Solutions Architecture Activity Capture

Solutions Architects record all customer and prospect activity to promote transparency and collaboration. By consistently capturing our prospect or customer-facing activity, we can perform analysis for further reporting to establish efficient decision making for GitLab’s business.

Why Record Customer Activities?

1. Transparency Reporting on SA activity regularly provides an easy way for other team members to see summaries of all SA activity, allowing for questioning our actions and increasing our accountability. Transparency also promotes valuable collaboration through increased visibility of our prospect and customer interactions.
2. Collaboration Timely feedback can be provided by reading through customer/prospect activity summaries. Team members may have experienced similar customer situations and can offer an alternate perspective or guidance as an asynchronous comment. It’s also easier to perform pattern matching across our plays by reviewing current activity. Finally, it’s an excellent vehicle for team members to thank those who have helped them with their work and receive recognition for work well done.
3. Efficiency When team members have questions on how a specific account activity went, they can read activity updates instead of seeking out the account team members. Leadership can also make essential decisions on how to run our business through analysis of our prospect or customer-facing activity, ultimately driving desired business results.

Recording Activity with Rattle

SA prospect/customer activity is recorded into Task objects within Salesforce based on the Log a Call action on an Opportunity. However, Rattle is leveraged to simplify the capture of required and optional fields via Slack to alleviate the SA from navigating through Salesforce.

Rattle Setup

• Setup your Rattle account and connect it to Slack, Salesforce, and your Google Calendar.
  • Rattle Setup Video
  • If you did not receive an invite to Rattle when you started at GitLab, please submit an Access Request.

Logging an Activity

• There are multiple ways to log your activity with Rattle (Log an Activity Video)
  • After meetings with a prospect/customers, you will be prompted in the Slack Rattle application to Log a Call for the activity (easiest method)
  • On-demand, type /rattle-create in Slack and click on the Create Task button
  • It is required to log the activity against the associated opportunity versus at the account level. This is to ensure accurate reporting and analysis of our engagement models.
• There is a minimal set of fields that are required to be populated, regardless if Rattle marks them as optional.
  • Related To - Search for and set this to the Salesforce Opportunity associated with the activity.
  • Name  - Please search for and populate the Name field with a prospect/customer contact existing in Salesforce that was part of the activity.   Name is currently a single select field. Choose any contact that was part of the meeting, if possible. In the future, we may have the ability to select multiple contacts.
  • Subject  - High-level description of the activity. Usually, the subject of the calendar event for this activity is appropriate.
  • [SA] Activity Type - Choose the type(s) of activity for this customer/prospect interaction (ie. Demo, POV Related, Presentation/Pitch). For description of each activity type, refer to this page.
  • Products Positioned (Optional) - Select the products that were either positioned directly within a Demo, Pitch, or aligned to product capabilities within a Close Plan. If the call was a discovery call, please select which product(s) would best be positioned in future calls.
  • Persona Levels (Optional if unknown) - Select the customer/prospect participants’ levels in this activity. Current options include: Individual Contributor, Manager/Director, Executive Note: Executive should be used for any VP, C-level or the Economic Buyer
  • Persona Functions (Optional if unknown) - Select the customer/prospect functions represented during the activity (ie. Development, Security, DevOps)
  • Description - Enter a summary of the interaction. Two to three sentences are usually sufficient, but more detail is ok. Try to capture the meeting’s intent, how it went (the outcome or customer/prospect sentiment), and any prospect/customer perceived next steps. It is highly encouraged that you provide a link to more detailed notes of your meeting. You can use Google Docs Bookmarks to do so.
  • Customer Interaction Sentiment - Choose how you feel this meeting went, indenpendently from any other meeting and independently off the status of the overall opportunity sentiment. Options for this field are strictly ‘Positive’, ‘Neutral’, and ‘Negative’

Activity type description

All activities should fall into one of the categories described in the activity type descriptions

Example Activity Description

We provided a SCM and CI/CD demo for the head of application development, Homer Simpson, that was well-received.  His team is responsible for building a suite of catalog services and API for their partner merchants.  They are using Spring Boot to develop microservices and struggling with deployment consistency and complexity.  As a next step, we are scheduling a review of their current path to production.
More detailed notes are here: <link to detailed notes>

Collaborating on an Update

When anyone logs an activity, Rattle will provide the update in a team Slack channel. It is highly encouraged that all members of the SA organization, as well as any GitLab team member, take time to review the updates to understand our business better, but also to exercise our value of collaboration. When reviewing updates, look for opportunities to provide a team member with some efficiency by sharing related work or knowledge you have that could assist with an opportunity. Also, it’s a great way to understand what your team members do so that you can leverage their experience in the future. Words of encouragement and congratulations are also encouraged.

