Gainsight CS: Q3 Release Webinar Recording

I had to drop early but I noticed that the webinar did not include covering how end users will be able to submit Key Definition suggestions which is in the Early Access Release Notes and is something that I and several other admins believe needs to be behind a permission bundle (regardless of the fact that admins still have to approve the suggestions).  

Some of the reasons (submitted by the following admins in the early access release notes document):

Angela Domenichelli ​@angela_domenichelli “If this causes confusion, I will turn off Copilot altogether, which I'm sure is not what Gainsight is hoping for with AI Feature adoption.  I agree that an on/off switch would be useful to allow us to continue being early adopters and train the copilot model. I also expect a lot of the suggestions to be for Relationships, which co-pilot does not even support but end users will not understand.

Will Scupham ( ​@wscupham  ) “I agree that not being able to restrict the suggestions capability is a risk. I imagine that there isn't a control for if a similar/identical suggestion already exists which could cause a lot of overhead admin work to reconcile duplicates. In which case, admin controls are even more important so that we can properly enable on the feature before we turn it on”

Michael O’Brien ( ​@mobrien14  ) “I agree with the sentiments already echoed in wanting to hide/disabled the KDs. Our admin & enablement teams are going to want to test this out & implement our own items and, like it or not, end users are going to click on something if they see it in the UI. We also have our own internal process for enhancements/requests & don't want to add additional routes for suggestions using this.”

Britt Layman ( ​@Blayman  ) “Seconding everything here. This has potential to be an area of added pain for our users, complexity and issues with us as admins, and my general thoughts are that if we need and want to define KDs, that's better facilitated by an ops team discussion with our users who could provide appropriate feedback. Not all of our users will be equipped to provide definitions and I'd rather not have something enabled that adds to confusion in the tool. To Angela's point, it may need to be a case of just turning off the feature completely, but at the very least we need the ability to turn off by permissions.”

Andy Buchanan ( ​@andy_buchanan ) “I would agree.  This needs to be slow-rolled here.  I would heavily suggest this being a Permission Bundle.  I would want control over who can submit.  Reviewing these would be an additional burden, and while more feedback from users is great, it's not helpful if they aren't great at providing this detail.”

Thomas Maier ( ​@TMaier )  “I appreciate the approach of using an approvals queue here and (hopefully) an audit log that is searchable and ideally reportable, but I do agree that a granular permission for something as powerful and complex as this would be reasonable to help admins with larger deployments function.  If, for instance, I have marketing ALSO in my org alongside the CSM's I might want to only present this ability to the CSM's to avoid a flood of conflicting ideas based on different team "up to's"

Dawn Cassidy ( ​@dcassidy ) “Please make this admin-controlled. Key Definitions aren't rolled out properly at all yet (and my users will be confused), you are making more work for your admins and actually limiting adoption of your new features with this kind of ham-fisted behavior. I'll just turn Copilot off if it causes more work for us.”

Caitlin Ankney ( ​@caitlin_ankney ) “Agreed, it would be nice if this could be added to permissions bundles and turned on or off. I'm sure this could be a great feature for some, but when you have many different types of users or are working with a large company, this could cause more confusion for our users.”

Travis Floyd ( ​@travis_floyd ) “If it is not part of the Business Process to allow users to make these suggestions, just having it automatically turned on for anyone who has access gives them the false impression that their suggestions are being considered.  This may be something that the business needs dictate a different formal process for submission... especially in large environments with lots of users... this could become unmanageable. 

Admin should have the ability to enable / disable this functionality.”

Victoria Barry ( ​@victoria_peeker_barry ) “I think this is another example where we admins need to have control and decide with our org and leadership whats appropriate for us and whats not.  It is a bit frustrating when Gainsight assumes to know what will work in our org....this is something which should only be given to select few to start in the org as a pilot and then decided if it needs to be expanded.”

Romi Herrera ( ​@romihache ) “I agree with all of the above. While I'm glad a queue system is in place, I believe allowing unrestricted access could quickly lead to an unmanageable workload for admins and potentially foster internal friction and mistrust among users. The absence of usage data is a major concern here. We can't responsibly expand access to new features without first understanding Copilot usage patterns. We need to know who is using it and how. This insight is the only way to accurately identify and select the most engaged users who should be granted the privilege of submitting KDs, among other things.”

