How participant actions show on a rep’s Engage view

What to expect on Engage

Users go to their Engage view in Guided Selling to see which actions they are assigned that are currently ready to be performed; these are the engagements they are expected to make as part of their daily work. A lead or contact can become Participants in a Sequence. A Sequence is comprised of a series of Participant Actions such as Calls or Emails to be performed by a Guided Selling user.

Actions will only become due one at a time for each participant, in sequential order, until they are completed or skipped. This prevents two actions from becoming active at the same time for the same participant. At the time an action is completed, all following actions are updated to have a due date according to the action timing prescribed in the sequence. So, although the Expected Execution Date for later actions have passed, they are not considered due until the previous action has been completed.

If an action is rescheduled from the Engage page, the Expected Execution Date is updated to the time set by the user and will be removed from Engage. It will reappear according to standard action processing described here.

Email actions created with Manual activation are displayed on Engage when due. Email actions created with Automatic activation do not show on Engage. The app will determine when the email is due and performs that action without any user interaction.

Key fields to know on the participant action

• Expected Execution Date - Actions will become active, or be performed, only after this time.
• Show on Engage - Checkbox to indicate that an unperformed action should be on Engage. For performed actions, it does not get unchecked.
• Status
  • Completed - Action was performed or skipped
  • Active - Action is unperformed and is currently on Engage
  • Future - Action is unperformed, and for various reasons, is not currently due
  • Disabled - Participant is associated to a sequence, but is not Active within the sequence, or the Sequence itself is not Active (If the participant is not in a sequence, Disabled/unperformed actions should not exist)
• Sequence Active - will be true if the action is part of a the participants current sequence, and both the participant and the sequence are active
• Sequence Type - Corresponds to the Object(Contact, Lead, Opportunity, Campaign) and Triggers related to the parent sequence
• System Deferral Reason - Will be populated with a reason if the action is the next one due, has passed the due date, but has another reason the app has determined it should not be on the user’s Engage
• Participant Phone - required for call actions
• Participant Email - required for email actions
• Action Type - Call, Email, Task, SMS
• Action Activation - Manual, Automatic

Action Criteria

In the Sequence configuration, an admin may utilize action criteria for each action in a given Sequence. At the moment the app determines an action is due based on the Expected Execution Date, the action’s criteria is then also evaluated. If it meets the criteria, then it will show on Engage to be performed by a user, or in the case of an automatic email, it will be sent immediately by the app.

There are two configuration options available for instances where an action is past it’s due date, but does not meet the given criteria: To hold the action until the criteria is met, effectively delaying when it show’s on a users Engage, or to skip the action altogether so that it never shows on Engage.

Actions on hold will be evaluated again later, but the sequence will not progress until the criteria is met, allowing the user to perform the action eventually.

Actions set to skip if the criteria was not met will be evaluated only once. So, if an action is on a user’s Engage view, it is the result of successfully meeting the criteria and it will not be skipped, even if it later fails to meet the criteria before the action is performed. Note: An admin or user may manually update a record to set Show on Engage to False, allowing the app to process it again and evaluate the skip criteria once more.

Automatic Skipping / Action Opt Out

If a customer has opted out of receiving communication for a specific channel (Email/SMS/Phone), those action types should skip automatically. No additional Action Criteria is needed. The Action Opt Out field on the participant action, as well as the System Deferral Reason field, will both be indicators of an Opt Out field being check on the Lead or Contact record in Salesforce.

Drip Sequences

When a participant is added to a drip sequence, the actions are created immediately. However, if the drip limit has already been met, the participant and its actions are queued. Actions cannot become Active while queued, even if it past the due date and meets criteria. As queued participants, they also cannot be added to any other sequences.

Once a participant is dequeued, assuming action criteria is met, the first action will become due, and it behaves like any other sequence from that point on.

How the app processes upcoming actions

For each sequence type (Contact, Lead, Opportunity, Campaign) there is an Apex batch job (e.g. PerformContactActionBatch) that is, by default, scheduled to run every 30 minutes. This schedule can be updated to be hourly or daily if needed. When a batch job executes, it will evaluate actions for all active participants for a given sequence type. Batches will process 200 records at a time. The number of batches depends on how many actions need to be evaluated.

The time between batch executions and the batch processing time will affect the time an action actually becomes Active compared to the Expected Execution Date. For example, if in action is due at 9:45am, and the next batch runs at 10:05am and takes 10 minutes to process, the action will not show on the user’s Engage view until between 10:05am-10:15am.

Troubleshooting steps when expected actions are not on Engage

Basic requirements

• Have all previous actions been completed? i.e. the action is the next one due
• Is the current time past the Expected Execution Date, allowing for processing time?
  • There must be an execution of the PerformActionBatch after the Expected Execution Date, and all batches must be processed successfully
  • Go to Setup->Apex Jobs
• Does the participant have a phone number? (for Call actions)
• Does the participant have an email address? (for Email actions)
• Is the owner’s native email account successfully connected? (for automatic Email actions)
  • Go to Sequence Settings->Users
• What is the Status of the participant's action?
  • Unperformed Participant Actions with an Active status should be on Engage
• Are the actions sorted correctly using the Engage view settings?
  • Check how the actions are sorted and/or filtered
• Is the Sequence Active?
  • Go to Guided Selling->Sequences
• Does the participant also have an Active status?
  • Go to Guided Selling->Sequences->Sequence Details(Click Sequence Name)->Participants->Filter/Sort by Active/Inactive status

Next steps when basic requirements are met

• Is there a value in System Deferral Reason? There may be a value if one of the following is true.
  • The action criteria is not met
  • An email action was already previously attempted (duplicate action failsafe)
  • Legacy merge syntax was detected in an email action
  • The participant has opted out of messaging
  • Email attempted to be sent outside of business hours
  • The action was queued
  • The action is owned by a delegation user
    • Identification of a delegation user is based on the assignment of the Guided Selling Delegation permission set, regardless of the assignment of Sequence Agent or Sequence Admin. Guided Selling licensed users should never have the Delegation permission set assigned.
• Does the participant have any Disabled actions related to it?
  • Disabled actions existing that are not part of the participant’s current sequence could interfere with the processing of overdue actions for the current sequence
  • Disabled actions can be safely deleted if they are not part of the current sequence
  • Sequence Association records related to the participant can also be deleted if one exists that is not for the current sequence
• Double-check the Apex Jobs page in Setup for successful execution of the PerformActionBatch
  • Any errors that affect one batch could affect all the records processed in the same batch
  • If a batch owner has not been set in Sequence Settings, no batch jobs can be scheduled or executed
  • Triggers for each of the Sequence types must also be turned on for the corresponding batch jobs to be scheduled
    • Double check the Sequence Type field since a Contact or Lead may be part of an Opportunity or Campaign Sequence, as each has its batch job
• Is the owner still an Active Salesforce user?
• Does the owner have proper permission sets assigned within Salesforce?
  • A licensed Guides Selling user should own the action. The correct permission sets assigned to this user will be the Guided Selling Standard Object Permissions set, and either Sequence Admin or Sequence Agent permission
  • To ensure the above-mentioned permission sets are up to date, with permissions added for any fields recently added to Guided Selling field sets, go to Sequence Settings->Users->Click Grant All Permission
• Is there any odd activity in the Field History?
  • Check the related tab to view the field history
  • Field history tracking needs to be enabled by an Admin and added to the page layout
  • Specific fields also need to be enabled for tracking by an admin after history tracking for the Participant Action object has been enabled in Salesforce Setup
  • Tracking shown on Engage could reveal that the field is being set to true, then being reset to false, for example (unexpected behavior)