Automated Playbooks Overview

Playbook automation help you automate common Customer Success needs by performing a series of actions (e.g. fire a risk indicator, send an email, create a task) on Vitally Objects that meet certain requirements.

Each action in a Playbook automation is applied at a defined schedule based on when the Playbook was first activated on the organization/account/user.

Creating Playbook Automation

Let's look into creating playbook automation! Below is a video to walk you through some examples. As you keep scrolling down on this documentation, we'll take a deep dive to help you make the best decisions in creating your playbook automation. We chat through frequency, triggers, actions, rules, and more!

How To

How to Visual

How to create a Playbook automation

Navigate to your Settings (⚙️) by selecting your Account Logo on the top left and under Operations select Playbooks (or via Quick Jump Mac: ⌘ + j Windows: Alt + j)
Select Create New on the top right
Select the Object you're targeting (Accounts, Users, Notes, Tasks, etc)
Build your trigger rules by using filters
Add in Actions (Create Note, Start a Conversation, Create Project, etc)
Turn on your playbook once you're satisfied

Below we dive deeper into how to choose your filters, frequency, re-enrollment, actions, waiting periods, and more.

🚨 By default, playbooks include churned accounts. If you don’t want your playbook automation to include churned enrollees, simply add a filter for “Churn date is not set” for Orgs and Accounts or "Deactivated is not set" for Users if your lifecycle tracking rules have been configured.

Automated Playbooks Run Limits

Run Limits allows you to choose how many times an Object can enroll in a Playbook over a specific timeframe when it matches and unmatches the rules. This is not to be confused with a recurring Playbook automation; you can learn about recurring Playbooks here.

Once an object matches, Playbook automations run on an hourly basis to see what object matches the rules set. This can not be modified.

There are three options:

No limit	At most X time(s)	At most X time(s) every X days
Accounts/Users/Orgs or Objects (Notes, Tasks, Custom Objects, etc) will run as they match and unmatch the rules. If an Account matches on January 1st, unmatches later that day and then rematches January 2nd it will re-run through the Playbook.	Control the number of times an Object runs through a Playbook as it matches and unmatches the rules. If set to 'At most 1 time': If an Account matches on January 1st, unmatches later that day, and then rematches on January 2nd, it will not re-run.	Control the number of times within a timeframe that an Object runs through a Playbook as it matches and unmatches the rules. If set to 'At most 1 time every 7 days': If an Account matches on January 1st, unmatches later that day, and then rematches on January 2nd, it will not re-run. If it rematches January 8th, it will then re-enroll.

Automated Playbooks Exit Strategy

There are two options:

Once they no longer match the rules	Only once they've completed the Playbook and no longer match the rules
Accounts with a run in progress will stop and exit the Playbook as soon as they no longer match the rules. Any actions that have not already been applied will be skipped.	Runs will not be stopped before reaching the end of the Playbook. After that, Accounts will exit the playbook when they no longer match the rules. All actions will be applied to the enrolled object, even if it no longer matches the Playbook.

Automated Playbooks Trigger Rules

Before you start creating your Playbook automation, you want to make sure you're choosing the correct trigger rules. Your trigger rules are what control what goes in and out of your Playbooks so it is very important that you start with the correct list of customers.

Playbooks can be triggered off any traits, Success Metrics, Elements, other Playbooks, Indicators, etc. There are many options for you to choose from to narrow down the audience list you want to specifically target (Below, there is a User vs Account Playbook Example).

Churned Accounts, Organizations, and Users will be enrolled into Playbooks by default, and all actions will apply.

If you don’t want your Playbook automation to include churned enrollees, simply add a filter for “Churn date is not set” for Orgs and Accounts or "Deactivated is not set" for Users if your lifecycle tracking rules have been configured.

Playbook Triggers	Playbook Trigger Visuals
Select What Object You Want to Trigger Off of You can select between your hierarchy, Notes, Tasks, Conversations, or Custom Objects.
Choosing between AND vs OR Logic There are two types of logic when configuring more than one Playbook rule: AND Logic: To identify Objects that meet one rule/group of rules AND another rule/group of rules OR Logic: To identify Objects that meet one rule/group of rules OR another rule/group of rules
Group Filters Filter Groups allow you to use AND/OR logic with any groups of multiple filters!

Depending on the trigger rules you want to choose from and what you're trying to accomplish will depend on your selection. Below, User vs Account Playbook Example, we go over Users vs Accounts as an example.

User vs Account Playbook Example

Account Rules vs User Rules

These rules function somewhat differently depending on whether your Playbook targets accounts or users:

Targeting Accounts - If your Playbook targets accounts AND you have User rules defined, then the account is a 'match' if any User at the Account matches your User rules.
Targeting Users - If your Playbook targets Users, we'll apply any Account rules to the User's Account and any User rules to the User itself.

