Order and throttle your guides

This article is relevant for overlay guides created in the Visual Design Studio or Adopt Studio that are set to activate automatically. Guide ordering and throttling isn't relevant to embedded guides.

The article provides guidance for using guide ordering and throttling to coordinate the timing of your automatic guides and avoid overwhelming your visitors with too much content at one time. Decide which guides to show first, how much time should pass before showing the next guide, and which guides should be shown immediately, regardless of throttling rules.

Prerequisites

• You must have Guide Publisher permissions or admin user permissions to edit guide settings.
• Guide ordering and throttling is available for applications using Pendo agent version 2.8.0 or greater or Mobile SDK version 2 or greater.

How it works

Guide ordering and throttling settings for automatic guides are managed at the application level. You can't order and throttle guides over multiple applications.

Ordering and throttling settings allow you to organize and prioritize your automatic guides, helping you to manage your visitors' guided experience in an application. You can use these settings to prioritize alert messages, set the display order of onboarding and nurture campaigns, deliver product announcements at the right time, and send follow-up research guides in the right order.

• Guide ordering ensures that automatic guides are shown in the order that you specify. If the next guide in the list isn't available for a visitor, for example, because it's anchored to a specific Page that the visitor isn't on, then the next available guide in the list takes it's place. For more information, see Guide anchoring in this article.
• Guide throttling controls the rate at which these guides are shown to visitors in each application, distributing them to limit how frequently visitors see automatic guides.

You can order automatic guides in an application with or without guide throttling turned on. Guides that are ordered without guide throttling turned on appear one after the other as soon as visitors become eligible for them. Guides that are ordered with guide throttling turned on are displayed in the order that they appear in the Order list, but at an interval defined by your guide throttling settings.

In combination, these settings can improve the end-user experience by giving visitors content in a meaningful order with the room to absorb each guide before being shown more. Guides are more likely to feel intentional and relevant, encouraging visitors to engage with their content instead of dismissing them automatically. You can also maximize engagement by following some of our recommended best practices in this article.

You can configure some automatic guides to ignore guide throttling settings. Guides that ignore throttling settings still respect ordering. From the top of the Order list, automatic guides that ignore throttling settings display one after the other as soon as visitors become eligible to see them. For information about how to set an automatic guide to ignore guide throttling, see Overlay guide activation options.

Best practices

If you have multiple automatic guides published in your application, you can avoid overwhleming visitors with proper timing. To this end, we recommend considering and acting on the following.

• Activation. Ordering only applies to automatically activated guides. Other guide activation methods allow the visitor to manually launch the guide themselves. Review each guide's activation type. Is the content important enough to be shown automatically? Could the guide be displayed as a badge-activated tooltip or Resource Center announcement instead?
• Pages. Are your guides anchored to a specific tagged Page or displaying sitewide? Sitewide guides are more likely to interrupt a visitor’s workflow. Try targeting specific Pages to deliver the right content only in the desired location. For information about how this works with guide ordering and throttling, see Guide anchoring in this article.
• Segmentation. Are you including everyone in your segment or only the users for whom the guide is applicable? Being more specific with your segmentation decreases the chance of surfacing irrelevant content to the wrong audience.
• Applications. Do all applications need the same level of guide throttling? If you have a multi-app subscription, guide ordering and throttling isn't necessarily a universal solution. Some applications might be used daily, while others might be used weekly or monthly. To maximize your impact, consider showing fewer guides each session for applications that have many repeat visitors. Use Pendo data to understand your visitors’ behavior to inform your throttling timing accordingly.
• Goals. What's the goal of your guide? Try organizing your guides into categories like Education, Announcements, Onboarding, and so on, to help you to prioritize your most important content for guide ordering. For more information about guide categories, see Manage guides and layouts using categories.
• Auditing. Keep track of your guides with regular audits and limit how many automatic guides you have public. Do you have multiple guides explaining the same thing? Can these be merged or condensed? Do you have old guides that are out of date and saturating the list of automatic guides? Can any of these guides be turned off or removed?
• Impact. Are any of the guides important or time-sensitive? You can ignore guide throttling for individual guides to deliver the message straight away. For instructions, see Automatic guide activation settings in Overlay guide activation options.
• Frequency. If you want visitors to see fewer automatic guides for each session, add more time between guides. If you want visitors to see multiple automatic guides in a single session, for example, because they're infrequent users, allow less time between guides (for example, show one guide every 30 minutes, with the most important guides set to ignore guide throttling).

