What is DevLess?

Insight into how your customers do - or do not - use your product is a key component of predictive customer health and proactive customer engagement. But for many Customer Success teams, getting time on their Development team's schedule to implement usage tracking is a real challenge.

But never fear, DevLess is here! DevLess empowers Customer Success teams to configure usage tracking without a heavy ask to their Development Team. Your Dev Team simply inserts a small Javascript snippet within your application and then any non-engineering user can easily tag in-app actions using a panel launched directly within your application. 

How Can I Instrument My App Using DevLess?

Step 1: Install the ChurnZero Javascript in Your Application

In order to use DevLess, the ChurnZero Javascript must first be installed within your application. Request that your Dev Team completes the first two sections from our JS Installation documentation: "Install the required Code Snippet on Every Page" and "Tell ChurnZero Who You Are and the User Are". 

Once that's done, your Dev Team's effort is complete! 

Step 2: Turn on DevLess Permissions for the ChurnZero user(s) who should have the right to create new Events via DevLess

To add DevLess Permission to one or more of your User Permission Groups:

1. Go to Admin > User Permission Groups
2. Edit the Permission Group you'd like to grant access to DevLess
3. Find "DevLess - EventMaps and PageTags" in the list of permissions and set it from "None" to "On"
4. Save your changes
5. Refresh your browser window so your new permissions are in place

Step 3: Start your Devless session and log into your application in another window

Important: Make sure you do not use a private or incognito browser session -- ChurnZero needs to be able to share cookies across tabs for Devless to run successfully

To start your DevLess session, go to your name in the upper right-hand corner and select the "Start DevLess" option. You will receive a confirmation dialogue that your DevLess session has begun; click "OK". 

Then, in a new browser tab, log into your application.

Step 4: Launch the DevLess Panel

Once you have logged into your application, open your Success Panel by clicking on the Success Panel launch avatar. If you do not have an active Success Panel set up for the account under which you are logged in, you will still have access to the Devless session. You'll either see the normal avatar you chose for your active panel, or this ChurnZero logo avatar that will initiate your Devless session when you click it.

If you do have an active Success Panel, you will have to click the wrench icon in the upper right to open the ChurnZero Content Panel, which you will use to tag Events within your application.  

Select "Manage Event Maps" from the Devless Panel

Step 5: Tag Events you want to track!

IMPORTANT: If/when you add new Events via DevLess, those events are IMMEDIATELY live and will start to show up in ChurnZero as your customers perform those actions. So be thoughtful as you save new events!

To begin a new Event:

1. Click on the blue "Add Event Map" button
2. Start moving your mouse around your application. Elements that are clickable and therefore track-able will be highlighted in blue
3. Hover over the element you want to track and click to select it
4. Once you've made your selection, if you click the magic wand in the Content Panel, your selected element will be highlighted. 
5. If you decide your don't like your selection, click the trash can to clear it

Provide your Event's details:

1. Event Name - This is the name that will be used all around ChurnZero. You can search through Events that are already in ChurnZero or create a new Event type on the fly by entering a unique name into this field.
   1. 1. If you select an existing event, you add this event to a current event that has already been defined in ChurnZero. This will log these events and any others sent to ChurnZero with this given Event Name (i.e. You have an event in ChurnZero named 'Login' populated by your application. You EventMap a target in your Devless session to a button and name it 'Login'. Both of these will fire the event 'Login').
2. Customize - This slider opens up a text area with the code of the element you selected so you can verify it is the exact element you want. Additionally, if multiple elements on the page match the element you selected, you will see a soft warning in yellow ("Other Elements Matched: X")
3. Description - Use this to provide a Description that will be sent to ChurnZero whenever a customer does this Event. You can only put a single piece of information into the Description. Use the Value Preview text to get an example of the description.
4. Quantity - Use this to provide a Quantity that will be sent to ChurnZero whenever a customer does this Event; the FIRST numeric value in the target content will be parsed. Use the Value Preview text to get an example of quantity.
5. Advanced Options - These advanced settings are provided for the rare instances where a target exists on multiple pages, the exact target path is the same (verify in the customize section), AND you only want to track it in ONE place. In this case, you can restrict this tracking to a specific URL.

