Yonyx offers a mature decision tree maker platform. Creating a decision tree using the this Platform involves interconnecting guidance steps and user response nodes.
Each guidance step node provides incremental guidance and has a follow-on question. The user response nodes are possible answers to the follow-on question in the previous guidance step. The entire decision tree is built as an interconnection of the guidance step and user response nodes. This article describes how to create a decision tree using the Yonyx platform.
Step 1: Create Decision Tree
To get started, log into your Yonyx account and click on the gear drop-down menu. From there, choose “My Guides”. Each Guide in Yonyx is a decision tree.
Now click on “Create Guide.”
In this article, we are focusing on building a troubleshooting decision tree. Enter the title of your decision tree, in this case, “TV Troubleshooting” then click “Save & Edit”.
- For troubleshooting decision trees, the title is the symptom frequently reported by customers – it can be very specific like “TV not turning on” or broad like “TV Troubleshooting”.
- For customer service decision trees, the title is the name of the business process – e.g., “Customer lost credit card” or “Customer inquiring about Mortgage Loan.”
- For outbound sales call scripts, the title can for instance be “Outbound Process – Lead Qualification.”
Step 2: Add Introductory Remarks to the Body Section of Decision Tree
For troubleshooting decision trees, the body section of the root guidance step contains some introductory remarks. This could be a brief overview of what this decision tree is about, what users can expect, and why it is useful. E.g., “Welcome to our guide to TV troubleshooting! This guide is designed to help you solve common issues with your TV.
Step 3: Add Follow-On Question
The follow-on question section is used to prompt interaction with users. For this TV troubleshooting tree, the first question could be, “Is it plugged in?
Click the “Save” button.
Step 4: Add User Responses
Now click on the “Add User Response” button to add a user response node to this decision tree.
Call the first user response, “Yes, it is” and click the Save button. The “Enter key” on the keyboard also saves the node if the cursor is in the title section of the user response node.
Add another user response node for, “No it is not.” so the decision tree now has a guidance step, with two possible user paths.
Step 5: Add Guidance Step to Expand the Decision Tree
In the first step of the decision tree, we asked the user if the TV is plugged in. Click on the User Response “Yes, it is,” then click on the “Add Guidance Step” button.
Each guidance step has a title section, a body section, and a follow-on question to continue interaction with the user. In the body section, you can include text, images, videos, or hyperlinks.
This guidance step will provide information for users who respond to the follow-on question, “Is the TV plugged in?” by choosing “Yes, it is”.
This guidance step should ask such users to check if the red light is lit. To do this, add a follow-on question, “Is the red light lit?” and add a title “Check red light.” The body section contains details that help users answer the follow-on question “Is the red light lit?” Thus, the body section can include an image showing the location of the red light.
Step 6: Add Author Notes
Each guidance step also has an optional author notes section. This is a useful tool for adding reminders or sharing information with other co-authors. For instance, you could include, “Remember to add a picture here later.” or “John Doe: Updated the picture of TV on 10/11/22.”
Continue building the decision tree by adding user responses and guidance steps. The following features will come in handy as you add more nodes to this decision tree.
Feature 1: Connecting and Disconnecting Nodes
Instead of adding a new guidance step, you can also connect a user response to an existing guidance step. In this example shown below, “What red light?”, can be connected to “Check red light” above. Click on “What red light?”, then click on Connect button.
You will then see the prompt that says “User Response selected for Connection. Please navigate to a guidance step and then click Connect Here”. That is when you click on the ”Check red light” guidance step and click “Connect Here”.
If a guidance step has multiple incoming user responses leading to it, you can disconnect any one user response by selecting it, then clicking on the “Disconnect” Button. The platform may redraw the location of such guidance step after disconnection. You can disconnect multiple incoming user responses leading up to a guidance step, until there is only one incoming user response left.
Feature 2: Copy / Pasting Nodes
You can copy and paste one guidance step, and multiple user responses at a time, within the same guide or across different guides. To copy a user response, just click on it, then click on the “Copy” button.
Now click on any Guidance Step where you would like to paste this user response, then click on the “Paste User Response” button.
It will then paste the User Response you copied. Note that you can also copy a Guidance Step and paste it on a User Response.
To copy a Guidance Step together with multiple user responses, you can easily copy the entire “guidance family” by copying the guidance step, then copy all the user responses one by one.
Next,
1. Paste the guidance step on an orphan user response.
2. Paste the user responses to the recently added guidance step.
All these copy-paste functions also work across decision trees. Thus, you can copy nodes from one decision tree, and paste these into another decision tree, in a different tab, of the same browser.
Feature 3: User View of a Decision Tree
Click on the View button to see this decision tree in User View in a new browser tab.