View guide order

To see the order of your automatic guides:

1. From the left-side menu, go to Guides > Guides.
2. Open the Ordering tab at the top of the Guides page.
3. If you have a multi-app subscription, select an application from the dropdown menu at the top of the table. You can't view the order of automatic guides across multiple applications.

The table shows a list of all automatically activated guides for the selected application in the order they're displayed to eligible visitors.

• Guides set to ignore throttling settings are shown first in the list in the order they'll display. Guides that ignore throttling settings are listed in the order they were created.
• Guides that don't ignore throttling settings are shown after guides that do ignore throttling settings, in the order that they'll display, starting from the number 1.

All new guides with the activation method set to Automatically are added to the bottom of the Order list when they're created until you reorder them. For instructions, see Order guides in this article.

You can filter the table by Product Area, guide category, status, and Page location. Guides with the Disabled status aren't shown in the list. Automatic guides in all other statuses are included in the list, and you can filter the list by these statuses: Public, Staged, Scheduled, Draft, Pending Review. For information about statuses, see Test and deliver your guide.

Order guides

Guides are prioritized by reordering them directly in the list. To order automatic guides:

1. From the left-side menu, go to Guides > Guides.
2. Open the Ordering tab at the top of the Guides page.
3. If you have a multi-app subscription, select an application from the dropdown menu at the top of the table. You can't order automatic guides across multiple applications.
   
   
   
   
4. Reorder your automatic guides. You can do this either:
   • By hovering over the row for a guide and then using the arrows at the end of the row. These arrows allow you to either move the guide to the top of the list, move the guide up one row in the list, move the guide down one row in the list, or move the guide to the bottom of the list.
     
     
     
     
   • By dragging an item up or down the list and dropping it in the appropriate location. You can't drag and drop a numbered guide into the list of guides that ignore throttling. If you want the guide to appear higher than number 1 in the list, you must turn off guide throttling settings for that guide. For instructions, see Automatic guide activation settings in Overlay guide activation options.
     
     

Tip: Use guide categories to prioritize your guides based on their goals and impact. For information about guide categories, see Manage guides and layouts using categories.

Changes are applied automatically and automatic guides become visible to visitors as soon as they're eligible to see the guide according to guide ordering and throttling settings.

Throttle guides

Guide throttling sets a limit to the number of automatic guides a visitor sees in a specified period of time. Throttling determines the minimum amount of time that passes between when a visitor receives one automatic guide and when the next one launches. The countdown for the next guide launch begins after the previous guide is dismissed or completed.

If throttling is off or an automatic guide ignores throttling settings, guides are shown as soon as they're available to an eligible visitor in list order. For information about list order, see View guide order in this article.

To turn on and configure guide throttling for automatic guides in an application:

1. From the left-side menu, go to Guides > Guides.
2. Open the Ordering tab at the top of the Guides page.
3. If you have a multi-app subscription, select an application from the dropdown menu at the top of the table. You can't turn on throttling for automatic guides across multiple applications.
   
   
   
   
4. Select OFF next to Guide Throttling at the top of the table. This opens a throttling configuration window.
   
   
   
   
5. Use the toggle to turn on guide throttling. This reveals the settings for configuring the interval between automatic guides.
   
