://support.gainsight.com/Journey_Orchestrator_and_Email/Standard_Outreaches/05_Configuring_Reports_to_Send_via_CoPilot#Apply_Filter.2FNo_Filter_User_Strategy_in_Journey_Orchestrator_Emails_with_Reports

Haven't tried it but from the looks of that document it has to be tied to the account - they are using the Client Success Manager on the Account object as an example.

But really this is an operational, internal need and Journey Orchestrator should be reserved for customer related outreaches and activities.

I would suggest using a program with a csv file as the mailing list.

This only works if you want a report aggregated by customer, one email per customer. For our use case, we need to send a report of all clients with data from Gainsight, product usage and Salesforce object data to execs and there is no way to send one email with one report in tabular format.

You still can't attach a report for all customers to a program.

Should this be combined?

+1, this is a common issue for us as well. There are workarounds such as sending a dashboard via a button but this still requires multiple steps to setup. Plus our exec team and other end-users are used to how SFDC reporting and dashboards work.

Can you 'share a dashboard' by using the Share 360 feature?

In our case, no. The reports I am creating are several thousand rows. They would have to export the report from the dashboard, and I think that caps out and ends up cutting off the data.

Same problem. Every Thur night I need to send out a list of At Risk accounts. Unfortunately, I export as excel file and send to the leadership team (use case listed in the original post). Having the SFDC report scheduler functionality like Jeff has suggested would be so helpful.

Hi Angela,

With dashboard sharing you can enable export of tabular data. You should definitely check it out!

Thanks, Dan. But there isn't a way to automate sharing dashboards yet, right? Is that on the roadmap?

Not directly OOTB, but there is a way to do this using Journey Orchestrator (FKA CoPilot).

https://community.gainsight.com/conversations/sharing-dashboards-using-copilot-how-to-guide-5bc73e18e4b04588aaf86a9e

I do share dashboards when appropriate. However, someone that doesn't have full Gainsight access only recieves a link to the page or a PPT. They either have to:

1. save a link and remember to go back in and check on a regular basis, and export the report from the dashboard, cause there are more rows than I can put on the dashboard section and because they need to manipulate the data further, or

2. receive a PPT presentation in an email that I have to manually push out which then would not contain all the data in a report where they can manipulate further.

I should be able to build a report, include it in an email template (attachment is fine), schedule that email to go out and pull new data into the report on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis to a whole team of internal managers at my organization who do not have full licenses or any license to Gainsight. And that one report should be able to contain data on ALL of our clients.

Angela - I agree. It seems to be when this topic comes up, Dashboards is the answer when Dashboards is not the question. Some orgs do not use nor want to enable shared dashboards and so there is no work around.

Scheduling recurring reports to be emailed - unrelated to an account - should be possible.

It needs to be OOTB because it is an operational need. Overhead on Journey Orchestrator is high and it clutters up customer related activities.

Just because something is possible, doesn't mean it's the right solution.

+1000 to Kelly's comment

Hey All,

Valid Points. Good News here. We are going to remove the need to mandate account id/relationship id to reports when you send it via programs.

Also, we are including a exclusive strategy for Users in program which will help address these use cases specifically. It should be available in the coming 1 or 2 months.

Thanks

Abhishek S

Very exciting Abhishek!

Abhishek - what is the resistance to enabling this from directly within Report Builder? Journey Orchestrator should not be our solution for internal reporting and dashboard delivery. With the volume of interest we have to have reports and/or dashboards emailed to managers, directors, executives, we're talking about a LOT of clutter and overhead in using Programs.

I am - and will continue to - advocating for a Report and/or Dashboard feature that allows scheduled delivery of reports directly from those tools, similar to how Salesforce does it. Journey Orchestrator should be considered a stop-gap, not a solution.

I appreciate that there are efforts being made to make delivery of reports easier, however, I completely agree with Jeff. We also use Salesforce.

Thanks Angela.

Abhishek - to elaborate on this a bit more, in Salesforce I create the report, then Schedule Future Runs, add a user/email. Done and done.

If you're envisioning this to work with the typical JO functionality

WIth Journey Orchestrator, you have to (at a minimum)

- build the report in Report Builder

- go to JO and create an Email Template to attach the report

- Create a Program and Select your model

- create your source data set

- make sure you map any fields appropriately on steps 2-5 on the Participants Config (and save each one separately)

- go attach your template to the program model and map any tokens asappropriate

- End the outreach

- Publish the outreach

- Schedule the outreach

This of course doesn't even reflect the amount of clutter that will show in the Templates, Programs and Program Calendar.

There are so many extra steps required to this through a Journey Program.

I understand you can deliver something faster using Journey Orchestrator, but for internal/operational purposes, this belongs in Report or Dashboard Builder.

Please consider the user experience and the overhead required to develop and maintain for this use case.

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