Your selection here determines whether our system will apply the Playbook's automated actions to either Accounts, Users, or Organizations (that match your Playbook's rules). There's a big difference in functionality based on your selection!

For example, let's say you build a Playbook automation with these conditions:

Let's also say your Playbook has an action to automatically send an email to whoever has the Playbook applied to them. Depending on whether your Playbook targets Accounts or Users, the functionality is quite different:

Above, notice how targeting Accounts doesn't necessarily prevent Users with NPS scores <= 8 from getting an email, but targeting Users does. Why is that? When targeting Accounts, you are telling Vitally that the output of the Playbook is to impact/affect the Account - not necessarily a specific User.

To elaborate, let's say that the action is to add the Account to a Segment (instead of sending an email). If your Playbook's conditions are the same - there's 1 Account rule and 1 User rule - Vitally needs to look at the Account and go, "Should we add this Account to this Segment?". We answer that question by looking at the Account's Users and going, "Is there any User with a last NPS score greater than 8?". If so, the Account gets added to the Segment. That same process occurs when targeting Accounts with a "Start a conversation" action.

FAQ

Q: What should I do if I want to send emails based on User activity?

A: If you want to send specific Users specific emails for exhibiting specific behaviors, then 99% of the time, you'll want the Playbook to target Users and not Accounts. Since targeting Users gives you complete control over the exact set of Users that get your email, then that's likely the way to go.

Q: Why would I target Accounts with an action to "Start a conversation"? Should I always just target users?

A: Definitely not. Since Vitally works with B2B companies almost exclusively, there's plenty of valid cases for saying "I need to email this company". For example, let's say you want to auto-engage Accounts the moment all Users at the Account stop using your product for 7 days. However, you don't want to engage ALL those Users, just the primary owner at the company that bought your product - perhaps you want to check in with that person to see if a team-wide onboarding session should be scheduled.

In that case, targeting the Account is 100% the right way to go. To make sure that the primary Account Owner is the only one to get the email though, you'd select that option when configuring your email action:

Automated Playbooks Actions

Actions allow you to configure something that should happen once an Object matches your rules on a set schedule.

For example, on the 1st day a Playbook automation is applied to an account, you can send an email to the Account's owner. On the 3rd day, you can create a Task for the Account's CSM. Then, on the 10th day, you can send another email.

How To	How To Visual
Select the blue plus sign button to view and add actions and rules for your playbook. Below we list out all available actions.

Automated Playbook Available Actions

Assign a Key Role to the Account/Organization

Manage your Key Role assignments with intelligent algorithms! With the "Assign a Key Role" Playbook actions, you can auto-assign team members to Accounts or Organizations using 3 different algorithms:

Assign to the selected team member who has the least-managed Accounts
Assign to the selected team member who has the least-managed revenue
Assign to the selected team member who has not been assigned to an Account for the longest amount of time (i.e. 'round robin')

Additionally, you can assign it to a specific person!

It's important to note that by default, churned accounts are not counted when determining which teammate has the fewest managed accounts. However, if the playbook has been configured to include churned data, then churned accounts will be counted in the total.

Create an Account/Organization Indicator

Indicators are automated alerts that detect significant opportunity or risk states into which accounts may transition. They can be assigned to teammates, manually silenced (by marking the Indicator as addressed), and more.

Add the Account/Organization/User to a Segment

Segments are organized subsets of each hierarchy, and you can use Playbooks to add and remove segments automatically. It's important to note that if a Segment was applied manually, a Playbook can not remove that Segment automatically.

Start a conversation with the Account/Organization/User

Starting a conversation with the right user at the right account is a critical component to Customer Success, and this action helps you do just that! You can send an email via Gmail or Outlook to auto-send it from the account's CSM, send personalized messages (using user, account, and CSM variables), and even schedule conversations to start on a delay, which gives your team time to review pending conversations and make any needed edits.

Trying to send a drip campaign? No problem! We now have the options to:

Limit how many emails the action schedules to send for a given sender on a given day. This helps you if you want to drip emails out and somewhat control the frequency of any responses
The ability to prevent scheduled send dates from falling on the weekend. It's important to note that this is based on the UTC time zone. To prevent conversations from being sent at Midnight UTC on Monday, senders should configure their personal sending windows.

You'll see an option for 'Daily maximum per sender' when using the conversation action. What this does is it looks at the emails that need to get sent and groups them by sender and their send date.

