Channels

Turn all your customer feedback into real-time insights with channels. Uncover trends and build products people love. Bring your support tickets, product reviews, and continuous feedback into one place and let Dovetail make sense of it.

Using purpose-built AI and LLM models, Channels continuously classifies and tracks themes in large data sets, connecting to your feedback sources with direct integrations to keep your finger on the pulse of high-volume customer feedback.

These themes are generated from the individual data points imported into a channel. A data point is a single piece of feedback that is imported to a channel in Dovetail. It could be a support ticket, an NPS response, or any kind of continuous product feedback. a row within a spreadsheet.

All Professional and Enterprise workspaces can import up to 250 data points per month and purchase additional data points by navigating to Settings → Billing.

Managers and Contributors can create a new channel from the navigation sidebar under Home or Browse pages.

• To do this, click New and select Channel.

• From there, configure your channel by selecting what data type best matches your feedback. We recommend setting up separate channels for each data type as the prompts we are giving the LLM are different and specific to each feedback type.

Once your channel is created, it's time to start bringing in your data points. At this time, you can connect directly to Front, Intercom, Jira Service Management, and Zendesk, and we'll begin syncing your tickets in real time. You can also import feedback through Zapier, or our Public API

• To connect a new data source, open a channel, press + Add source, and select from the list of data sources.

• Once your data source has been connected, select the data you wish to sync to your channel. You can choose specific teams or inboxes and the timeframe of your data. The timeframe you select is how far back you want to start syncing data from your source.

For example, if you select from 6 months, all existing data collected from the last 6 months will be added to your channel as a starting point. From there, any new data collected will be automatically synced into your channel over time.

You can also import NPS responses, support tickets, churn responses, and app reviews from a CSV spreadsheet. We recommend tidying up your spreadsheet first before importing into a channel including renaming important headings, identifying what column you wish to have analyzed and removing any data that you do not wish to import into Dovetail. Any dates must also be in ISO 8601 date format or YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.

• To connect a new data source, open a channel, press + Add source, and select from the list of data sources.

• Once your CSV has been selected, you will need to indicate which column should be analyzed for classification once imported. To ensure the right data is analyzed:

  • Choose a column that has content you want analyzed. This is typically a comment or ticket.

  • Choose a column as date. This will allow you to apply filters to drill into specific time periods.

• If you have additional columns in your spreadsheet (typically metadata fields), you can bring these into your channel as filters for segmentation.

• Select Finish. Your channel will then start identifying themes and classifying your data points into these themes.

After creating your channel, you can set up additional data source integrations in Zapier (note that Zapier must provide support for that data source).

• Create a trigger in Zapier for your data source.

• Add the Create data point action for Dovetail. From there, you can also set any metadata information on Zapier.

You can learn more about the 7,000+ apps you can integrate with Dovetail through Zapier here.

After creating your channel, you can use the Dovetail API to create any custom integrations with your data sources.

• Create a personal API key to authorize the integration.

• Once you create the API key, connect to the Channels endpoint.

All instructions for using the Dovetail API can be found in our developer documentation.

When you create a new Channel, we automatically organize themes into categories relevant to your data type. These help guide how new themes are automatically created and data is classified in your channel.

You can also add your own custom category, topic, or area of interest to organize themes and track what’s important to you. For a Channel, you can create up to ten custom topics that can be updated at anytime.

• To do this, select + New in the sidebar.

• Next, add a title and a brief description to help guide how we generate themes and classify data points.

• From there, click Create. Once created, we will create new themes and classify any existing and new data points into these.

You're always in control of your data. Once themes have been generated, you can merge any that are overlapping, split any that need to be more granular, or even create your own if you think something was missed!

Merge themes

• To merge themes, simply select multiple themes and press Merge from the top of the theme table.

Edit themes

• To edit a theme, select the ... menu next to the theme name and, select Edit. You will see a dialogue box where you can change the theme title and description. Press Save when done.

Create a theme

• To create new themes and keep track of what's relevant to you, click + New in the sidebar or on the themes list.

• From there, enter the theme name and description to help guide data classification and theme detection.

You can add new data sources within a channel at any time.

Add an additional data source

• To add an additional data source to a channel, open your channel and click on Source in the top right of the screen.

• From there, you will be able to see which sources are connected to your channel as well as connect a new source. Select Add source and complete steps to connect a new integration or import a CSV spreadsheet of new data to your channel.

Channels is billed by the total number of data points used in all channels across a single workspace. To help you keep on top of your team's usage, you can quickly review how much data has been used for an entire workspace.

• To do this, open Settings, select Billing and navigate to Add ons.

• From there, you will be able to see Channels and review the usage period dates alongside the number of data points used for that period.

For a specific channels, you can also get a quick view of your usage by clicking on Sources in the top right corner of your channel.

Admins can purchase a Channels add-on to increase the monthly limit for Channels across a workspace. For more information, see our article here.

What counts towards Channels usage for our plan?

A single data point imported into a Channel contributes to usage. For example, a single conversation imported from Zendesk or Intercom counts as a single data point. Total usage is aggregated across all channels in your workspace. By default, workspaces on the Professional and Enterprise plans have 250 data points per month included in their plan for dedicated use in Channels.

The usage period resets every month from the workspace billing date. This is applicable for plans billed on both a monthly and yearly billing cycle.

What happens when I hit the data points limit for the month?

Once you reach the usage limit for the month, no new data points will appear in your channel. You can continue to access all data that has been imported previously, move data points, and update the themes list.

This also means that there will be no extra charges for overages and if necessary, you can choose to upgrade your data usage for your plan.

The usage period resets every month from the workspace original billing date. This is applicable for subscriptions billed on both a monthly and yearly cycle.

Can I increase or decrease how many data points included in my plan?

Yes! If you have purchased a Channels add-on, a workspace admin can upgrade to increase or downgrade to decrease the number of data points you wish to have analyzed per month. For more information, see our article here.

There are a few important things you will need to know before upgrading or downgrading your Channels add-on:

• If you upgrade in the current billing cycle, the new limit will apply immediately, and data points in the current cycle will be imported and analysed in Channels (up to the new limit).

• If you upgrade in the next billing cycle, only the data points that come in during the new cycle will appear in Channels. You will lose the data points from the previous cycle that were not imported.

• When downgrading and decreasing your limit, the new limit will apply immediately and no new data will appear in Channels. Any historical data will still be available.

Can I export data from Channels?

No, you cannot export data from a channel like regular project data. This includes imported data points, generated themes, or generated summaries.

How is our data being used?

For details on your data, see Responsible Use on Dovetail AI features.

Are there new policy checks required to use Channels?

The current Artificial intelligence development policy in our trust center is still relevant and covers what is required to use channels.