Step 6: Save your Event (and add another!)

When you are satisfied with the settings of your Event, click "Create" in the lower right-hand corner of the Content Panel. Your Event will be saved and will be listed along the left-hand side. 

 Keep adding Events until everything you want to track has been tagged!

Step 7: Set up Page Tagging

The Page Tagging feature in DevLess allows you to track usage in greater detail by tagging specific pages in your platform, using the URL. Here is an example of the type of usage data you can collect:

• On Jan 8, John Doe logged into the platform for 5 hours. John spent:
  • 1 hour on page A
  • 2 hours on page B
  • 2 hours on page C

To set up these tags, launch the DevLess panel and click Page Tags, and then click the "Add Page Tag" button.

From there, set each component of the Page Tag:

• Tag Name: Identifier for this tag
• Page: the URL for the page you want to track
  • Tip: Track multiple related pages (such as Accounts) under one tag by using the entire URL minus unique identifier at the end
  • Tip: If you have multiple URLs that you want to track as the same Module - simply create two Page Tags and name the Module the same thing. They'll combine when they hit the system.
    • Example Module Name: Dashboard
      • URL 1: www.chasesbakery.com/dashboard
      • URL 2: www.chasescoffee.com/dashboard
• Event Name: used if you want page visit to also trigger an event. Setting up an Event Name and selecting "Track Usage" will mean that an event with that name will fire to ChurnZero every time a user accesses that page.
• Module Name: name of the item visited, (ex: Dashboard). Setting up a Module Name and selecting "Set Module" will mean that Time in App will be tracked to a module of that name in ChurnZero. You will also be able to set a module for when someone leaves that page. 

Measuring Usage with Page Tags

Once your Page Tags are configured, you can check and see how much time is spent in each module by navigating to the Time Spent section under My Dashboard. Use the selector to view usage data for the desired module.

Additionally, you can filter by module time spent in Segments:

Lastly, each Account and Contact will show module-based usage data on the Usage tab:

 Important Notes and FAQs

• You can create multiple actions for a single event.
  • Ex: You could target a "Search" button as an Event and target an "Advanced Search" button as an Event, but both are tied to the single Event name of "Search". 
• An Event will fire to ChurnZero when the user clicks on the tagged element - but if there is validation and/or confirmation dialogues, clicking the element doesn't necessarily mean the customer truly completed the Event (depending on what it's tracking). 
  • Ex: You created an Event called "In-App Purchase" that fires when users click a "Pay Now" button. But when one of your users clicks that button, they receive validation that their credit card is expired. Since they do not have a new credit card handy, they abandon their purchase. But when they clicked the "Pay Now" button, that event was immediately fired to ChurnZero, even though they didn't actually complete their purchase. 
• If you have an app that supports sub-domains per account, you can input a wildcard into your Page Tags to include all subdomains. For example, if you have this URL -- https://churnzero.company-xyz.com/home/ -- and the word "churnzero" will change depending on the account that is logged in, this is called a sub-domain. To handle sub-domains in a Page Tag location, you will want to replace the specific sub-domain in the URL with the wildcard symbol ( * ). Here is what it would look like with the wildcard replacement: https://*.company-xyz.com/home/
  • Note: Wildcards can not be used in URLs for an Event Map. As an alternative turn off “Restrict to URL” to make the event map work without any dependency on the URL. In that case, as long as the Targeted Element is on the page and can be clicked, the event will fire
• When creating Walkthroughs, if you have multiple that are connected to the same Page Tag only one of the Walkthroughs will appear on the page at one time. In other words, it is not possible to view multiple Walkthroughs on the same page at one time. To avoid this scenario, it may help to create more specific Page Tags that only trigger based on a certain URL. You can find more info on configuring Page Tags in this article.