Reply to a Conversation

If you want to follow up on a previous conversation action, you can select reply to a conversation! You'll, of course, need to have a conversation to reply to, and once you've got that, you can then use the reply to a conversation action to send a follow-up email. To properly identify which conversation you want to reply to, reference the unique ID assigned to the conversation action.

Create an Account/Organization Task

Tasks are to-dos created for Organizations/Accounts and assigned to your teammates. With this action, you can ensure your team members complete specific activities for Accounts exhibiting specific behaviors.

The 'Create a task' action in playbooks also supports selecting multiple fallback assignees alongside an algorithm to use to determine which assignee should be assigned to the task. The 2 algorithms supported are:

Round robin: Assign the task to the teammate not assigned to a task created by the action for the longest period of time
Least incomplete tasks: Assign the task to the teammate with the least incomplete tasks created by the action

Update Task(s) for the Account/Organization

Use the data you are syncing to Vitally to update or complete a task automatically. E.g. When the Account enables our Slack integration, mark the 'Enable Slack' task as completed. Search for the tasks you want to target and then update completed, task name, assignee, category, task status, or task traits!

Create an Account/Organization Project

Projects are sequences of Tasks aimed at helping a customer reach a stage or goal. With this Playbook action, you can ensure that standard projects like onboarding, annual renewals, QBR processes, and more are automatically created for the right customers at the right times.

Create an Account/Organization Doc

Docs are dedicated workspaces to gather and share information.

Docs provide transparency between you and your customer, the ability to create templates for consistency across team members, and the capability to share with customers to create a more collaborative relationship.

Update an Account/Organization/User/Custom Object Trait

You can update any editable trait via a Playbook automation! In this action, you have the ability to increment/decrement a number Trait or set to null.

A popular use case for this can be used in conjunction with Custom Object Playbooks to do some basic rollups, like tracking the number of Jira tickets created by a customer over the last 30 days.

Custom traits help you track data points about your customers directly in Vitally. With this action, you can set the value of a custom trait automatically for Accounts that match your rules.

A popular use case for this action is to map your plan names to their monthly cost, automatically setting an MRR trait for accounts based on the plan they're subscribed to.

You can configure Playbook actions to update traits on a Custom Object for Playbooks that enroll said Custom Object. For example, if an Opportunity needs to have a field automatically updated when its stage changes, Playbooks will support that.

Send a Segment track (Account or User level only)

Vitally's Segment integration allows you to configure Vitally as a Segment destination, syncing the data you track in Segment (groups, identifys, and tracks) into Vitally in real-time. However, you can also use Vitally as a Segment source, which allows you to push Vitally's unique customer insights back to Segment for use in your other tools! This doc explains that in more detail.

This action allows you to send a Segment track call to Segment-connected integrations as accounts or users reach certain points in the Playbook. For example, say you have a Playbook automation that welcomes new customers the first day they become a paying customer. With this action, you can send a track back to Segment to let other systems/data stores log a record of these new customers.

An example track sent from a Playbook might look something like this:

analytics.track({
  event: "New Vitally customer", // You get to define the event name per Playbook
  groupId: "ACCOUNT_GROUP_ID", // We auto-set this for you using the account's Segment group ID
  context: {
    groupId: "ACCOUNT_GROUP_ID" // We auto-set this for you using the account's Segment group ID
  },
  properties: {
    playbook: "New customer playbook" // This is the name of the playbook in Vitally
  }
});

Ping a webhook

You can trigger actions in external systems with the Ping a webhook Playbook action. With this action, you can send a Playbook Identifier that identifies which playbook is sending the webhook, along with any user or account traits that you wish to send. You can also ping a webhook from note-triggered playbooks with details about the note.

To configure this action, make sure that you enter a valid webhook URL and select the proper HTTP method (PUT or POST). If your request will require any headers (i.e., authentication), simply enter those into the Request Headers section.

Show in-app NPS survey (Account and User level only)

Vitally's NPS for B2B SaaS (free) add-on is NPS rebuilt for Customer Success. When enabled, you can pair it with Playbooks to limit the users at accounts that should be shown an NPS survey.

For example, you could set up rules that filter accounts to just those on an annual deal that are renewing within 30 days. Add a 'Show NPS' action to your Playbook, and we'll only show the NPS survey to users at matching accounts!

Automated Playbooks Rules

Rules allow you to add delays (i.e, Wait) or split (i.e, Branch) logic to create branches.

