Understanding Vitally’s Hierarchy

Vitally’s hierarchy is designed to reflect the way your business manages customers, so you can:

Track customer relationships at both a parent level (Organization) and child level (Accounts).
Clearly see how Users interact with their Accounts.
Store and analyze additional data with Custom Objects.

💡 While many objects can roll up from the Account to the Organization level, objects only on the Organization level can not roll down to the Account level.

The Building Blocks of Hierarchy

The first thing you’ll need to ensure is in good standing is your External IDs. An external ID acts as a single, consistent key that ties data across all systems—ensuring that customer records in Salesforce, Stripe, Segment, and others all map back to the same entity. External IDs are required and without it, you risk creating duplicate accounts or fragmenting a customer’s journey across your tools. In our hierarchy, using an external ID ensures that parent-child relationships stay intact and aligned across integrations. Ultimately, it’s the backbone that holds together accurate, unified profiles and prevents data divergence.

💡 Note that Custom Objects can represent your Organizations or Accounts. In that case, the below still applies for Organizations and Accounts. For example, if you’re using Salesforce “Deals” as your Accounts, the below is still applicable for Accounts.

Category	Organization	Account	User	Custom Object
Primary Purpose	Company-wide view of customer relationship	Subscriptions, products, or business units under an Organization	Individual end-users	Flexible data for anything else (e.g., Subscriptions, Renewals, Projects)
Key Role Assignment	✅ Often assigned for enterprise or parent-level relationship management	✅ Most common level for CSM ownership	❌ Can not be assigned	❌ Key Roles can not be assigned to a custom object
Where Most Work Happens	⚙️ High-level tracking & reporting	💼 Day-to-day CSM workflows, tasks, health, and playbooks	👤 Adoption tracking, engagement insights	📂 Data enrichment & reporting
Health Scoring	✅ Org Health (can be aggregated from Accounts but not required)	✅ Individual Account Health	❌ Health Scores are only on the Parent (Org) or Child level (Account)	✅ Used in formulas traits for health score inputs
Product Usage Tracking (events)	Org level events & aggregated metrics across Accounts in a formula trait	Detailed usage per Account	Timestamped individual activity	❌ can not send events from a Custom Object
Playbooks	✅ Org-level playbooks (e.g., Enterprise renewals)	✅ Account-level playbooks (most common)	✅ Automations triggered by Users	✅ Automations triggered from object activity
Activity Items (Projects, Tasks, Goals, Notes, etc)	✅ All Activity Items available	✅ All Activity Items available	⚠️ Some activity items can be found under the User like Notes, Conversations, NPS, Surveys, & Meetings	❌ Activity items can not be assigned to a custom object
Traits	✅ Org traits, formulas, and custom traits (ARR, Industry, Segment)	✅ Account traits, formulas, and custom traits (MRR, Renewal Date)	✅ User data (Role, Plan, Last Login)	✅ Custom object traits & custom traits
Reporting & Dashboards	✅ Granular and roll-up metrics	✅ Granular operational views	✅ User behavior analytics	✅ Reporting by object type

1. Organizations (Parent Level)

The top-level object in Vitally.
Represents the entire customer company (e.g., Acme Corp).
Can have multiple child Accounts under it.
Holds information that applies to the whole company (e.g., contracts, ARR, global health scores).

2. Accounts (Child Level)

Accounts live under Organizations (e.g., Acme is the org and there’s two children: (1) Acme EMEA, and (2) Acme US)
Represent specific business units, subscriptions, or divisions of the parent company.
Allow you to segment usage, renewals, and health tracking at a granular level.
NOTE* When viewing an Organization or an Account, you can easily see how they’re connected. Organizations show which Accounts belong to them (their children) and Accounts show which Organization(s) they belong to (their parent(s)). However, what isn’t currently visible at the Account level is how sibling Accounts — the “children” under the same Organization — relate to each other.

3. Users (People)

Represent the individual end-users of your product (e.g., John Smith, john@acme.corp)
Users belong to an Account will roll up to the Organization. Users can also be associated only to the Organization and not an Account.
Allow you to measure engagement, adoption, and user-level activity.

