About Playbooks

Playbooks are groups of tasks that enable you to complete a focused piece of customer success work. They're useful for scoping any work that needs completing to satisfy the objectives of a success plan. You can also use them independently to scope out any series of tasks that a customer success manager (CSM) might need to undertake in support of their customer. They’re particularly useful for managing repetitive pieces of work to save time and drive consistency.

Viewing Playbooks

You can view playbooks in:

The Playbooks tab.
Success Tracker. For more information, see Using Success Tracker.

You can view the playbook task records associated with a playbook in the Related tab of the playbook's record page.

Creating Playbooks

You can create either blank playbooks or playbooks from templates. A playbook created from a template inherits the information stored in the template, including its playbook task information. You can also select a record type for your new record if your administrator has set up custom record types.

You can create playbooks using:

The Create Playbook action in the Actions panel, which is available on the Customer Success Management Workspace. This action might also be available from a record page if your administrator has added the Actions panel to the page. This method enables you to create either blank playbooks or playbooks from a template.
The Add Playbooks button in Success Tracker. This method enables you to create either blank playbooks or playbooks from a template.
The New list view button in the Playbooks tab. This enables you to create blank playbooks only.

For more information, see Creating Playbooks.

You can also create new playbooks from existing ones using the Clone Playbook button available on playbook record pages. For more information, see Cloning Playbooks.

Note:

To create playbooks from templates, you must have the correct permissions assigned. For more information, contact your administrator.

When creating a playbook:

The Parent Success Plan field can be automatically populated if you leave it blank and select an objective that has a parent success plan associated with it.
The Account field can be automatically populated if you leave it blank and select an objective that has a parent account associated with it.
If you select a parent success plan for a playbook, it must match the success plan of the objective associated with the playbook.
You must select a role if you want to enable the automatic allocation of resources to it.

Blank Playbooks

You can automatically associate a playbook with:

An account, by creating the playbook from the Actions panel on the account's record page
An objective, by creating the playbook from the Actions panel on the objective's record page
A success plan, by creating the playbook from the Actions panel on the success plan's record page

When creating blank playbooks, the Account field is automatically populated with:

The account associated with the parent success plan or objective, if you select one
The account associated with the record you are creating the playbook from when creating a playbook from the account, objective, or success plan record page

Playbooks Created from Templates

You can save a playbook as a template by selecting the Template checkbox when creating your new playbook. Playbooks created from templates inherit their information and playbook task records.

You can automatically associate a playbook with:

An account, by creating the playbook from the Actions panel on the account's record page
An objective, by creating the playbook from the Actions panel on the objective's record page
A success plan, by creating the playbook from the Actions panel on the success plan's record page

When creating a new playbook record from a template that contains child records, the Select Records grid displays so that you can:

View the child records inherited from the template.
Deselect any child records that you do not want to include in your new record. By default, all of the template's child records are selected. If the template contains no child records, a message notifies you of this, the Select Records grid does not display, and you can finish creating your new record.
Edit the child records inherited from the template. When adding resources to new child records, ensure that the resources you want to add are active and are not PSA resources. You can add a single resource to objectives and playbooks, and multiple resources to playbook tasks.

Note:

Changing the start date of a playbook affects the start and end dates of its child records. In this case, any changes you made to the start and end dates of child records will be lost and the start and end dates will be set according to the playbook's new start date.

When selecting a template:
- Only playbooks with the Active and Template checkboxes selected are displayed.
- You can switch between views using and . By default, the last-selected view is displayed.
- To refresh the template information, click .
When creating a playbook from an account, objective, or success plan record page, the Account field is automatically populated with the account associated with the record you are creating the playbook from.
Playbook tasks copied from the template playbook or success plan are associated with the same account as the playbook.
If you do not select a team during playbook creation, adding resources to the team using team manager automatically creates and associates a team with the playbook.

Custom Record Types

If your org uses custom record types:

You can select a record type for your new record, if your administrator has set up custom record types.
The displayed fields might vary if your org uses custom record types. For more information, contact your administrator.
When creating a record of a specific type, the Record Type field is automatically populated and is read-only. To display this field, your administrator must add it to the necessary page layouts.
If there are no record types available in your org for the CS Activity, Objective, Playbook, Playbook Task, and Success Plan objects, the fields in their related creation and edit windows use the related field sets.

For more information, see Setting up Customer Success Cloud.

Editing Playbooks

You can edit playbooks from:

The Playbooks tab
Success Tracker

For more information, see Editing Playbooks.

When editing a playbook:

The Parent Success Plan field can be automatically populated if you leave it blank and select an objective that has a parent success plan associated with it.
If you select a parent success plan for a playbook, it must match the success plan of the objective associated with the playbook.
Editing a playbook's objective also updates the objective and success plan of the playbook tasks associated with the playbook.
Editing a playbook's success plan also updates the success plan of the playbook tasks associated with the playbook.

Notes:

The displayed fields might vary if your org uses custom record types. For more information, contact your administrator.
If there are no record types available in your org for the CS Activity, Objective, Playbook, Playbook Task, and Success Plan objects, the fields in their related creation and edit windows use the related field sets.

Allocating Resources to Playbooks

You can manually allocate any active CS Cloud resource, or automatically allocate the most suitable CS Cloud resource from a pool of resources, to a playbook. The resource allocated to a playbook record is also the owner of that record.

For more information, see Allocating Resources and Auto-Allocating Resources to Playbooks.