Split (branch): Another word for this is branches! With branching, teams can create workflows with dedicated paths for addressing a range of different outcomes. The branching logic also means teams can reduce the number of their overall Playbooks. For example, instead of using multiple Playbooks to assign new customers to specific plan types, teams can utilize branching to filter new customers into their correct plan from a single Playbook.
Wait: You can now choose between setting a rule for a waiting period as a defined number of days or until the account matches a specific set of rules. Users can set this rule for various situations, including automating emails, tracking account set up, or any other action your team may be automating. When delaying automations until a specific condition is met, users can also define a maximum number of days to delay the next action. If a customer is stuck or doesn’t complete the expected action, your team can set a new path to best address the customer.

Split (Branched) Logic

With our "split" rule, you can create branching conditions within a playbook. Playbooks prioritize from left to right. In other words, if you have 3 branches the Playbook will first check if it matches the first branch and if it doesn't, it'll continue to check the next branch on the right until there are no more branches. Follow these steps to add a branch:

How to	How to Visual
How to create Playbook branch logic: Select Rules tab when adding a new action Select Split into paths Click to +Add a branch Name your Branch Define the conditions of the branch(s) Repeat step 3-4 until you have all the branches you need Select Save once you're satisfied

An "Otherwise" branch will always be created to capture any objects that do not match the logic of the other branches.

Branches can be reordered or deleted using the up and down arrows or the trashcan icon in the pop-up next to each branch name.

Split/Branch logic use cases:

Creating email campaigns with branched logic

To create Playbooks that branch off of email engagement, first add a branch to define the filters using Action Filters. For example, if you would like to create a new conversation if the previous message has not been replied to, select that property and set it "Is False."

Once you have defined your branch logic, you can add what actions to trigger after the conversation. You can add the action Reply to a Conversation so the follow-up is tied to the initial conversation and a new thread is not created.

Once you've selected the action to Reply to a Conversation, you can select the conversation to tie it back to. There is an ID on each conversation that can easily identify the specific conversation (this comes in handy when you've got a large Playbook with many conversations).

Once you've selected the conversation, you can then define the reply. Once done select Save, and you're all set!

Automated Playbook Wait/Delay

There are 2 options to delay an action in a playbook

Wait for a number of days
Wait until the Object matches specific rules

Wait/Delays	Wait/Delays Visuals
Wait for a number of days This allows you to wait a specific number of days until the Playbook's next steps are applied to the Object
Wait until the Object matches specific rules This allows you to define rules that must be met in order for the matching audience to move forward in the Playbook. You can also add in a max wait that will be a maximum amount of time to wait and when it has exceeded that wait time period, the object will move forward in the Playbook.

Automated Playbook Details

Define general details about your Playbook, such as Name, Category, and Description.

How to

How to Visual

Select the gear icon on the top right-hand corner, and you can define general details about your Playbook:

Description - Want to give your team some context and direction when the Playbook is applied? Then, enter a note here and add account/user variables via the bottom right icon in the toolbar. We will 'compile' your note here with the matching account/user when displaying it throughout Vitally
Category - Optional, but helps keep your Playbooks organized
Name - Give your Playbook a name so you/your team can easily identify it later

Creating an Automated Playbooks Category

Creating a category is done when you're in a Playbook so the workflow is slightly different than some of the other categories.

How To	How to Visual
How to create a Playbook Category: Navigate to the Playbook you want to categorize When in your Playbook, click the settings gear on the top right A pop-up will appear where you can select from existing categories or create a new one Type out the new category and press Enter That's it! You've created a new category

Managing your Automated Playbooks

View Matching Audience

This is a great way to troubleshoot who actively matches your playbook today! If they are not in this list, they do not match the playbook, so looking at what they are missing is a great first step.

How To	Visual
Matching Audience allows you to preview the audience that *currently* matches the Playbook criteria. This includes an audience that has already run through the Playbook, or that will run through the Playbook. Select the TRIGGER, and the right panel will populate You'll see Edit Rules and matching Audience. Select Matching Audience

Viewing Active Playbook Automation in a Table View

How To

How to Visual

To view Accounts with a specific Playbook active, you can enable the column for the desired Playbook and then sort by that column, add a filter on the column for the desired Playbook, or both!

The column for each Playbook shows the date the Playbook was applied to the Account as well as when it completed (e.i ran through the Playbook to completion)

If you click on the Playbook column for a specific Account, you can also see a history of the actions performed on the account by the Playbook.

Viewing Active Playbook Automation in Customer 360s

How To	How to Visual
To view Playbook history on an Organization, Account, or User in the Customer 360 Profile, you can easily navigate to the Playbook Runs section in the Explorer.

View Playbook Automation History

Another great way to troubleshoot who has gone through a playbook, who is currently running through one, when they ran, and when they stopped matching the playbook trigger rules!

