Introduction
This document provides step-by-step instructions to teach you how to use Skilljar’s Salesforce integration to pull training data into the Gainsight CS platform. After completing this setup, you’ll be able to unlock the power of Gainsight by leveraging Skilljar training data to scale your Customer Success team initiatives.
This integration will help you:
- Build a comprehensive customer health score that includes engagement with learning content.
- Give your go-to-market and Customer Success teams visibility into training consumption
- Trigger automated communications out of Gainsight based on Skilljar training data including course completions, achievement notifications, or health score changes.
What You’ll Need
To set up this data integration, here’s what you’ll need: .
- A Skilljar admin dashboard account with “Global Administrator” permissions.
- A Salesforce admin dashboard account with permissions to install Managed Packages.
- A Gainsight admin dashboard account with permissions to access the platform integration settings and data designer feature.
Step 1: Installing the Skilljar -> Salesforce Managed Package Integration
In order to push data into Gainsight, you'll first need to install Skilljar’s Salesforce Managed Package integration to ensure all of your Skilljar data is available in Salesforce.
What to Do:
-
Refer to the following support guide that will walk you through the installation process: Salesforce: Install the Salesforce Integration App with Skilljar.
*Important: After the SFDC Managed Package has been installed and hooked up to Skilljar, be sure to follow the historical data backfill process to ensure your Salesforce instance has your complete set of Skilljar data since the time you launched.
Step 2: Connecting Gainsight to Salesforce
What to Do:
- In the Gainsight admin dashboard, use the left navigation bar to expand “Administration” > “Integrations” and click “Connectors 2.0”.
- On the next page, click the “Create Connection” button in the top right and select “Salesforce” as the connection type.
- Define a name for this connection and select the Org type in the form on the next screen:
Note: If your Salesforce organization uses a custom domain, be sure to toggle that setting on and enter the domain name on this page.
- Click the “Authorize” button and log in to your Salesforce admin account in the popup that appears to complete the connection setup.
Step 3: Pulling the Skilljar Student object into Gainsight using the data designer
Now that we have connected Gainsight to Salesforce, it’s time to use the data designer to pull in Skilljar training objects. We recommend starting with the Student, Course Progress, and Published Course objects which will allow you to see the courses that students have enrolled in and completed.
What to Do:
- In the Gainsight admin dashboard, use the left navigation bar to expand “Administration” > “Analytics” and click “Data Designer”.
- On the next page, click the “New Design” button in the top right.
- Input a name, select a folder storage location, and add a description (optional) for your data design in the next form.
- Click the “Prepare” button.
- In the data designer, select “Salesforce” in the “Data Source” field and then use your mouse to drag the Salesforce name you defined in step 2 into the canvas on the right.
- Within the folder that appears, select the “students” object and click the “Continue” button in the bottom right.
- This will open the fields selector where you can choose the data fields you want to import from the Student object.
- Click every field and then hit the “Select” button in the bottom right to move on.
- You are now in the field mapping layout where we can define Gainsight display names for each field on the object. We recommend adding the object’s name to the front of each display name field. Example: “Student Email”.
- After you have defined your display names for each field, click the “Save” button to complete the import process for the Student object.
Step 4: Pulling in the Course Progress object and joining it to the Student object
What to Do:
- Return to the data designer page and select “Salesforce” in the “Data Source” field again. Use your mouse to drag the Salesforce connection name you defined in step 2 into the canvas on the right.
- Within the folder that appears, select the “course_progress” object and click the “Continue” button in the bottom right.
- Click every field and then hit the “Select” button in the bottom right to move on.
- In the field mapping layout, add “Course Progress” to the front of every display name field just like we did with the Student object. Example: “Course Progress Completed At”.
- Hit the “Save” button to complete the import process for the Course Progress object
- We now want to merge the Student and Course Progress objects together to make them easier to use in reporting and automations. To do this, click the three dots next to the Student object in the data designer canvas, select “Merge”, and then select the Course Progress object:
- In the flyout widget, select “Left” for the join condition and then select the “Student ID” field from the Student object and the “Student” field from the Course Progress object. This will use the Student ID field on both objects to link them together.
- Hit the “Save” button to complete this process.
Step 5: Pulling in the Published Course object and joining it to the Course Progress object.
What to Do:
- Return to the data designer page and select “Salesforce” in the “Data Source” field again. Use your mouse to drag the Salesforce connection name you defined in step 2 into the canvas on the right.
- Within the folder that appears, select the “published_courses” object and click the “Continue” button in the bottom right.
- Click every field and then hit the “Select” button in the bottom right to move on.
- In the field mapping layout, add “Published Course” to the front of every display name field just like we did with the Student object. Example: “Published Course Title”.
- Hit the “Save” button to complete the import process for the Published Course object
- We now want to merge the Course Progress and Published Course objects together so we can access information about the course. To do this, click the three dots next to the Course Progress object in the data designer canvas, select “Merge”, and then select the “published_courses” object:
- In the flyout widget, select “Inner” for the join condition and then select the “Course Progress Course” field from the Course Progress object and the “Published Courses Course” field from the Published Course object:
- Hit the “Save” button to complete the data designer setup. Feel free to pull in and merge any additional Skilljar objects using this technique. You can always come back and update your data design at any point.
Step 6: Activating your data design for global use in Gainsight
What to Do:
- In the data design, click the “Configure” button in the bottom right corner which will open the settings page:
- Following the screenshot above, toggle the slider under the “Universal Data Space” heading to “Yes”. This setting will convert your data design into a Gainsight MDA object that can be used in standard reports and automations.
- To ensure your data design automatically pulls in new Skilljar data once a day, toggle the slider to “Yes” under the “Schedule” heading. Select “Basic Scheduler” as the “Schedule Type” and choose “Daily” for how often to run this schedule.
- Set the “Starting From” date to today’s date and set the “Till Date” to whatever you would like (example: three years from today’s date). Set “Schedule run time” to “Once” and leave the run time set to “12:00 AM” in your timezone.
- Click the “Done” button in the bottom right when you are finished which completes the Skilljar to Gainsight data integration process.
Step 7: Using a data design in Gainsight reporting
Now that you have published your data design, you can start to use it to build reports in Gainsight that showcase Skilljar training data. At this point it is recommended to partner with your Gainsight operations team to strategize on how best to use this data, but below you will find a basic reporting example.
What to Do:
- In the Gainsight admin dashboard, use the left navigation bar to expand “Insights” > and click “Reports”.
- On the next page, find the folder you stored your data design in during step 3 and open it. Click the data design in this folder based on the name you gave it earlier. It will have [DD] at the start of the file name to denote that it is a data design.
- In the reporting interface, use your mouse to drag the fields you want to add to the report into the “Show Me” box:
- The screenshot above provides a recommendation for the fields you might want to start with to report on Student enrollments, course progress, and completions.
- Click the “Run Report” button to generate the report and then continue to adjust the fields until you are happy.
You have now created your first Gainsight report using Skilljar data. Congratulations! If you need additional support, please reach out to solutions@skilljar.com.