5 Tips to Organize and Run Your Rules Efficiently

Every Gainsight admin has their own approach to organizing rules. If you're anything like me, you have strong opinions about how things should be set up. Whether you prefer an elaborate folder system or rely on strict naming conventions, the key is consistency. Here are a few practical tips to help you keep your Rules Engine organized and efficient.

Naming Conventions & Folders

To folder or not to folder? That’s the question. Some admins swear by using folders for organization, while others lean heavily on well-structured rule names. Personally, I avoid folders...

That said, folders can be useful for short-term organization during large projects or migrations. Ultimately, what matters most is having a clear system that everyone follows.

Here are a few naming conventions I’ve seen work well:

The format doesn’t matter as much as sticking to one. A consistent naming strategy makes rules easier to search, troubleshoot, and maintain, especially as your team grows or changes.

Don't Miss Failure Notifications

Rule failures happen, but you should never be the last to know! It’s surprisingly common for failure notifications to go to outdated inboxes or former team members.

A few ways to avoid this:

• Create a team email (e.g., `gainsight-admins@yourcompany.com`) and use it for all rule alerts.
• Set up a Slack notification for failed rules via webhook or middleware.
• Assign someone to own rule failures so issues aren’t left sitting.

Schedule Intentionally

It’s tempting to schedule everything to run overnight and call it good, but that’s not always the best move. I’m a big fan of rule chains. They help with organization, and you can trigger rules conditionally without stacking up scheduled times.

Do Regular Cleanup

One day you log into Gainsight and realize you’ve got 300+ rules...but only 100 are actually active. Sound familiar? Old rules pile up fast, especially during busy projects or iterations. If you need to keep historical logic, use an external doc with screenshots and explanations - but otherwise, clean it out.

Here’s a basic cleanup checklist:

• Delete test rules or clearly label them (`TEST - Do Not Use`)
• Remove or archive inactive rules
• Ensure naming conventions and descriptions are in place
• Review schedules and failure notifications
• Add rules to chains where possible

Avoid Temporary Solutions

I’ll do a deeper dive into this in a future post, but here’s one tip I always use: Only update fields if something has changed.

That means pulling in both the source and target field in your data prep step and comparing them. If they’re different, update. If not, skip. It keeps your rule results smaller, makes testing easier, and reduces the load on your instance.

Use the Rule Analyzer too- it offers suggestions to optimize performance (like data volume warnings or query complexity). The more you filter early, the less work the system has to do.



Bonus: Tap Into the Community

Don’t forget Gainsight has a fantastic admin community. Vote on feature requests, ask questions, and learn how others are solving similar problems.

A few relevant threads:

• https://communities.gainsight.com/ideas/i-d-like-the-ability-to-chain-together-more-than-just-rules-16456
• https://communities.gainsight.com/ideas/rules-chain-dependencies-17932

Conclusion

By following these habits, you’ll keep your Gainsight instance running smoothly—and make life easier for yourself and your team. Rules don’t have to be messy. A little structure goes a long way.

Illustrations by Storyset