Connect Pendo to Gainsight using Salesforce

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You can use Salesforce to pass data between Pendo and Gainsight without any additional connectors or API calls. 

This article provides an overview of functionality and how to set this integration up. The steps outlined in these instructions can be completed by a Gainsight Admin, with no coding necessary. If, instead, you want to work with Gainsight Services to set this up for you, contact Gainsight Support for pricing.

Use cases

Connecting Pendo to Gainsight using Salesforce allows you to:

Augment Gainsight data

You can use Gainsight with Salesforce to incorporate detailed usage behavior from Pendo at both the customer (account) and individual (visitor) level into your customer data in Gainsight. Augment Gainsight’s health scores, workflows, and usage reports with key KPIs in Pendo, such as:

  • Login frequency
  • Time in application
  • Features used
  • Total number of users per account

Adding this product data from Pendo to Gainsight allows you to: 

  • Prioritize customer success follow-up for accounts with declining usage.
  • Identify behavior patterns for potential upsell and expansion, and follow-up with coordinated workflows and outreach.
  • Incorporate product usage metrics, such as sign-in frequency and time on site into health scores to then analyze which product behaviors drive the highest health scores.
  • Prompt offline outreach to customers that have been inactive for a period of time.
  • Deliver personalized interaction at one-to-many scale to engage your visitors when they are most receptive and your message is most relevant.

Create customized messaging

You can also use data from Gainsight to target specific segments of users with custom Pendo in-app guides. You can create segments based on data such as:

  • Upcoming renewals
  • Churn risk
  • Onboarding status

Adding this data from Gainsight to Pendo allows you to:

  • Create customized help, messages, and surveys to your customers directly in-app based on Gainsight’s customer insights.
  • Notify users in the application of an upcoming renewal or other significant lifecycle milestone.
  • Tailor user onboarding to showcase the most relevant features based on user role.
  • Prompt specific guides and messages to nurture customer adoption based on their survey responses or Overall Health.

Prerequisites

  • The Salesforce integration with Pendo, set up to push and pull data at the account level. For instructions, see Set up the Salesforce integration with Pendo.
  • Admin access to your Pendo subscription.
  • Admin permissions in Salesforce.
  • Admin permissions in Gainsight.
  • An installed and active Gainsight-managed package (app) set up in the same Salesforce environment as your Pendo integration with Salesforce.

For Gainsight installation links and guides, see Salesforce Appexchange.

How it works

Pendo is connected to Gainsight through the Salesforce integration with Pendo.

Note: The Salesforce integration imports data from and pushes data to the same Salesforce object every 24 hours. You can also push data syncs on-demand from the Data Mappings page in Pendo. Any sync, whether manual or automatic, runs both a data “pull” and “push”, if both are configured.

  • Usage data from Pendo is pushed to Salesforce fields to be incorporated into broader measurements and sales or customer success workflows.
  • Salesforce fields are also pulled into Pendo as visitor and account metadata, which can then be used to define user segments and to target in-app guides.

When you connect Gainsight to Pendo using the Salesforce integration, custom fields belonging to the Account object in Salesforce are used to share and pass data between Gainsight and Pendo. Gainsight rules update custom data to and from custom Account fields.

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Best practices

We recommend using the Salesforce Account object for passing data between Gainsight and Pendo. Pendo can also share visitor-level data with Salesforce, but we recommend keeping data transfer at the account level.

While Pendo has the ability to read and write from any Salesforce object, making it possible to push product data directly to the Gainsight Usage Data Object or other objects, we don’t recommend this approach. This is because Pendo’s integration is based on importing data from, and pushing data to, the same Salesforce object. Connecting directly to the usage object in Gainsight limits the data that you can pull in. Instead, we recommend using the Salesforce Account object as the internal "clearing house" to pass data back and forth between Gainsight and Pendo.

Step 1. Prepare the Account object in Salesforce

You must create and add custom fields in the Salesforce Account object for each measure that you would like to pass to Gainsight. This involves adding custom Account fields in Salesforce for:

  • Holding Pendo data to be pushed to Gainsight.
  • Holding Gainsight data to be pushed to Pendo.