4. Custom Objects

Flexible data structures that let you model additional data in Vitally as a separate object tied to a customer.
These could be objects like revenue contracts (Deals), renewal opportunities, customer escalations (Risks), or any structured data unique to your business.
Can be tied to either/both:
- Organizations (e.g., enterprise-wide licenses)
- Accounts (e.g., Opportunities, Deals, etc)
- Will roll up to the Organization (*note: custom objects on the Org level do not roll down to the Account)
Additionally, Custom Objects can represent your Organization or Accounts. For example, if you’re using Salesforce, you can select Opportunities to be your Accounts.

How They Work Together (a visual)

Organization (Acme Corp)
|
|––– Account (Acme US)
|    |–– User (John Smith)
|    |–– User (Jane Doe)
|    |–– Custom Objects (Subscription, Renewal Opportunities)
|
|––– Account (Acme EMEA)
|    |–– User (Carlos Diaz)
|    |–– Custom Objects (Subscription, Renewal Opportunities)
|
|––– Custom Objects (Enterprise Agreement, Global Contracts)
|
|––– User (Global VP)

Working with Hierarchies

1. Automatic Churn Propagation

When an Organization churns, all child Accounts also churn.
Applies to ignored orgs as well: ignoring an org ignores all its children.

2. Import Filters Don’t Work for Referenced Parents

If data references a parent, that parent will be created even if it doesn’t meet import filters.

3. Playbook for Each Hierarchy

Playbooks, Project Templates, and other Activity items can target Organizations OR Accounts, not both.

Hierarchy and Integrations

Name	Category	Connection Method	Supported Objects
Amplitude	Analytics	Webhooks	Events, Accounts, Users, Organizations
Big Query	Data Warehouse	Embed Secret	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Events, Custom Objects, NPS Responses
Gmail	Email	OAuth	Conversations
Hubspot	CRM	OAuth	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Custom Objects, Notes, Tasks, Conversations
Intercom	Support	OAuth	Accounts, Users, Events, Conversations
PostGres	Data Warehouse	Embed Secret	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Events, Custom Objects, NPS Responses
Redshift	Data Warehouse	Embed Secret	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Events, Custom Objects, NPS Responses
Rest API	API	API Key	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Custom Objects, Notes, Tasks, Conversations, NPS Responses, Projects, Messages, Admins, Traits
Salesforce	CRM	OAuth	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Custom Objects, Notes, Tasks
Snowflake	Data Warehouse	Embed Secret	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Events, NPS Responses, Custom Objects
Zendesk	Support	OAuth	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Conversations
Gong	Enrichment	Webhooks	Meetings
Analytics API	API	API Key	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Events
Chargebee	Revenue	Webhooks, API Key	Accounts
Jira	Support	Webooks	Custom Objects
Mixpanel	Analytics	Embed Secret	Events
Pendo	Analytics	Webhooks	NPS Response, Events, Accounts, Users, Organizations
S3	Data Warehouse	Embed Secret	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Events, NPS Responses
Segment	Analytics	Embed Secret	Traits, Events, Accounts, User
Slack	Enrichment	OAuth	Organizations, Accounts, Docs, NPS Responses, Projects, Custom Objects, Tasks
Stripe	Revenue	OAuth	Accounts
Zapier	Enrichment	API Key	Organizations, Accounts, Users, Events, Custom Objects, Notes, Tasks, NPS Responses, Messages, Traits, Admins
Clearbit	Enrichment	API Key	Accounts, Traits
Looker	Enrichment	API Key	N/A
Outlook	Email	OAuth	Conversations
Recurly	Revenue	API Key	Accounts
Rudderstack	Analytics	API Key, Webhooks	Events, Accounts, Users
Sendgrid	Email	API Key	Conversations

Example Hierarchy in Action

Scenario: Education Customer (District → Schools → Users)

Organization: District
Accounts: Individual Schools
Users: Teachers & Admins
Custom Objects: Programs, Subscriptions, Surveys

Scenario: Enterprise Customer (Parent Company → Subsidiaries)

Organization: Parent Company
Accounts: Subsidiaries or regional entities
Users: Employees per subsidiary
Custom Objects: Global contracts, expansion opportunities

Scenario: Custom Objects represent your Accounts

Accounts: Deals
Users: End Users
Custom Objects: Renewals, Product Requests, Opportunities

How to Navigate Vitally

Zapier

Organization Object: Supported Integrations & Creating Hierarchy

Best Practices for Transitioning to the Org-Account Structure in Vitally

Vitally Glossary

Hierarchy at Vitally