   
   
   
6. Enter a number and choose the interval from the dropdown menu: Day, Minute, or Hour.
   
   
   
   
7. Select Save in the bottom-right corner of the window.
   
   

The text next to Guide Throttling at the top of the table updates to display your throttling configuration. For example 1 Guide / 1 Day means that one automatic guide from the list will show every day.

Ordering and throttling with other settings

Guide throttling and ordering aren't affected by Repeat Guide Display unless you also turn on Ignore Guide Throttling Settings for an automatic guide. An automatic guide with a snooze button isn't affected by guide throttling after the snoozed period has elapsed, but the guide still respects guide ordering. If you have Repeat Guide Display turned on for an automatic guide while the guide is snoozed, the repeat interval is paused and the snooze interval takes precedence. After the snooze period has elapsed and the guide is shown again, the Repeat Guide Display interval becomes active again and checks for its next display time in accordance with the Order list and throttling interval.

Guide throttling and ordering is affected by where the first step of a guide is anchored to. If the next guide in the list is configured to display on a specific tagged Page or if the guide is anchored to a specific location (element or tagged Feature), the visitor must be on that Page or that location must be present for the guide to display. If these conditions aren't met, the next guide in the Order list that the visitor is eligible to see displays in its place.

Repeat Guide Display

By default, automatic guides don't relaunch for a visitor after they've already seen and interacted with it. The Repeat Guide Display setting for an automatic guide overrides this functionality, but respects the guide throttling settings that control the frequency of automatically shown guides. For example, if throttling is set to show one guide each day, the Repeat Guide Display setting adheres to this limitation unless Ignore Guide Throttling Settings is also turned on for that guide.

Without guide throttling, the Repeat Guide Display setting relaunches an automatic guide after a set interval (in hours or days). When a visitor dismisses the automatic guide, the interval timer restarts for both the repeat guide setting and the throttling setting. You can configure the repeat guide behavior to continue until a specified number of guide dismissals or until the guide is no longer public. For more information, see Automatic activation in Overlay guide activation options.

For example, if you set your guide throttling to show a guide once every day, and you have the following two guides in order:

• Guide A. Includes a Repeat Guide Display interval of 1 hour and stops displaying after two dismissals.
• Guide B. No additional settings.

Then the user flow might be:

1. Day 1 at 10 AM: Guide A displays > Visitor dismisses the guide immediately.
2. Day 2 at 10 AM: Guide A displays > Visitor dismisses the guide immediately.
3. Day 3 at 10 AM: Guide B displays.

However, if you also have Ignore Guide Throttling Settings turned on for the first guide (Guide A), then the user flow would change to:

1. Day 1 at 10 AM: Guide A displays > Visitor dismisses the guide immediately.
2. Day 1 at 11 AM: Guide A redisplays > Visitor dismisses the guide immediately.
3. Day 2 at 11 AM: Guide B displays.

If you have Ignore Guide Throttling Settings turned on for the second guide instead (Guide B), then the user flow would change to:

1. Day 1 at 10 AM: Guide A displays > Visitor dismisses the guide immediately.
2. Day 1 at 10 AM: Guide B redisplays > Visitor dismisses the guide immediately.
3. Day 2 at 10 AM: Guide A displays.

The flow changes if your guide throttling period is shorter than your Repeat Guide Display period. For example, if you set your guide throttling to show a guide every 30 minutes and you have a Repeat Guide Display turned on for Guide A set to an interval of 1 day, the user flow might be:

1. Day 1 at 10 AM: Guide A displays > Visitor dismisses the guide immediately.
2. Day 1 at 10:30 AM: Guide B displays > Visitor dismisses the guide immediately.
3. Day 2 at 10 AM: Guide A displays.

Snooze button action

Automatic guides with a Snooze Guide button action respect throttling for their initial display. After the snooze timer has elapsed, the guide ignores throttling when it redisplays. This means that a guide is shown for the first time when it reaches its turn in the Order list, and then continues to display at the snooze interval every time that the snooze button is selected.

