Share and Learn Best Practices

After a pair of acquisitions and the decision to consolidate CS in Gainsight, we needed to migrate notes from Planhat and Catalyst into Timeline. This post documents how we migrated notes, including the conventions we used, the mapping decisions we made (authors, activity types, companies, attendees), and a few issues to be aware of/avoid.If you’re planning a similar migration, follow along, hope this helps. Migration goalsMove legacy notes, meetings, QBRs, and other interactions into Gainsight Timeline with original authors, dates, and attendees. Make it safe to rerun batches without creating duplicates. Make the source system visible on every migrated activity.Our conventions:External Id The record Id from either Planhat or Catalyst Guarantees global uniqueness and gives a natural “upsert”. Replays won’t create dupes; you can PUT with identifier=externalid to fix records. We used this more than I’d like to admit External Source Catalyst: External Source = “Catalyst Notes - Legacy H

If you are using Gainsight as your platform of choice and are involved in Digital Success, or Digital First as I like call it, you will want to watch this video.In this tips and tricks video, I explore leveraging Data Designer as a control plane to inform your leadership of planned outreach and data gaps, and to better determine when an email is sent. 

Sometimes integrations break. While I would hope Gainsight support would monitor, catch, and address things when the integration stops working, that may not be the case. Here’s a simple solution I came up with to ensure that (at least half of) the integration is still working. (Shoutout 🤖 Google Gemini ✨ for the thought partnership )My assumption: if the PUSH of PX data TO Salesforce isn’t working, the PULL of Data probably isn’t either. But this solution doesn’t necessarily guarantee to catch the other half if the PUSH continues to work.  Set up a Salesforce fieldCreate a field on Salesforce Contacts for PX Last Seen Set your Salesforce integration to PUSH data from PX to Salesforce PX User attribute (out-of-the-box): Last Seen Salesforce field: {your field name} Create a Salesforce ReportCreate a report  Filter all contacts by {your field name} = TODAYSubscribe to the ReportSchedule to run whenever makes sense based on the multiple daily syncs that push data from PX to Salesforce (

It's been a really long time since I last recorded a Tips and Tricks video, and since I have been having lost of fun with Staircase AI by Gainsight, I thought I'll share some ✌insights✌ - 🥁 🥁 😉  

Scheduling meetings can be very time consuming; and can often be the reason why customers don’t schedule meetings at all. Reducing the friction between both account management teams (i.e - Customer Success Managers, Account Managers, Solution Architects, etc.) and customers can help significantly with improving the response rate of your requests for a meeting. One tool to help with this is Calendly. A popular calendar booking service that allows third parties to select a time slot that is convenient for both them and you, without the need for long email chains back and forth. Calendly in particular has some great features such as round-robin scheduling (great for pooled teams) and group bookings (great when you want both a Customer Success Manager and Account Manager to attend). Once your team has selected a tool such as Calendly, the next challenge is getting your customers to book the time at the right point in their customer journey. This can vary between all sorts of different use

Ever wish your team(s) could get vital Gainsight information without having to constantly log in? You're not alone! At Acquia, we've found that using Gainsight's internal email features has transformed how we communicate and collaborate. I'm excited to share some examples of how we do this and how you can too.Improved Response TimeFor our teams with occasional Gainsight tasks, we’ve built out notifications to prompt action from those teams.Example 1: Our CSMs create CSQLs (Customer Success Qualified Leads) via a CTA that they then assign to the Account Manager to work.  Account Managers tend to operate mostly in Salesforce, so it’s not always top of mind for them to go work CTAs.  To solve this problem, we’ve created two internal emails that they can use to complete the process of updating and tagging the CTAs appropriately. (One that fires a few days following the creation of the CTA, and then, another that fires a few days later if no action has still been completed)Both emails conta

  We're thrilled to announce that The GameChanger Awards are back and now open for nominations across Europe and Asia!These awards recognize and celebrate the remarkable achievements of our customers who are transforming the landscape of Customer Success, Product Experience, Community Engagement, Education, and AI through Gainsight. This is your chance to showcase how you've leveraged Gainsight products to drive significant impact and innovation within your organization. Nomination submissions will be accepted until 12 September. To participate, simply download the submission template, add your qualitative and quantitative data from 2023 along with your details, and submit it HERE by 6:00 PM (CET) 12 September.   This year’s award categories:The Architect – Customer Communities The Challenger – Customer Success The Dream Team – Any Gainsight Product The Golden Skillet – Skilljar by Gainsight The Transformational Leader – Any Gainsight Product (VP+ title required) The Visionary – AI Ful

