You can add buttons with different controls and navigation actions when creating your guide in the Visual Design Studio. This article describes the button actions available to you.
For instructions on how to add a button to your guide, see Add and edit guide content. For information about how to edit a button in your guide, see Guide building blocks. You can also add and edit guide actions from the Behavior tab of the Edit Container window. For more information, see Edit overlay guide step settings.
Note: The following button actions require Pendo agent version 2.62 and above or Mobile SDK 2.3.3 and above: Launch Guide, Previous Step, Snooze Guide, Go to Step, and Automation.
Compound buttons
Buttons can perform up to two actions depending on the primary button action that you choose for the button. This can be useful for site navigation or opening external resources while also interacting with a guide.
After selecting a primary action, you can add the appropriate compound button action, such as opening a URL, opening another guide, going to a specific step, or adding an amount of time for snoozing the guide.
Only certain combinations of button actions are allowed. For example, if you choose to dismiss the guide with a button, the only available additional action is to direct the user to a URL link.
Next Step
Next Step advances to the next step in a multi-step Guide. If there is no next step, the guide is dismissed.
This action doesn't interact with the UI and the following conditions must be met for the next step in the guide to display:
- The next step must display on the same page.
- If the next step is anchored to an element, that element must be present on that page.
The only compound button actions available after this are URL Link or Automation.
Dismiss Guide
Dismiss Guide closes the guide and shows the guide was dismissed in guide analytics.
The only available compound button action is URL Link. You can use this with a permalink to open launch another guide at a specified step. This is useful if you want to relaunch a guide for a visitor who has already seen part of the guide. If you want to launch a guide that the visitor hasn't seen, use Launch Guide instead.
To dismiss a guide and relaunch another guide at a specified step, you must find and add the permalink for the other guide's step to your current guide:
- In the Settings page of the guide you want to launch from another guide, select the ellipsis (...) in the top-right corner and select Permalinks.
- Copy the link of the required step.
- Add Dismiss Guide as the primary action for the button.
- Choose URL Link as the compound action for the button.
- Add the permalink for the specific step of the other guide to the URL Link field.
For more information on permalinks, see Create a guide permalink.
Submit All Polls + Advance Guide
Submit All Polls + Advance Guide is only available if a poll building block is on the guide step. This action submits all poll responses to guide analytics and advances the guide to the next linear step or dismisses the guide if there isn't another step.
The only available compound button action is URL Link.
Submit All Polls + Go to Step
Submit All Polls + Go to Step is only available if a poll building block is on the guide step. This action submits all poll responses to guide analytics and advances the guide to a step that you specify in the same multi-step guide. For information about uses for using a button to select a specific step in a guide, see Go to Step.
The only available compound button action is URL Link.
URL Link
URL Link behaves the same way as a link in text. The browser goes to the specified URL in a new browser tab.
The available compound button actions for URL Link are:
- Next Step
- Dismiss Guide
- Submit All Polls + Advance Guide (if the step includes a poll)
- Submit All Polls + Go to Step (if the step includes a poll)
- Previous Step
- Snooze Guide
- Go to Step
You can also use URL link as a compound action to Dismiss Guide to launch another guide at a specified step. For more information, see Dismiss Guide in this article.
Launch Guide
Launch Guide dismisses the current guide and launches the guide that you specify. The guide being launched must have the same page and segment as the current guide step for the guide launch. If these conditions aren't met, the user experience stops after selecting the button.
Choosing Launch Guide prompts you to select a guide from a dropdown list. The dropdown list contains your Draft, Staged, and Public guides. The guides are sorted by activation on the current page and then in alphabetical order for all other guides. Guides with a Disabled status and the Resource Center (including individual modules) aren't an option for the Launch Guide button action.
The launched guide must be Public to be seen by visitors in your production environment. Staged guides can only be seen in your staging environment. For more information about guide statuses, see Test and deliver your guide.
There are no compound button actions for Launch Guide.
Specify a step
You can specify which step of a guide to launch. This gives you more control over which paths to lead your visitors through and removes the need to duplicate guides.
Specify a step using permalinks
You can relaunch a guide at a specific step using a permalink for a visitor who has already seen part of the guide. For example, if a visitor has already seen step 1 and step 2 of a guide, you can manually add a permalink to take them to step 3. This involves choosing Dismiss Guide as the primary action and URL Link as the compound action. For more information, see Dismiss Guide in this article.
Previous Step
Previous Step goes to the previous linear step in a multi-step guide.
The only available compound button actions are URL Link or Automation.
If you delete step 1 of your guide or move a step with a Previous Step action to step 1, an error message reminds you to update your button.
Snooze Guide
Snooze Guide dismisses the guide and reactivates it after the set duration has passed. Snooze duration can be set in increments of minutes, hours, or days for web applications, and hours or days for mobile applications. Snooze works best with automatically activated guides.
A snoozed guide counts as a guide view for guide throttling and reactivates after the snooze duration has elapsed. Snoozed guides can still be activated manually by a target element, badge, or from the Resource Center. Viewing a guide manually cancels the pending snooze action for that guide.
If you also 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. The Repeat Guide Display interval becomes active again and after the snooze period has elapsed or the guide is dismissed. For more information about the Repeat Guide Display setting, see Automatic activation in Overlay guide activation options.
If you want the visitor to select their snooze duration, add multiple buttons with different times and label the buttons accordingly. Snooze can't be added as a button action for the Close button. It also can't be used with NPS Polls.
The only available compound button action is URL Link.
Go to Step
Go to Step advances the guide to a specified guide step in the same guide. You can choose any step before or after the current step. Guide analytics indicates that the visitor used Go to Step to view nonlinear guide steps.
Go to Step has many creative use cases. For example, you could:
- Create guide with multiple flows launched from a single starting point, using buttons that direct the visitor to the step that starts each flow. In this scenario, you might include two buttons in step 1 of the guide: one button directs the visitor through to the next step in the guide (flow 1), and the other button directs the user to step 5, skipping steps 2 to 4 (flow 2).
- Add a button to later steps in a guide to redirect a visitor back to step 1 of the guide to restart it at any point or skip ahead in a workflow.
- Use multiple buttons to direct the user conditionally to the appropriate guide steps based on their selection, such as "Yes" and "No" buttons in respond to "Are you satisfied with this product" to direct the visitor to an appropriate poll or content.
The following conditions must be met for the specified step in the guide to display:
- The specified step must display on the same page.
- If the specified step is anchored to an element, that element must be present on that page. This action can't be used with Element Click or Hover.
Go to Step isn't conditional on any poll responses or Event Properties.
The only available compound button action is URL Link or Automation.
Automation
You can configure an Automation button to do one or both of the following when the user selects it:
- Autofill. Add static text to input fields that you configure to autofill.
- Autoclick. Preselect clickable or selectable elements, such as checkboxes or dropdown menu items.
For more information, see Add guide automation.
You can add any of the other button actions as a compound action.
Close button
The close (X) button is part of the guide layout rather than a button action. You can customize the button presence, location, and style. For more information and instructions, see Add and edit guide content or Guide building blocks, which each have a section dedicated to adding, removing, moving, and editing the close button.