Team Activity Slack Channels

All Rattle activity updates channels are of the format #rattle-activities-<region or segment name>:

• #rattle-activities-apj-cs
• #rattle-activities-channels-and-alliances-sa
• #rattle-activities-commercial-sa
• #rattle-activities-east-sa
• #rattle-activities-emea-sa
• #rattle-activities-pubsec-sa
• #rattle-activities-west-sa

Tip: You can create a dedicated slack section for all of your Rattle related channels. This will allow you easy access to updates for cross-team collaboration.

SA Specific Opportunity Fields

An SA Validated Tech Evaluation is a set of SA-assisted activities a prospect or a customer undertakes to make a decision on whether or not a GitLab solution will provide the value they expect. These activities include and are not limited to a guided trial, POV, value stream assessment, workshops, and strategy roadmap planning. An SA Validated Tech Evaluation does not start until a prospect or customer explicitly engages in an evaluation of value and involves meaningful engagement with a GitLab SA. As part of an SA Validated Tech Evaluation, the GitLab SA should create a Technical Close Plan. If the GitLab SA does not know the next actions to progress the evaluation towards closure, it’s an indication that there is NOT an SA Validated Tech Evaluation that the SA is meaningfully engaged on.

To assist with the analysis of SA guided technical evaluations by our prospects and customer, the SA team maintains four opportunity fields in Salesforce. These four fields can be updated through Rattle or within the opportunity in Salesforce:

• Primary SA - The primary SA assigned to and working on the opportunity.
• SA Validated Tech Evaluation Start Date - The date the SA started engaging with a prospect or customer on an explicit solution evaluation as described above. This date should mark the first time the SA engages with the customer after the customer explicitly starts an evaluation of value. When the SA joins an initial meeting and the prospect does not seriously engage until months later, the start date should reflect when they seriously engaged. This date should not be set if the SA activity, regardless of the type of activity (e.g., demos, workshops, etc.), is for the purpose of discovery, creating interest in GitLab, education, or anything other than the serious evaluation of a GitLab to address an agreed upon problem and / or drive a specific outcome.
  • In Commercial, the start date is to reflect the start of the trial when an SA is engaged with the account, even when the trial started prior to the SA engaging.
• SA Validated Tech Evaluation End Date - The date the SA stopped engaging with a prospect or customer from an evaluation standpoint and the technical evaluation is deemed closed as a technical win, loss, or a stalled evaluation. This has no connection to whether or not the deal closes with a win or loss, as there may be non-technical variables that may impact the success of a deal after a technical evaluation.
  • In Commercial, the end date is to reflect the end of the trial when an SA is engaged with the account.
• SA Validated Tech Evaluation Close Status - The close status of the technical evaluation: There are two ways to update these fields in Rattle: While all of these fields can be updated and changed anytime as an opportunity evolves, the end date and close status should not be populated as a forecast.
  • On the Rattle You just had a meeting notification - select the opportunity by searching in the Search Salesforce box. Click the Update Opportunity button.
  • By searching for the opportunity first using /Rattle <opportunity name> in Slack and clicking on the Update Opportunity button.
  • Win - The technical evaluation has ended, and the prospect or customer agrees the GitLab solution meets their requirements.
  • Loss - The technical evaluation has completed, but the prospect or customer is choosing an alternative solution or not changing their current process due to deficiencies with the evaluated GitLab solution.
  • Stalled - The technical evaluation has not completed, but the customer or prospect is not actively evaluating any solution. As a guideline, this usually means the SA is not working with the prospect or customer on evaluation-related activities for at least two weeks.
• SA Validated Tech Evaluation Close Details - The close details are to include a short 1-2 line description of the Close Status

Whenever an SA engages a prospect/customer who has a specific problem to be addressed or goal to be achieved, and that prospect/customer needs validation that GitLab has the solution, you are encouraged to capture that as a technical evaluation. Similar to how there are some deals without a corresponding SA, there may be deals where a technical evaluation is not performed, and SA involvement is minimal.

In case that the opportunity has been closed in Salesforce, and you did not have the chance to complete all the information for your SA activities previously described, do the following:

• Go to the opportunity you need to update, and click on Show Feed and the left hand side of the topics bar.
• In the post text area, enter @Sales-Support and then a brief description of the fields you wish to fill. Example:

  @[Sales-Support] please update the SA Validated Tech Evaluation Close Status field to Won, and SA Validated Tech Evaluation End Date to 10/14/2021

• Make sure you manually type the @Sales-support part of your message, as Salesforce will not recognize the @ call to notify the sales support group.