If you’re looking to analyze the usage of Gainsight among your users, there are a few ways that this can be accomplished, and I wanted to share how we went about tackling this problem.Ultimately, we didn’t use the GS Asset Tracking object for our use case. We were less interested in the reports/dashboards being used, and more interested in the results we were expecting to see (the outputs, like Timeline activities and CTA movement).  Business Impact: As a member of CS Ops, CS Leadership, & CS Systems, I want to understand how our users are adopting Gainsight and adhering to their expected usage of the platform.Description: Build a dashboard that outlines key indicators of adoption/usage:Log in frequency Logging activities to Timeline Acting upon created CTAs Updating CSM Sentiment in health scorecardThe dashboard answers questions such as… Logins Who are the top users based on logins? Top 10 Users This Month User Login History object, Count of Login Time and MAX of Login Time

Hi, We have a full partner strategy, and don't have direct customers. Currently we are using the Allbound as a partner portal. E.g. for onboarding of partners, sharing of documentation, deal reg forms, etc.We are looking into Gainsight Community to be able to engage/interact more with our end customers/users. To simplify our tech stack we were wondering if we could Allbound by Gainsight Community.Are there other Gainsight Community customers who have a partner strategy? If so, is there any experience in using Gainsight Community also as a partner portal?Thanks,Bram

Is anyone else out there obsessed with automating every corner of your community platform? 🙋‍♂️ I’m all-in on streamlining processes using tools like Workato, Google Apps Script, and Python to make community operations smarter, faster, and more scalable.Here’s a peek at how we’ve extended our setup to do just that — and some of the behind-the-scenes automation magic that makes it all work.🧠 Custom Roles That Assign Themselves (Yes, Really)Our community structure is centered on lines of business and product access, with custom roles managing visibility and permissions. Manual assignment just doesn’t scale — so we automated it entirely.🔁 When a user registers, a community webhook fires.⚙️ A Workato recipe catches that webhook and: Parses the user's email domain Queries Salesforce for the associated Account and its Lines of Business Dynamically builds a list of roles based on what that user should be entitled to 🧩 The final step? An API call to the community platform that assigns

Effective escalation management is vital for Customer Success. While tools like Jira or ServiceNow handle technical workflows, they often lack the context and visibility CS teams need. This article outlines how to use Gainsight to complement those systems with better tracking, reporting, and accountability. The GoalEnable Customer Success teams and leadership to:Track the full lifecycle of escalations within Gainsight Improve visibility across accounts and teams Enrich customer context for health scoring, renewals, and risk management Automate follow-ups and SLA tracking with CTAs Leverage AI-powered insights through Timeline and Copilot features Step-by-Step: Escalation Tracking via Gainsight Step 1: Keep Support Platform as the Source of TruthContinue using Jira (or ServiceNow or other Support Platforms) to manage detailed escalation workflows, ticket comments, and ownership. Gainsight’s role is visibility and lifecycle tracking, not replacing Jira's ticket resolution process. Step 2

I wanted to share how we track key field changes on the Company object using Real Time Rules. This is a common use case that is easy to implement once you get comfortable with Real Time Rule functionality!Step 1: Create your History Tracking ObjectWe use a custom object to hold information for our key field changes. We titled it “Company History Tracking.” It has the following fields:Old Value New Value Field Company (GSID lookup) and the other system-generated fieldsStep 2: Create your Real Time RuleReal Time Rules can be used to track field level changes on limited objects (called “Topics”). For this example, we’ll use the “Company” topic to track field level changes from Company in real-time.Step 3: Choose your event (what do you want to track that changes?)After choosing your “Topic” (Company), choose your “Event.” This is the change that occurs that will trigger the rule. There are some OOTB options for you, but if you’re looking to do multiple changes at once, use a “Custom Updat

As a CS Ops Manager at TrendMiner for the past 5 years, I’m always looking for ways to help our Customer Success team scale more effectively through better processes, systems, and data. Recently, we tackled a common challenge in CS: single-threading.Got questions or thoughts on this? Feel free to drop a comment or send me a message. Happy to chat more about it!The challengeIt happens a lot more than you’d like as a CSM: your main contact changes roles or leaves the company and the customer goes dark. The solution? Multi-threading: making sure you have regular touchpoints with multiple stakeholders, so you are not dependent on a single individual.But how do you ensure this is consistently done for every customer? What tools can you provide to your CSMs to get more insight into the breadth of their outreach?Introducing the Value Network, a practical tool implemented in Gainsight CS that accomplishes exactly that…What is a Value Network?A Value Network is an overview of all customer conta

