Close for Connectivity

The Account Executives use Close to keep track of their communications with prospective clients. When a prospective client sees a demo of the product and decides to use FareHarbor as his or her company’s booking software, an Account Executive works with that company to create an onboarding doc–meanwhile, these steps are being entered into Close so that other FareHarbor team members can see a timeline of the progress.

When it’s time for a client to begin the actual onboarding process, the onboarding information is submitted through Close via a shared document link in a Close note, and the status is updated to Closed & Onboarding. From this point, a builder in Onboarding will see this lead in the OB Building Queue and begin building the Dashboard, working closely with the AE to complete the Dashboard. After this is complete, an onboarding trainer will be directly involved in tracking further progress in Close as the Dashboard is updated, the client is trained, and the company goes Live!

During the onboarding process, the onboarder builder will add the affiliates the client wants to work with to the dashboard. These affiliates will show up in a tableau report that is runned daily. From there, the company is added to Airtable with the status “Not Yet Live” and a task is created for the onboarding trainer to ping us when the company goes live.

For Google, the onboarding builder will submit an Airtable form that we receive as a ticket. In this case, we can go ahead and create a task for the onboarding trainer to ping us when the company goes live and follow the steps here.

Please note that if there is no OB4 assigned yet in close, the task will be created for the AE instead.

OB2 = Onboarding Dashboard Builder
OB4 = Onboarding Trainer

(Task example: please ping the connectivity team when live for Viator)

We have hundreds of custom fields, many of which are used inter-departmentally and are integral to our internal processes so it is important to keep those fields updated at all times. Below are the most important fields used by connectivity; however we only manage and are responsible for updating the Connectivity Live and Google – Opted out fields.

• Account Tier

  A client’s tier – our SLAs are primarily based on the client’s tier.

• AM

  Indicates the name of the Account Manager for the accounts. We inform the AMs when a client goes live on an API or for escalations.

• AM Related

  Uses the SN of the first live lead to identify the relationship between accounts, so both leads have the same value.

• API – Google Opt Out

  Updated when a client decides to opt out of the Google TTD API.

• SP – Affiliate Setup

  Indicates whether a partner connects through ASN buttons, an affiliate dashboard, FHDN, AL-Desk or the API.

• Connectivity – Live

  Indicates if there is a live API connection with that account’s dashboard, and if so to which API Partner(s).

• Lead ID

  The actual Lead ID for the lead currently being viewed. We always add the lead ID to the client’s record in Airtable.

• Live build request date

  Date field for requesting a live build. This is updated every time a new project is requested, removing the previous request date. We use this field when we submit a live build request to OB.

• OB 02 (Dashboard Builder)

  OB 02 – This is used to designate who will be building the dashboard for a recently closed client. OB 02 always helps us with the initial Google API mapping.

• OB 04 (Onboarder)

  OB 04 – The Client Onboard Specialist that will be running the training and assisting the account in going live. We always set a task for the OB 04 to ping us when a client goes live on FH so we can start with the API integration.

• OB Doc

  Link to the Onboard Doc provided by the sales team. This comes in the format of Google Sheet or Airtable. This is referenced by many other departments to review details during the Onboard Process.

• SP – API Partner Tier

  A partner’s tier – our SLAs are primarily based on partner and/or client tier.

• SP – API Partner Status

  Used by the Strategic Partnerships team to track the lifecycle of an API partner’s connection. Connectivity works with partners marked as “7 – Live”.

• Sales Owner

  Indicates the AE who is in charge of working, or “owns” the lead.

• TA URL

  The URL of the company’s Tripadvisor page

Create a build request following best practices. Once completed, create a note in Close detailing the build request. You can always use the Connectivity LBR template, do not forget to make a copy for yourself.

(Note example: API Build Request [Link the Excel file] Please ping [your name] once completed!)

Update the field Live Build Request Date to the current date and remove the field Live Build Completion Date (If applicable, this field won’t be there if this is the first live build request for this client). With Close restructure, those fields now live in two different places, under Dashboard and under Custom Fields. We do not have permissions to edit the Dashboard LBR fields, and should, moving forward, only edit the Custom Fields.

Once these steps are complete you can see the company listed in the Live Build Queue.

Once the build has been completed. The OB builder will ping you in the Slack room #builders, so make sure to keep an eye out on those Slack messages!