User View is the only view of the decision tree presented to Internal or External users. In this view, the user can go through the decision tree step by step, by choosing a user response from the ones that are listed below every guidance step.
Feature 4: Popularity vs. Manual Sort Order for User Responses
When a decision tree is viewed in User View, the user responses appear right below the follow-on question in a popularity-based sort order. Yonyx platform considers the last two weeks of usage of the guide, to determine this sort order. The most popular user response appears on the top and the least popular one at the bottom. This ensures that users don’t have to go through all user responses before finding the one they are likely to choose to traverse through the decision tree.
However, there are guidance steps, where you want the user responses should appear in a fixed order, irrespective of the popularity of each user response. E.g., if the follow-on question reads, “What is the model number of your TV? If the user responses are:
- Model XYZ-1
- Model XYZ-2
- Model XYZ-3
It would look odd for such user responses to appear in popularity sort order – e.g.,
- Model XYZ-3
- Model XYZ-1
- Model XYZ-2
For Manual/Fixed sorting, click on any User Response then click the “Edit” button.
You will then see the Manual Sort Order option. You can fix the order of each user response, by entering a number one, two, three, etc. here. Make sure to add a number for “each” user response of the guidance step. Thus, if there are five user responses, each user response should have a numerical value of 1 through 5 assigned in “Manual Sort Order.”
These numbers should correspond to the order, in which you want the user responses to appear in User View.
Feature 5: Synchronized Navigation in Map View and Interactive View
Once you have completed your decision tree, you can view it in either Interactive View or Map View. In Map View, you can click on a guidance step to see its content in Interactive View.
Similarly, by clicking on a user response in Interactive View, you can select its following guidance step in Map View.
Home Button: The home button lets you select the root node.
Back Button: The back button helps you trace your path back through the series of nodes clicked in an Authoring session. This allows Authors to easily make changes to the decision tree as required.
Ancestors Button: The Ancestors button appears in Interactive View when you select a (non-root) guidance step in Map View. Clicking on this button shows all the incoming user responses leading to the selected guidance step.
Clicking on any user response from this list helps discover the corresponding ancestor node, i.e. – it selects the guidance step that this user response belongs to.
Feature 6: Deleting a node
You can only delete leaf nodes, one node at a time. Simply click on any node then click on the “Delete button.” Note that you will see the “Delete” option only when you click on a leaf node (whether guidance step or user response).
Feature 7: Expanding a Decision Tree
You can expand a decision tree in Map View in three ways:
1. Expand one step at a time: When you “Edit” a decision tree from “My Guides” the tree only shows the root guidance family. Click on the + sign on a user response node to expand one guidance family at a time.
2. Expand one path at a time: Click on any node and then click “Expand Path.” This will expand all the nodes of the decision tree following the chosen node
3. Expand the entire decision tree: Click on the root guidance step and then click “Expand Guide.” This will expand the entire decision tree.
Feature 8: Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard Shortcuts help improve the productivity of a Yonyx Author. These shortcuts are designed to have Author’s left hand to be used for the keyboard and right hand for the Mouse. The cursor focus needs to be on the Map View for keyboard shortcuts to be active. Map View appearing with white background color indicates the cursor focus is on Map View. A grey background color for Map View indicates the cursor focus is on Interactive View.
Keyboard Shortcuts Active:
Keyboard Shortcuts Inactive:
Select a node, then
‘e’ = Edit node [guidance step or user response]
‘a’ = Add node [add guidance step if a user response node is selected, and vice versa]
‘d’ = Delete node [guidance step or user response]
‘c’ = Copy node [guidance step or user response]
‘v’ = Paste node [guidance step or user response]
‘q’ = Connect [select user response, then choose q for Connect]
‘w’ = Connect Here [select guidance step, then choose w for Connect Here]
‘r’ = Disconnect [select user response, then choose r for disconnect]
‘x’ = Expand [select guidance step or user response, then choose x for expanding the decision tree]
‘escape’ = Select/Deselect node [select any node, then choose “Esc” key on keyboard to deselect it]
Keyboard Arrow Keys
- When a node is selected,
- Arrow Keys select related nodes.
- ‘Right Arrow’ = Select node to the right.
- ‘Left Arrow’ = Select node to the left.
- ‘Up/Down Arrow’ = Select User Response siblings of the current guidance family.
- When nothing is selected,
- Arrow Keys can scroll the map Up, Down, Left and Right with corresponding arrow keys
Conclusion:
Creating decision trees for customer service, call scripts or technical support is extremely easy with the Yonyx platform. Synchronized Map View and Interactive View combined with a host of specialized features designed for editing decision trees, enable authors to create trees that can be used stand-alone or integrated within CRM systems like Salesforce.