Yes, this post was created with AI, but I checked its work. Based on our implementation, here's a comprehensive guide on how to build robust killswitches into your Gainsight rules to prevent data disasters and massive CTA creation incidents. 🎯 Why Killswitches MatterImagine waking up to find your rule created 2,000 CTAs overnight because of bad data, or worse - your health scores were incorrectly set to zero because a data source failed. Killswitches are your safety net, providing automated circuit breakers that stop rules when unexpected conditions are detected. 🛠️ Two Main Killswitch Patterns1. Volume-Based: Preventing CTA ExplosionsUse Case: Risk CTA creation that depends on external data sourcesImplementation:Count the number of CTAs that would be created by your rule If count exceeds a reasonable threshold (e.g., 100 CTAs), abort the rule Send Slack notification to alert your teamSetup Steps:Add a Transform step to count the number of CTA records Include a Slack notification act

Hi everyone -  I recently crowdsourced the Gainsight Admin community to ask for some best practices regarding best practices for managing a Gainsight sandbox. I got some helpful thoughts, and along with an assist from ChatGPT, came up with the following 8 best practices. By all means, do not consider this a final list! I’d love to hear what I missed or if anything needs to be tweaked. We’re all constantly learning here 😃. 1. Use Sandbox for Testing Only Only use Sandbox for:  Testing new rules, playbooks, layouts, and configurations  Training new admins or CSMs  QA before deploying to production  Never test in production if the change has risk — even small changes (e.g., to Rules or Permissions) can cascade widely. If we absolutely must test in production (due to data limitations in Sandbox, for example), then test on a Company record that is only meant for testing. 2. Establish a Promotion Process Have a clearly documented change control process: Develop and test in sandbox.  Use a

I was hoping to nab some pictures to share in a LinkedIn post from both when Gainstars got recognized and maybe from my session. Any idea when these might go up? Thank you!

Hey Community-ersAbout a year ago I posted here asking how you promote community at events.2 weeks ago, my company www.mews.com hosted it’s annual hospitality conference. I wanted to share this here as we did 2 things differently this time around with some great results so thought I’d share here. Hopefully this is somewhat inspiring!!:  Community Drinks Event (Pre-Conference): We hosted an exclusive rooftop event for customers already in town the evening before the main conference. We had support staff managing logistics so I could focus on mingling. I budgeted for a live DJ and a magician which added a special touch. The evening was hosted in a beautiful waterside rooftop venue in the sun which certainly helped with the strong turnout. As a result, I was able to have some great conversation about the community with my customers, get new customers signed up to the community and got some verbal commitments for community-exclusive success story interviews - one of my key targets in 2025.

Thank you to those of you who attended our AI “Real Talk” panel discussion at this year’s Pulse.  We ran out of time to cover all the submitted questions, so this is my attempt to address the follow up questions that I’m best suited to answer.  Do you see Ai/Agents as a more economical solution to outsourcing? No, I see AI agents as an augmentation to the workforce.  Our organization does not outsource but we do offshore.   How do you plan on getting around potential legal hurdles with AI in the future around data, etc. Do you think less regulations will benefit in the long run? Or are guardrails necessary?  At the moment, we don’t have answer to the legal hurdles (yet).  We focus on the markets less regulated to start in order to commence our AI initiatives.  Yes, I believe guardrails are necessary to prevent security risks. @Dan Reese, how did you calculate the cost of one AI Agent for your Digital COE ($14K/year)?  We measured a time impact of [Avg. 7 meetings per week x 30 minutes

 Feeling a little blue now that you’re not surrounded by 2,000 of your closest CS friends? Same here. But don’t worry—you can relive the magic with all the incredible photos from the week 📸We’ll also be dropping session recordings by the end of the week into the Pulse Library.Is it too early to say… bring on Pulse 2026?  

So wonderful seeing everyone at Pulse 2025!!Thank you to the Gainsight event team for a great conference.When can we anticipate the Pulse 2025 On Demand sessions to be available? 

Our Lord returns! DJ Skemaddox returns and it was Glorious!! 

Hey everyone! My team and I are really looking forward to #Pulse2025! Join me on Thursday, May 29 at 10:15am PT in the Innovation Theater for a session on Driving More Expansion Revenue. We will discuss:-What holds CS organizations back from driving expansion revenue-Initiatives to implement-Case studies of successful CS organizations You'll receive an assessment to evaluate your organization and recommendations to boost expansion revenue. Let me know if you're coming so we can connect before or after the session. 

Survive the Vegas heat and make new CS friends at the Minus5° Ice Bar! Matik & Rod Cherkas are hosting a networking happy hour with heavy hors d'oeuvres and a hosted open bar. Explore the Minus5° Ice Bar which is completely made of ice (jackets to be provided), and then warm back up at the 1923 Prohibition Bar next door. When: May 28 @ 5 pm, after Day 1 at PulseWhere: Minus5° Ice Bar and 1923 Prohibition Bar (less than a 10-minute walk from Pulse)Sign Up: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/success-on-the-rocks-tickets-1357265951999 Cool down at the Minus5° Ice BarWarm back up at the Prohibition Bar