JO-ANN DEASIS
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Integration setup and management

 

Integration setup and troubleshooting

Orb
Jan - Feb 2025


Summary

  • Sole designer working with a PM and 1 engineer

  • An updated workflow that streamlines the set up and troubleshooting of 3rd party accounting integrations to reduce inbound support tickets and support upmarket customers

  • Launched in February 2025

Partial GIF of the final design

 
 

Background

Orb is a financial platform for SaaS businesses enabling flexible usage-based pricing. With Orb, customers are able to accurately bill their customers, rapidly iterate on their pricing strategy, and reduce the number of engineers dedicated to in-house billing systems.

Large upmarket customers who use NetSuite or QuickBooks as their accounting source of truth need to sync their customers and pricing with Orb, but the current integration setup is confusing, even with documentation, and requires jumping to several different parts of the product, leaving new customers with a subpar experience during onboarding.

When there’s an issue with the accounting sync, users can view the first piece of information in what went wrong but then have to investigate multiple places to identify exactly where the sync failed or reach out to Orb support.

 

Problems

Users are not set up for success.

  • Common reasons for failed syncs is that the sync is missing a mapping of customers or items (product/SKUs) between the 3rd party and Orb. A lot of errors could be avoided if we helped users set up mappings upfront.

  • Much of the set up and troubleshooting is spread across many pages, and our product and documentation do not give enough guidance for users to self-serve.

  • Unclear error messages lead users to dead ends, leaving them to reach out to support in frustration.

This all leads to a poor perception of Orb. Customers expect integrations to just work.

Current NetSuite accounting sync setup

Messages from a customer trying to set up NetSuite

 

Goals and metrics

Success metrics

  • Faster, more self-serve setup

  • Reduced sync errors

  • Reduced support tickets for integration issues

Business goals

  • Improve early perceptions of Orb with upmarket customers

 
 
 

Solution

Figma demo of our solution’s key frames (with some pre-filled states for presentation purposes)

Key features of the solution

  • Streamlines initial connection and configuration for each integration so that a user needing to configure NetSuite accounting sync doesn’t have to go to invoicing sync to set up broad NetSuite settings

  • Adds the mapping of Orb items and NetSuite items into the setup flow so that users do not have to jump to a different page and will be less likely to run into mapping issues later

  • Includes better labeling and filtering of the synced records page to identify what needs attention

  • Streamlines troubleshooting individual sync records by pulling the missing required fields into a side panel, so that users can perform a fix on the spot and do not need to visit multiple pages to chase down the error

 
 

Results and next steps

The new flow was launched in February with certain pieces de-scoped, like the new user experience for the landing page and the summary and advanced filtering of the synced records page.

Potential next steps

  • Extend this setup flow to tax integrations

  • Iterate on secondary navigation and interactions for adding a new integration to streamline the page

  • Add sync details for more visibility in ongoing sync progress