The Snooze Guide button action allows the guide to relaunch after a set interval (in minutes, hours, or days). When a visitor snoozes the guide through a button, the interval timer restarts for both the snoozed guide and throttling. When an automatic guide is displayed after a Snooze Guide button action, it counts as a single display instance. 

For example, if you set your guide throttling to show a guide once every day, and you have the following two guides in order:

• Guide A. Includes a Snooze Guide button with an interval of 30 minutes.
• Guide B. No additional settings.

The user flow might be:

1. The visitor snoozes Guide A at 10 AM.
2. Guide A reappears at 10:30 AM (in line with the snooze configuration) > The visitor closes the guide using the close button instead of the snooze button.
3. Guide B appears at 10:30 AM the next day.

This flow changes if your guide throttling period is shorter than your snooze period. For example, if you set your guide throttling to show a guide every 10 minutes and you have a snooze button on your first guide (Guide A) set to the same interval of 30 minutes, the user flow might be:

1. The visitor snoozes Guide A at 10 AM.
2. Guide B displays at 10:10 AM (in line with the throttling configuration) > The visitor closes the guide using the close button.
3. Guide A reappears at 10:30 AM (in line with the snooze configuration).

If the above example also included a Repeat Guide Display interval of 1 hour for Guide A, then the user flow might be:

1. The visitor snoozes Guide A at 10 AM.
2. Guide B displays at 10:10 AM (in line with the throttling configuration) > The visitor closes the guide using the close button.
3. Guide A reappears at 10:30 AM (in line with the snooze configuration) > The visitor closes the guide using the close button instead of the snooze button.
4. Guide A reappears at 11:30 AM (in line with the repeat guide configuration).

For more information about snooze buttons in guides and how the functionality interacts with Repeat Guide Display, see Snooze Guide in Guide button actions.

Guide anchoring

Guides can be anchored to a tagged Page (rather than sitewide), a location (UI element or tagged Feature) in your application, or a combination of both Page and location. If you anchor the first step of your guide in at least one of these ways, the guide only launches if one or both of the following criteria is met based on these location settings:

• The visitor is on the specified Page.
• The UI element or tagged Feature is present.

Pendo prioritizes guides that are eligible for display based first on visitor navigation and then the order in the list. This means that guides aren't necessarily displayed in the order shown in the list. If a guide is anchored to a Page that the visitor isn't on, or to a location that isn't present, then the guide doesn't display even if it's next in the list, and the next guide that a visitor is eligible to see displays instead. 

For example, if you set your guide throttling to show a guide every 10 minutes and you have the following guide ordering:

• Guide A. Anchored to Page A.
• Guide B. Set to display Sitewide instead of to a specific Page.
• Guide C. Anchored to Page B.

The user flow might be:

1. The visitor goes to Page B > Guide B is shown first.
2. Staying on Page B for 10 minutes prompts the display of Guide C.
3. The user navigates to Page A after 10 minutes > Guide A is shown for the first time.

Order and throttle mobile guides

Pendo's SDK for mobile supports ordering and throttling for mobile guides in the same way as it does for web guides. However, you can't override throttling for a single mobile guide. All guides adhere to throttling rules.

Regardless of the guide ordering, guides set to display when the mobile application launches (app-launch guides) always take precedence over other guides. If a visitor is eligible for multiple app-launch guides during a session, the highest priority guide is displayed during the current session. The next guide set to display when the mobile application launches is displayed in the next session.

For performance reasons, the Pendo SDK fetches some guides from the Pendo server earlier than others. There might be a delay, ranging from a few hundred milliseconds to a few seconds depending on the number of eligible guides for the session, from when the visitor interacts with the mobile application to when the next guide is available for display. The Pendo SDK might not display the guide when it's available until the next time the guide is activated, for example, if the visitor navigates away from the tagged Page that a guide was anchored to before the guide is ready for display. App-launch guides aren't affected by this logic and display immediately when available on the device regardless of the visitor's location in the application.