Pendo

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Overview

The Pendo integration imports survey responses from the polls in your Pendo guides. Dovetail analyzes the open-text answers, and brings numeric answers, such as NPS and CSAT scores, across as fields you can filter by and chart in Dashboards. Each guide you select becomes a dataset. A workspace admin creates the Pendo source once for the whole workspace, and channels then add its guides. Learn more about Sources →

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Before you start

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In Dovetail

• A workspace admin creates the source. Other users can request it.
• The credentials you connect with are shared by the whole workspace. See Shared credentials for how to choose an account.

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In Pendo

• A Pendo subscription with API access. Your Pendo plan must include API access for you to create an integration key.
• A Pendo integration key with read access. In Pendo, go to Settings → Integrations, open the Integration keys tab, and select Add integration key. Dovetail only reads from Pendo, so don’t allow writes for the key. The person who creates the key doesn’t have to be the workspace admin who creates the source.
• The whole key, including its region suffix. The part of the key after the last dot tells Dovetail which Pendo region your subscription is in, such as eu or jpn.

We recommend a key used only by Dovetail, with a description that says so. You can then revoke it without affecting your other Pendo integrations.

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Create the Pendo source

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Authentication and permissions

Pendo connects with an integration key. Dovetail uses the key only to read your guides, their poll responses, and each respondent’s email address. Dovetail doesn’t write anything to Pendo. The integration key is stored once for the whole workspace. To change the account or credentials, see Reconnect a source.

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Datasets

Each guide you select becomes its own dataset and syncs on its own, so a problem with one guide doesn’t stop the others. A channel can add some or all of the source’s guides. Every open-text poll in a guide is analyzed, and every numeric poll becomes a field. A guide needs at least one open-text poll to import anything, because Dovetail creates data points only from open-text answers. NPS guides built in Pendo pair the score with a follow-up reason question, which Dovetail treats as open text. To add more guides later, open the source and select Add guide. See Add datasets.

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What gets imported

Each poll submission becomes one data point. When a visitor submits a guide’s polls, their open-text answers become the data point’s conversation, as question-and-answer pairs, and the other details become fields you can filter and roll up by.

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Always imported

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Imported when present

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Not imported

• Submissions with no open-text answer, such as a visitor who answered only a score poll.
• Multiple-choice answers.
• Respondent names. Pendo doesn’t provide one to Dovetail.
• Custom visitor and account metadata.
• Pendo’s own analytics, such as engagement metrics, segments, or NPS and CSAT roll-ups.

To rename the fields above or change their types, see Source fields. Need a field that isn’t on this list? Let us know.

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Customer emails

This data includes customer email addresses, so Dovetail can link data points to contacts. See Create contacts from source data. For a response to carry an email, the respondent has to be an identified Pendo visitor: pass email in the visitor object of your pendo.initialize or pendo.identify call. Emails held only in other Pendo metadata aren’t used. Responses from anonymous visitors still import, but they aren’t linked to a contact.

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Scores and field types

Each numeric poll in a guide becomes its own field, named after the poll question:

• Pendo NPS polls, and number-scale polls from 0 to 10, become NPS fields.
• Number-scale polls from 1 to 5 become CSAT fields.
• Other number scales become Rating fields.

To chart scores in Dashboards, the field must use the NPS or CSAT type. See NPS and CSAT scores for Dashboards.

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Sync behavior

The first import starts when the source is created. After that, the source syncs about every hour. See Manage a source.

• Import period. The import period applies to the time of each poll submission. Submissions made before the start of the period aren’t imported.
• Ongoing sync. Each sync imports submissions made since the previous sync.

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Troubleshooting

Dovetail doesn’t accept the integration key. Check that you copied the whole key, including the region suffix after the last dot, that the key still exists in Pendo, and that your subscription includes API access. The source shows “Pendo rejected the request for poll responses.” Confirm with your Pendo admin that the subscription still includes guide polls and API access, then select Sync now. If the integration key needs replacing, contact Dovetail support. See Source statuses. The source shows “Some Pendo guides or polls no longer exist.” Check in Pendo that the guide still exists. If it does, the key’s region suffix may not match your subscription’s region. Contact Dovetail support. A guide has responses in Pendo, but nothing imported. Check that:

• The guide has at least one open-text poll. Guides with only score or choice polls import nothing.
• The responses include an open-text answer. Submissions that answer only a score poll aren’t imported.
• The responses were submitted within the import period. See Get older data.
• The channel includes the guide’s dataset. See Missing or outdated data.

Responses aren’t linked to contacts. Dovetail links a response to a contact only when the visitor is identified with an email in Pendo. See Customer emails. My score poll isn’t available in an NPS or CSAT widget. A score poll on a scale Dovetail doesn’t recognize arrives as a Rating field. Change the field to NPS or CSAT. See If a channel is missing from a widget. Pendo isn’t available when I set up a channel. See Troubleshoot sources.

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Revoke access in Pendo

Pausing or deleting the source in Dovetail doesn’t delete the integration key in Pendo. To cut off Dovetail’s access, go to Settings → Integrations in Pendo, open the Integration keys tab, and delete the key you used for the source. To pause or delete the source in Dovetail, see Manage a source. To take its data out of one channel, see Channel setup.

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