Holly Harris  ( ​@HollySimmons ) - “Agree on the above, as Admins we should choose whether our end-users can submit suggestions or not. We have existing processes for our CSMs and leadership to request changes to Gainsight (and we use a voting system to ensure we work on these in order of priority) and this will be a different place for us to manage. Not welcome at all.”

Roxanne Conroy  ( ​@RoxConroy ) “Agree with the above as well. Not every end user has the best practice in mind and this will massively muddy the waters with suggestions in an already murky area of Admin visibility such as AI. Please allow this to be granted on a user by user basis.”

Jen Provenzano ( ​@jenlpro ) “While my current company would actually really value this feature, I also very much see the use case to either completely disable the suggestion feature (ie using a data catalog for all definitions and having a team who manages definitions company-wide; companies with a dedicated KM team with a different suggestion intake process, etc), as well as to limit the users who can suggest (ie during our POC for Copilot where we only enabled the perms for 10 users, those 10 users should be the only folks who can submit feedback DESPITE Copilot unintentionally being exposed on C360 in our instance by Gainsight for all users). It is important you think about the end user here. While Admins are the ones giving you feedback that this needs to be admin-controlled, it's in favor of our end user experience. The more Gainsight is exposing to our users that isn't organization-sanctioned featureset, the higher likelihood that your end users experience friction or confusion and begin to distrust or dislike the system. Happy to chat more if you have questions - thank you!”

Jeff Kirkpatrick ( ​@darkknight  ) “I do not want end users submitting Key Definition suggestions at this point.  KDs have been unreliable and wonky (I've opened several support tickets). It is not ready for end users to be submitting, so admins must have the ability to turn off the suggestion capability.  I've got close to 150 users right now (and I know some of your customers have a LOT more than that). This is not something every admin is prepared to train and manage, or even want every user having the ability to do.  We should be able to grant permission to submit Key Definitions to specific users - it should not be a free for all to everyone who has Copilot access (which is ALL Viewer, Full and Viewer Analytics users because it's enabled by default in all Default bundles).  Admins should be able to restrict access to Key Definitions full stop.  This sort of thing needs to be considered for EVERY end user facing feature. All end user features should come with an on-off switch controlled by an admin so that we can choose how, when and to whom to roll it out. It shouldn't be something we have to request.”

Thanks ​@darkknight for putting this together!!!
I used Gemini to consolidate our concerns and the reasoning behind them:

🔑 Core Arguments for Admin Control

The admins provided several compelling reasons for needing granular control over who can submit KD suggestions:

• Risk of Confusion and User Friction:

  • Many users fear the feature will cause confusion and frustration for end users who may not understand the context (e.g., Relationships are not supported) or may not be equipped to provide accurate definitions.

  • Exposing non-organization-sanctioned features increases the likelihood of users experiencing friction and potentially leading them to distrust or dislike the system 

• Increased Administrative Burden and Unmanageable Workload:

  • Unrestricted access could lead to a flood of suggestions and an unmanageable workload for admins who must review and approve them 

  • There is concern about the overhead of reconciling duplicate or low-quality suggestions

  • Admins often have existing internal processes for enhancements and requests, and this feature introduces an additional, potentially conflicting route for suggestions 

• Need for Controlled Rollout and Testing:

  • Admins want to slow-roll or pilot the feature with select users before broader release

  • Some admins need to test and implement their own items first before end users start submitting

• Feature Maturity Concerns:

  • The feature is not considered reliable enough for end-user submissions at this time, with some admins reporting existing issues and support tickets regarding KDs

• Misaligned Expectations:

  • Automatically enabling the feature gives users a false impression that their suggestions are being considered, especially if the business process doesn't allow for it

  • In large or complex organizations (e.g., Marketing alongside CSMs),  different teams may have conflicting ideas

• Consequence of No Control:

  • Several admins state they will be forced to turn off Copilot completely if the suggestion feature causes too much confusion or work, which is contrary to the goal of AI adoption

🎯 Desired Solution

The unanimous request is for the ability to restrict access to Key Definition suggestion submission using:

• Permission Bundles/User-by-User Basis: Allowing admins to decide exactly who can submit suggestions (The consensus).

• An Admin On/Off Switch: To easily disable the feature system-wide if needed