How To	How To Visual
When in a Playbook, you can view any objects that are in progress, completed or stopped. By selecting an object, you can see the history for that object specifically When in your Playbook, select the clock on the top right A left panel will pop up where you'll see In Progress, Completed, and Stopped. Select one of the tabs and search for the object you're looking for Once found, select it to see the history
You can also go to an Org/Account/User 360 to see all the Playbook automations they have run through and select each one to view the history for that. Go to the Org/Account/User If you have a deck other than the default one, X out of it On the right hand panel, scroll down to Playbooks Here you'll see a list of all Playbooks the object is running through or has run through Select the Playbook to be taken to the history If you've updated your view to the new Customer 360, click here for more information on Playbook Runs

How to Stop a Playbook Automation

You can stop a Playbook automation. This action has two impacts:

All previously-applied actions are 'undone' (e.g. active Indicators are ended, pending messages are not sent, etc, if the undo strategy for that action is set to delete)
No further actions will be applied to the Account for that Playbook.

How To

How To Visual

If you'd like to 'force stop' a Playbook from executing any further actions on the account

Go to the Account (or other hierarchy)
If you have a deck other than the default one, X out of it
On the right hand panel, scroll down to Playbooks
Here you'll see a list of all Playbooks the object is running through or has run through
Select the Stop Playbook link displayed
You can add a note as to why, which is visible to your team

If you've updated your view to the new Customer 360, click here for more information on Playbook Runs

How to Clone or Delete a Playbook Automation

When you delete a Playbook, here's what will happen:

All previously-applied actions are 'undone' (e.g. active Indicators are ended, pending messages are not sent, etc)
If the Playbook added an Account to a Segment, the Account will be removed from the Segment.
Tasks and custom traits will either be deleted/cleared or left alone, depending on the option that you select in the action configuration.

How To	How To Visual
Deleting or cloning a Playbook is simple: Go to your Settings Scroll down a bit and select Playbooks You'll see all the Playbooks and the meatball menu Select the meatball menu to see Delete and Clone

How to Manually Unenroll an Object from a Playbook

There may be times when you want to stop a Playbook from running on a customer, user, task, or other object. You can stop a Playbook's run manually.

If you've updated your view to the new Customer 360, click here for more information on Playbook Runs.

Here's how:

For users, accounts, or organizations:

From the user, account, or organization profile, locate the Playbooks card, it will be in the default Deck if that is not automatically selected
Locate the specific Playbook run in the card that you would like to stop
Click the red Stop Playbook button

For Tasks, Projects, and Other Activities:

First, you may need to create a custom Activity Deck that contains the Playbooks card. This page has information on creating Decks.
Navigate to that object's record
Look for the Activity Deck panel
Select the Deck that contains the Playbooks card
Locate the specific Playbook run that you would like to stop
Select the red Stop Playbook button

FAQ

Q: I applied an action retroactively after making a change. Why were all actions not applied?

A: When a Playbook gets retroactively applied, it applies all new actions that have not yet been applied to matching objects. It doesn’t rerun any actions that have already been applied to a matching object.

Q: Do churned customers run through playbooks?

A: As of 12/8/23, all actions will be applied for any Playbook created on or AFTER. You'll want to add a filter such as 'churn date is not set' so those actions don't trigger on churned Organizations or Accounts.

This does NOT include users. We will NOT email churned Users from the start or reply to conversation actions in a Playbook.

Any Playbooks created before 12/8/23: Yes, but not all actions are applied to churned Objects. Below is a list of actions that a Playbook will ignore and actions that will work via a Playbook:

Playbook actions applied:	Playbook actions ignored:
Add to a segment Update task(s) Update a trait Send a Segment track Ping a webhook Show a NPS survey	Assign a key role Create an indicator Start a conversation Reply to a conversation Create a task Create a project

Q: How do I stop churned customers from being enrolled in Playbook automations?

A: Churned customers will be enrolled in playbooks, and all actions will apply. If you don’t want your playbooks to include churned enrollees, simply add a filter for “Churn date is not set” for Orgs and Accounts or "Deactivated is not set" for Users if your lifecycle tracking rules have been configured.

Q: I'm using the action filters to reply to a conversation earlier in the playbook, but can not find the conversation I want to reply to. What's going on?

A: This is likely tied to the "strategy" in your conversation action. You want to be sure to have it set to "start a group conversation with users at the same account" and NOT "start one conversation per user". Once you switch that over to the appropriate strategy, you will now see the conversation under the action filters.

🤝 Managing Stakeholder Change

Conversation did not get sent from a Playbook

Using Playbooks to Follow Up on Conversations (drip campaigns)

Segment was not removed after exiting a Playbook

Vitally Glossary