Create custom fields for holding Pendo data

Before making any changes to the Salesforce Account object, consider the data that you would like to sync with Gainsight. Some common data include:

  • Active visitors in the last 30 days or the last 7 days
  • Time on site in last 30 days or the last 7 days
  • Last visit date
  • Feature X clicks in the last 30 days or the last 7 days
  • Total NPS responses
  • Account NPS score

After you’ve decided which fields to include, you add these fields to the Salesforce Account object so that incoming data can be pushed to Gainsight. Set up the fields as follows:

Pendo measurement Salesforce Account custom field name * Recommended Salesforce label
Active visitors last 30 days Pendo_numberofvisitors_last30d Pendo Number of Visitors (Last 30d)
Time on site last 30 days Pendo_timeonsite_last30d Pendo Time On SIte (Last 30d)
Last visit date Pendo_lastvisit_last30d Pendo Lasts Visit (Last 30d)

* Each Salesforce field must have the "Pendo_" prefix added to the field name. Pendo only writes to fields that are titled this way.

Create custom fields for holding Gainsight data

You must also create custom fields for the data that you want to bring from Gainsight into Pendo. 

Unlike creating custom fields for holding incoming Pendo data, there are no naming restrictions for creating custom fields for holding Gainsight data. However, we recommend that you:

  • Use meaningful naming conventions.
  • Ensure that the data types are consistent. For example, if you’re passing a numerical customer health score from Gainsight to Pendo, the data type for the field you create in the Account object must match.

Step 2. Configure a "pull" to bring Gainsight data into Pendo

Before continuing, if you haven’t already set up the Salesforce integration, follow the instructions outlined in Set up the Salesforce integration with Pendo, ensuring that you set up the initial mapping to connect Pendo and Salesforce at the account level. For more information, see Creating a connection in the Salesforce integration with Pendo overview article.

After you’ve set up mapping between Salesforce and Pendo, you can select the fields that you would like to pull from Gainsight into Pendo.

  1. Go to Settings > Data Mappings and open the Account Level Data tab.
  2. Scroll down to the Salesforce Account Integration, contained within a blue box at the bottom of the page.
  3. Set up your initial connection:
    • If you already have the Salesforce integration mapped at the account level, select Setup Mapping.
    • If you’re setting up the Salesforce integration for the first time, select Begin, and follow the instructions for setting up a connection outlined in Set up the Salesforce integration with Pendo.
  4. In the Pick Fields to Add to Pendo box, select the fields that you would like to pull from Gainsight into Pendo. You can select any of the Account fields that you added to hold Gainsight data in Step 1.
  5. Select Done.

After the integration is set up and the fields are mapped, Pendo starts syncing data with Salesforce every 24 hours.

Step 3. Configure a Pendo "push"

After you’ve configured the mechanism for pulling Gainsight data into Pendo through the Salesforce Account object, you must set up the reports that Pendo uses to push data back into Salesforce.

You can find full instructions for setting up a push data sync in Set up the Salesforce integration with Pendo. For connecting Gainsight with Pendo through a Salesforce push, we specifically recommend the following:
  1. Go to People > Accounts and open the Account Reports tab.
  2. Select + Create Report in the top-right corner of the page.
  3. Create a meaningful name for the report.
  4. Choose a Visibility level, and if appropriate, choose an App.
  5. Ensure Segment is set to Everyone.
  6. Choose a Date Range. This dictates the frequency with which the results are pushed to Gainsight. You can use different reports for different date ranges. This allows you to, for example, sync both 7-day visitors as well as 30-day visitors to Gainsight.
  7. Choose the fields that you want to add to the report. Select all fields that you want to add to Gainsight.
  8. Select Create Report.

After the report is created, you can map the report fields to corresponding fields belonging to the Account object in Salesforce.

  1. On the Salesforce Push row of the account report summary, select Set up
  2. In the window that opens, map columns from the report to Salesforce fields. Because Pendo reads and writes from the same Salesforce object, you can only push data fields out to the Account object in Salesforce
  3. Ensure Daily Sync is turned on. This tells Pendo to push data from the report fields you specify to the mapped Salesforce fields every 24 hours.
  4. Select Save Settings

Step 4. Add Pendo fields to the Gainsight Usage Data object

Now that Pendo is set up to read and write fields from the Salesforce Account object, you must set up data to transfer to and from Gainsight.

Note: The instructions that follow assume that weekly aggregate data is being synced into Gainsight’s Usage Data object. If you’ve chosen to store your data within Gainsight’s MDA, follow the instructions but apply them to the area that your usage data is stored.

Create and add measures in Gainsight. Ensure that the names you give to your measures are descriptive so that it’s clear what values represent. For more information, see Gainsight’s article, Create Measures and Measure Groups.

