Configuring the Account Lifecycle
You can configure an account lifecycle to set the conditions an account must meet to enter each of its six stages. Each condition tests one account field, and a stage can combine several, requiring an account to meet all of them or any one of them. The Lifecycles dashboard reports no metrics until a lifecycle is configured.
Prerequisites
Before configuring the lifecycle, you must have
- A data source assigned to the property you create the lifecycle in, or available in all properties
- Account records synced from that data source, so LDP has accounts to place in a stage
Create the Lifecycle
Configure all six stages in one pass. Cancel, the back arrow, and navigating away all discard what you entered, and there’s no draft to return to.
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In the Property menu at the top of the sidebar, select the property whose data sources the lifecycle uses. The dashboard counts accounts only from data sources assigned to that property, or available in all properties.
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Click Lifecycles in the Touchpoints section of the navigation menu.
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Click New Lifecycle. The Lifecycle Settings page opens with the Stage Configuration card and Stage 1 expanded.
New Lifecycle appears only while the dashboard has no lifecycle to show. To change an existing lifecycle, edit it.
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Enter a Lifecycle Name. The dashboard uses this name as its title, and you can change it later.
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Configure each of the six stages. They appear as Stage 1 through Stage 6 in a fixed order: Aware, Engaged, Pipeline, Onboarding, Established, and At-Risk. You can’t rename or reorder them, and only the description, the conditions, and the time limit are editable.
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Expand the stage. Stage 1 opens expanded.
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Edit the Description. Each stage opens with a default description, and clearing it makes the stage Unconfigured.
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Under Stage Conditions, click Select Attribute in the first condition and choose the account field it checks. See Condition Fields.
Under Trigger, each condition reads as a sentence: Account, then the field, then the comparison, then the value.
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Click Select Operator and choose the comparison to apply. See Operators.
Changing the field clears the operator and the value, and changing the operator clears the value.
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Enter the value the operator compares the field to. The true, false, is known, and is unknown operators take no value, so no value entry appears for them.
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To add another condition, click Add Trigger and set its field, operator, and value the same way. To remove one, click its Remove button, the circled X at the end of the row. The first condition can’t be removed.
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If the stage has more than one condition, choose how they combine in the sentence above them, which reads All of these criteria must be met. by default. Keep All to require an account to meet every condition, or choose Any to require it to meet at least one. You can’t change All while the stage has a single condition.
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Set Max Time in Stage. See Max Time in Stage.
The Select Operator picker appears only after you choose a field, and the value entry only after you choose an operator. When every condition in the stage is complete, its label changes from Unconfigured to Configured, so a condition you add and leave empty keeps the stage Unconfigured until you finish or remove it. Repeat for the remaining stages.
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Click Create. Create stays disabled until the lifecycle has a name and all six stages read Configured.
The dashboard opens and shows Your dashboard is almost ready! while LDP processes the configuration, then shows the metrics.
Condition Fields
The field picker lists the account fields your connected data sources provide. The list is sorted alphabetically, and you can search it. Only fields whose data type has operators available appear, so if a field you expect is missing, LDP can’t compare values in it.
Fields LDP works out from other fields are labeled Calculated Field. Use them in a condition the same way as any other field.
Operators
The available operators depend on the field’s data type.
| Data Type | Operators |
|---|---|
| Boolean | true, false |
| Date | is before, is on, is after |
| Number | is equal to, greater than, less than, is not equal to, is known, is unknown |
| Text | is, is not, contains, does not contain, is known, is unknown |
There are four data types, and duration is not one of them. Duration is a unit, so a field holding one, such as a count of days, takes the Number operators.
Number and duration fields accept a numeric value, and text fields accept text. A date field opens a date picker covering one year on either side of the current date.
To place an account in a stage once its reported earnings pass a threshold, set the condition to Account, Annual Revenue, greater than, and 1000000. To key a stage off the sector instead, use Account, Industry, is, and Electronics. The fields available to you come from your own connected data sources, so your field names can differ from these.
Max Time in Stage
Max Time in Stage sets the maximum number of days an account can remain in a stage. Every stage begins with a 90-day limit turned on.
Turn off Max Time in Stage to remove the limit for a stage, or edit Set Limit To and enter a different number of days. The limit must be at least one day.
Edit the Lifecycle
Only an Administrator or Owner of the workspace can edit the lifecycle. For other users, the Lifecycle Configuration action doesn’t appear.
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On the Lifecycles dashboard, next to the lifecycle name, click Actions (
) → Lifecycle Configuration. -
Change the lifecycle name, or expand a stage and change its description, conditions, or time limit. See Create the Lifecycle for what each stage control does.
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Click Save. Save stays disabled until the lifecycle has a name and every stage reads Configured.
The dashboard shows Your dashboard is almost ready! while LDP processes the changes.
At the next stage update, LDP checks every account against the new conditions. Once LDP has updated the stages at least once, changing a stage’s conditions or its time limit starts the lifecycle over: each account goes to the stage whose conditions it meets now, or to no stage if it meets none, its time in stage starts again, and the conversion percentages and trends count only stage changes recorded after the edit. Editing only the name of the lifecycle or a stage’s description keeps the stage history.
Troubleshooting Empty States
Depending on your workspace configuration and connected data sources, the Lifecycles dashboard can display these empty states.
| State | When it appears | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| No Data Sources Connected | No data source is connected to the workspace | LDP has no account data to classify |
| Configure a New Lifecycle | A data source is connected but no lifecycle exists | The workspace needs a lifecycle before the dashboard reports metrics |
| Your dashboard is almost ready! | A lifecycle is saved and LDP is processing it | Metrics appear once processing finishes |
| No Account Data Available | The data sources for the property you’re viewing hold no account records | No accounts are available to place in a stage |