Proof of Value (POV) Updates

Proof of Values are tracked in salesforce but can be created or updated through Rattle by:

• Create POV: Clicking on the Add a Proof of Value button
  • on the Rattle You just had a meeting notification in slack
  • after searching for and selecting an opportunity or account first using /rattle <search> in Slack
  • after using /rattle-create
• Update POV: Clicking on the Update a Proof of Value button
  • after searching for and selecting a POV first using /rattle <name of POV> in Slack

Updating Activity Summaries

You can update activity that was previously logged in Salesforce or through Rattle by clicking the Update Activity button on the update notification posted by Rattle to your team activity channel.

Creating a Contact

If a contact you’d like to associate your activity updates with does not yet exist on the account in Salesforce, you can create the contact through Rattle:

• Use /rattle-create in Slack and click the Create Contact button. The contact will now appear in the Name field when logging an activity through Rattle. (Create a Record Video)

Reports & Dashboards

• Solutions Architecture Tableau Dashboard
• SA Activity - Salesforce Report
• Current FQ Technical Evaluations - Salesforce Report
• Proof of Values - Salesforce Dashboard
• SA - APJ - Salesforce Dashboard
• SA - Commercial - Salesforce Dashboard
• SA - EMEA - Salesforce Dashboard
• SA - US East - Salesforce Dashboard
• SA - US West - Salesforce Dashboard
• Solutions Architect Salesforce Dashboard

Setting up Rattle alerts

Rattle alerts are messages sent from the Rattle application via Slack that inform you whenver certain actions happen. All users are allowed to create Workflows.

This tutorial explains the available options and how to set it up.

Training Resources

• Logging an Activity Post Meeting
• Create a Record
• Updating Tech Eval Dates and Status

Feedback and Questions Process

• In order to provide feedback on our activity capture process, tools, or reports, please create an issue in the Customer Success, Solutions Architecture Activity Capture project using the Feedback template.
• #rattle-users slack channel - Discuss and ask questions related to Rattle and SA activity capture
• #rattle-gitlab slack channel - Discuss and ask questions related to Rattle with the Rattle account team covering GitLab

Recording Email Activity with Salesforce

Email communication with customers can be recorded in Salesforce within the account’s activity history. There are two options to track this activity:

1. BCC your “email to Salesforce address”. Instructions to obtain this address are found on this page.
2. Or, download the Salesforce Chrome plugin to easily log customer-related emails.

Email communication that is collected and stored in Salesforce is not measured or reported on at this time. It can be useful to collect for sharing information with the broader sales team.

Rattle Workflows

For transparency and awareness, the Rattle activities specific to Solution Architects are listed below.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Question: Should I also be adding calls to Salesforce using the Salesforce specific Google calendar plugin as we’ve done in the past or should we only be using the Rattle integration.
• Answer: It is not required to automatically log your calls via the Salesforce-Google calendar plugin and we aren’t currently planning to analyze that information.

Troubleshooting steps (with Rattle)

For Feedback and launch specific issues, please see this ISSUE Rattle Launch Feedback and Known Issues

Rattle didn’t send me a notification after the call, what may have been the cause?

It can take 0-5 minutes for the system to ping you. After that, here are several QA steps:

• Zero external persons listed as invitees on the calendar; the invite was sent by the customer, but the attendee list only has internal GitLab employees
• The invitees are listed in SFDC, but under a different email address (e.g., email does not match)
• While we have a primary Email field and another field called something like Email #2, Rattle only looks to the primary Email field.

Rattle is trying to log my activity to the wrong Opportunity

Rattle using the following logic to relate an Opportunity to a calendar meeting: -Are any of these attendees Contact Roles on an Opportunity? If YES, then Rattle will try to associate them -If NO, Rattle will look at the email domains of attendees and try to associate the activity to the Account with the domain that matches. You might run into errors if: -Your event attendee uses Gmail or another generic domain -Your event attendee has a domain that is similar to another Account (ex “epsi.com” might get picked up as “pepsi.com”) -The Rattle support team is aware of these issues and working to create more accurate matching logic

Error message when logging a call to a Lead and Opportunity

Because Leads are a separate object and unrelated to Opportunities, you cannot log a call to a Lead and Opportunity. Instead, best practice is to log it to the Contact and Opportunity. You may need to convert the Lead to a Contact first. In that case, check with your SDR.

I just added a Contact or converted a Lead—>Contact and now Rattle cannot find the Contact

Rattle syncs the Salesforce schema every 15 minutes. So when you initially convert a Lead—>Contact OR you add a Contact (via Rattle or directly in SFDC), it will take roughly 15 minutes for the new schema to load.

Error message: “CannotUpdateConvertedLead”

This error message occurs when the call happened, the Lead was converted to a Contact, and then the call was logged. In this case, it is a caching issue. Run the /rattle command to manually log the call.

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