You can also push the data to the Gainsight MDA rather than the Salesforce object. This configuration allows you to store data at a frequency other than weekly or monthly. 

Whether writing Pendo usage data to Gainsight objects in Salesforce or the MDA, you must first pass data from Pendo to Salesforce. Then you can use Gainsight’s rules engine to import the data to either data store.

Step 5. Add "Load to Usage" Gainsight rule

You must create a rule within the Gainsight admin console to send Pendo data to Gainsight.

Move Account object fields into Gainsight

  1. In the Gainsight Administration tab, go to the Rules Engine.
  2. Select + Rule to create a new rule. This opens the Edit Rule screen.

    image_6.png
  3. Choose Custom under Rule Type.
  4. Choose Account for Rule For.
  5. Choose a meaningful Rule Name, such as “Pendo Account to Usage Push”.
  6. Select Next. This opens the Setup Rule screen.

    Gainsight Setup Rule.png

  7. Select Native Data.
  8. Select Account from the dropdown menu.
  9. From the ID list of fields, add the following field to the Show box.
    • Account::ID (this is the ID from the Account object).
    • All of the custom Pendo fields you added to the Account.
  10. Select Apply to Gainsight customers only below the Filters section
  11. Select Next. This opens the Setup Action screen, needed for the next steps.

Set up the rule

  1. From the Action Configuration screen, where you left off, create a Load to Usage action type. The fields that you added to the Show box as part of the instructions for moving Salesforce Account object fields into Gainsight appear on the left of the screen. 

    Setup Action in Gainsight.png

  2. On the right side of the screen, map these fields to the corresponding fields that you added to the Usage Data object as part of Step 4
  3. Add a field mapping. Select + Field Mapping in the top-right corner, choose Usage Data Aggregation Level Name, and then enter ACCOUNTLEVEL (with no spaces) to indicate that the data is account level.
  4. Add another field mapping. Select + Field Mapping in the top-right corner, choose Date and then select Rule Date as the subsequent value.
  5. Select Save, and then Schedule from the numbered breadcrumbs at the top of the screen.

    Schedule.png

  6. Set the timing for the rule to run daily. This matches the cadence of the Pendo data push, allowing you to to consistently add the updated usage data into Pendo.
  7. Select Save.

Step 6. Add "Load to SFDC" Gainsight rule

The last step in the process is to sync any Gainsight data that you want to make available to Pendo back into the Salesforce object. To do this, you create one more rule within the Gainsight admin console.

Adding the appropriate Gainsight rules is a multi-step process:

  1. Create a rule to move Account object fields into Gainsight.
  2. Enable the ability for a Gainsight rule to write to the Account object.
  3. Set up the rule action.

Move Gainsight fields to the Account object

  1. In the Gainsight Administration tab, go to the Rules Engine.
  2. Select + Rule to create a new rule. This opens the Edit Rule screen.
  3. Choose Custom under Rule Type.
  4. Choose Account for Rule For.
  5. Choose a meaningful Rule Name, such as “Pendo Sync from Gainsight to Account”.
  6. Select Next. This opens the Setup Rule screen.

    Setup Rule 2.png

  7. Select Native Data.
  8. Select Customer Info from the dropdown menu.
  9. From the list of fields, add the following field to the Show box.
    • Account::ID (this is the ID from the Account object).
    • All of the Gainsight fields that you want to prompt action in Pendo.
  10. Select Apply to Gainsight customers only below the Filters section
  11. Select Next. This opens the Setup Action screen, needed for the next steps. 

Set up the rule action

Before you can set up an action for your rule, you must enable the ability for a Gainsight rule to write to the Account object. Enable all the fields you want to write to and the Account ID field. Then:

  1. From the Setup Action screen, where you left off, create a Load to SFDC action type.
  2. Select the Account as your object name.
  3. Select Update as your operation. 
  4. The fields that you added to the Show box as part of the instructions for moving Gainsight fields to the Salesforce account object appear on the left of the screen. On the right side of the screen, map these fields to the corresponding fields you added to the Account object in Step 1.

    Load to SFDC.png
  5. Select Include in identifiers for the Account::Id STRING mapping.
  6. Select Save, and then Schedule from the numbered breadcrumbs at the top of the screen.
  7. Set the timing for the rule to run daily. This matches the cadence of the Pendo data push, allowing you to to consistently add the updated usage data into Pendo.
  8. Select Save.
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