Product Qualified Lead (PQL) development guide

The Product Qualified Lead (PQL) funnel connects our users with our team members. Read more about PQL product principles.

A hand-raise PQL is a user who requests to speak to sales from within the product.

Set up your development environment

  1. Set up GDK with a connection to your local CustomersDot instance.
  2. Set up CustomersDot to talk to a staging instance of Workato.

  3. Set up CustomersDot using the normal install instructions.
  4. Set the CUSTOMER_PORTAL_URL environment variable to your local (or ngrok) URL of your CustomersDot instance.
  5. Place export CUSTOMER_PORTAL_URL='https://XXX.ngrok.io/' in your shell rc script (~/.zshrc or ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc) and restart GDK.
  6. Enter the credentials on CustomersDot development to Workato in your /config/secrets.yml and restart. Credentials for the Workato Staging are in the 1Password Subscription portal vault. The URL for staging is https://apim.workato.com/gitlab-dev/services/marketo/lead.
  workato_url: "<%= ENV['WORKATO_URL'] %>"
  workato_client_id: "<%= ENV['WORKATO_CLIENT_ID'] %>"
  workato_client_secret: "<%= ENV['WORKATO_CLIENT_SECRET'] %>"

Set up lead monitoring

  1. Set up access for the Marketo sandbox, similar to this example request.

Manually test leads

  1. Register a new user with a unique email on your local GitLab instance.
  2. Send the PQL lead by submitting your new form or creating a new trial or a new hand raise lead.
  3. Use easily identifiable values that can be easily seen in Workato staging.
  4. Observe the entry in the staging instance of Workato and paste in the merge request comment and mention.

Troubleshooting

  • Check the application and Sidekiq logs on gitlab.com and CustomersDot to monitor leads.
  • Check the leads table in CustomersDot.
  • Ask for access to the Marketo Sandbox and validate the leads there, to this example request.

Embed a hand-raise lead form

HandRaiseLeadButton is a reusable component that adds a button and a hand-raise modal to any screen.

You can import a hand-raise lead button the following way.

import HandRaiseLeadButton from 'ee/hand_raise_leads/hand_raise_lead/components/hand_raise_lead_button.vue';

export default {
  components: {
    HandRaiseLeadButton,
...
</script>

<template>

<hand-raise-lead-button />

The hand-raise lead form accepts the following parameters via provide or inject.

    provide: {
      small,
      user: {
        namespaceId,
        userName,
        firstName,
        lastName,
        companyName,
        glmContent,
      },
      ctaTracking: {
        action,
        label,
        property,
        value,
        experiment,
      },
    },

The ctaTracking parameters follow the data-track attributes for implementing Snowplow tracking. The provided tracking attributes are attached to the button inside the HandRaiseLeadButton component, which triggers the hand-raise lead modal when selected.

Monitor the lead location

When embedding a new hand raise form, use a unique glmContent or glm_content field that is different to any existing values.

We currently use the following glm_content values:

glm_content value Notes
discover-group-security This value is used in the group security feature discovery page.
discover-group-security-pqltest This value is used in the group security feature discovery page experiment with 3 CTAs.
discover-project-security This value is used in the project security feature discovery page.
discover-project-security-pqltest This value is used in the project security feature discovery page experiment with 3 CTAs.
group-billing This value is used in the group billing page.
trial-status-show-group This value is used in the upper-left nav when a namespace has an active trial.

Test the component

In a jest test, you may test the presence of the component.

expect(wrapper.findComponent(HandRaiseLeadButton).exists()).toBe(true);

PQL lead flow

The flow of a PQL lead is as follows:

  1. A user triggers a HandRaiseLeadButton component on gitlab.com.
  2. The HandRaiseLeadButton submits any information to the following API endpoint: /-/trials/create_hand_raise_lead.
  3. That endpoint reposts the form to the CustomersDot trials/create_hand_raise_lead endpoint.
  4. CustomersDot records the form data to the leads table and posts the form to Workato.
  5. Workato sends the form to Marketo.
  6. Marketo does scoring and sends the form to Salesforce.
  7. Our Sales team uses Salesforce to connect to the leads.

Trial lead flow

Trial lead flow on GitLab.com

sequenceDiagram Trial Frontend Forms ->>TrialsController#create_lead: GitLab.com frontend sends [lead] to backend TrialsController#create_lead->>CreateLeadService: [lead] TrialsController#create_lead->>ApplyTrialService: [lead] Apply the trial CreateLeadService->>SubscriptionPortalClient#generate_trial(sync_to_gl=false): [lead] Creates customer account on CustomersDot ApplyTrialService->>SubscriptionPortalClient#generate_trial(sync_to_gl=true): [lead] Asks CustomersDot to apply the trial on namespace SubscriptionPortalClient#generate_trial(sync_to_gl=false)->>CustomersDot|TrialsController#create(sync_to_gl=false): GitLab.com sends [lead] to CustomersDot SubscriptionPortalClient#generate_trial(sync_to_gl=true)->>CustomersDot|TrialsController#create(sync_to_gl=true): GitLab.com asks CustomersDot to apply the trial

Trial lead flow on CustomersDot (sync_to_gl)

sequenceDiagram CustomersDot|TrialsController#create->>HostedPlans|CreateTrialService#execute: Save [lead] to leads table for monitoring purposes HostedPlans|CreateTrialService#execute->>BaseTrialService#create_account: Creates a customer record in customers table HostedPlans|CreateTrialService#create_lead->>CreateLeadService: Creates a lead record in customers table HostedPlans|CreateTrialService#create_lead->>Workato|CreateLeadWorker: Async worker to submit [lead] to Workato Workato|CreateLeadWorker->>Workato|CreateLeadService: [lead] Workato|CreateLeadService->>WorkatoApp#create_lead: [lead] WorkatoApp#create_lead->>Workato: [lead] is sent to Workato

Applying the trial to a namespace on CustomersDot

sequenceDiagram HostedPlans|CreateTrialService->load_namespace#Gitlab api/namespaces: Load namespace details HostedPlans|CreateTrialService->create_order#: Creates an order in orders table HostedPlans|CreateTrialService->create_trial_history#: Creates a record in trial_histories table

Hand raise lead flow

Hand raise flow on GitLab.com

sequenceDiagram HandRaiseForm Vue Component->>TrialsController#create_hand_raise_lead: GitLab.com frontend sends [lead] to backend TrialsController#create_hand_raise_lead->>CreateHandRaiseLeadService: [lead] CreateHandRaiseLeadService->>SubscriptionPortalClient: [lead] SubscriptionPortalClient->>CustomersDot|TrialsController#create_hand_raise_lead: GitLab.com sends [lead] to CustomersDot

Hand raise flow on CustomersDot

sequenceDiagram CustomersDot|TrialsController#create_hand_raise_lead->>CreateLeadService: Save [lead] to leads table for monitoring purposes CustomersDot|TrialsController#create_hand_raise_lead->>Workato|CreateLeadWorker: Async worker to submit [lead] to Workato Workato|CreateLeadWorker->>Workato|CreateLeadService: [lead] Workato|CreateLeadService->>WorkatoApp#create_lead: [lead] WorkatoApp#create_lead->>Workato: [lead] is sent to Workato

PQL flow after Workato for all lead types

sequenceDiagram Workato->>Marketo: [lead] Marketo->>Salesforce(SFDC): [lead]