Stacks allow you to view and manage the products you use in the context of your entire technology suite.

With CabinetM's stack configurator you can look at your technology suite in many ways (by technology category, customer journey, sales funnel etc.). Our simple drag-and-drop configurator makes it simple to create, edit and share all the information about the technology you use. If you still have questions don't hesitate to reach out!

Contents

Create Stack structure

Add products

Annotate products

Details

Integrations

Data Map

Notes

Training

Campaigns

Leverage your stack

Assign to the Enterprise and Teams

Table View

Export

Create a custom URL

There are three ways to begin building your stack:

1. If you are already tracking your technology with a spreadsheet, download the CabinetM upload template, transfer your information to that, save as a CSV and upload!  Please note:  your product names must match those in the CabinetM exactly in order for the upload to work.

2. If you are starting with no information you can use Stack Finder.  Stack Finder will scan your website to identify code associated with marketing technology products and use that information to build a starting stack.  Please note:  This should only be used as a starting point -- it is likely to be an incomplete and somewhat inaccurate list of products used in your organization.  If a product does not require that code be placed on your site, Stack Finder won't see it.  Additionally, marketing teams are particularly bad about removing code for products no longer in use.  Finally, if your IT team has installed technology to prevent the scanning of your code, Stack Finder will not operate. 

3. Click on CREATE A COMPANY stack to begin building a stack from the ground up.  Our stack configurator is very intuitive and simple to use.

• Give your stack a name
• Describe your stack (what it represents)
• Upload a logo (optional)
• Choose the color of your stack
• Start adding layers

There is no right or wrong way to structure a stack.  Most companies start with technology categories in order to quickly inventory everything in place.  Frequently this stack is labeled as the "Source of Truth" stack.  With this in place it's easy to move on to build stacks that look at technology as it relates to the customer journey, sales funnel or any strategic initiative.  We do recommend considering building a "Trash" stack to keep track of everything that has been retired or rejected, and an "Evaluation" stack to keep everyone aligned around technology that is being evaluated. 

4. Add descriptions to your stack layers and indent layers to show the relationship between layers.

5. It's a good idea to SAVE your stack before adding products.  As you save be sure to:

• Identify type of stack (this will be helpful down the road when you are running stack reports or filtering stacks.
• Confirm your business type, size and industry -- this will pre-populate from your Company Profile.
• Tag stacks by department, location, region, and business unit if you selected that as an option in Settings.

There are four ways to add products to your stack:

• Search within the stack layer
• Search within the stack search bar
• Drag products over from your Drawers
• Add products from product profiles, search results thumbnails and under product categories

If we don’t have the product you are searching for, let us know by:

• Reporting a missing product, or
• Emailing CabinetM 

There are more than 15,000 products in our database across 500+ categories.  If you reach out to report a missing product, we’ll have it on the site within 48 hours.

Note: If your Enterprise Admin has created profiles for your internally developed technology and integration code, you can drop those into your stack as well. They will appear in the drawer to the right of your stack titled "Internal Technology".

Add details to the products in your stacks

As you add products to your stack you’ll be prompted to add details about the products you are using.  You can add as much or as little detail as you want.  If you prefer to add all your products into the stack first and annotate with details later, click the “Do not automatically show this page when I add products” checkbox at the bottom of the annotation screen. 

Make sure to save any information that you add to the annotation page.

Details

On the Details page add the following information.

• Anchor platform designation -- if you want to show that a particular product is one of your key anchor platforms you have the option of selecting "Display as an Anchor Platform".  In Stack View and Stack Maps anchor products will be displayed with a heavier border.
• Marketing function – adding information about the marketing function makes it easy to identify redundant products.
• Spend information – add information about your monthly spend
• The type of contract you are spending against as well as any relevant notes about your spend or budget for this product.
  • Note: If you have a contract record for this product you can link that record to the Stack Annotation to ensure that you have a complete picture of your product in one place.

• Identify how you measure performance for this product and add any notes relevant to your performance experience with the product
• Performance satisfaction rating -- your overall assessment of how the product is performing in your environment.
• If this product has an analytics dashboard, include a link to that dashboard here.

If you are an Enterprise Admin you also have the option of:

• Adding custom fields to your stack annotations. 
  • Custom fields added in the Stack Annotation Details page will be applied to all products in the stack.
  • If you would like to add a custom field that appears in ALL STACKS in your account, you can do that in Shared Annotations.
• Convert your product details to a SHARED ANNOTATION which will allow the details you've added about a product to travel from stack to stack. 

Integrations

Documenting how products are connected to one another is extremely important -- often how well a stack performs is dependent on how well stack elements are integrated.  In the Integrations tab you can document:

• The direction data is flowing
• The type of integration
• Notes about the integration (add text, tables, images and links)
  
• Data Map

Please note:  There are five "non-integration" options under configuration options:  

• Planned Integration
• Related to but not integrated
• Future integration
• Planned disconnect
• Disconnected/Inactive
  

  Planned Integration enables you to identify integrations planned for the future.  They will be represented on your Stack Map
  as a dashed grey line.

  Related To enables you to associate a non-integrated product with another product in your stack to showcase products that have an important relationship to other products though not integrated. Related products will be represented by a translucent line (or a white line against a dark background) in your Stack Map.

Data Maps

Easily maintain and manage individual integration details and create a comprehensive data dictionary and library, therefore eliminating the need to continually search for integration information. With Data Maps you can:

• Create and edit a data map between any two products
• Pre-set column selections to simplify data map creation
• View the Data Map within the Stack Map or Stack Annotations
• Download the data map into an Excel spreadsheet
• Share the Data Map with colleagues via a custom URL
• Create multiple versions of a data map in order to track data map evolution
  

Notes

Add notes to your product annotations to capture exchanges with vendors, agencies or colleagues. 

Training

If you need to help team members come up to speed on a product, add training contacts and links to training materials.

Campaigns

You also have the ability to attach campaign information and record the details of campaigns that have been run using a particular product or product set.  Upload images and videos to capture campaign content.  Record how well a campaign performed.

Leverage your stack to manage and report on the technology you use

Work layer by layer to identify redundant products, contracts and functionality.  You'll be amazed at how much money you'll save with this exercise alone.  Next look at non-performing or under utilized products -- is there an opportunity to eliminate additional products or upgrade to better performing products.

Some of the things you can do with your stack once it is built:

Assign to the Enterprise and/or Teams 

Using the "People" icon you can assign a stack to a team to enable multiple members to edit and evolve the stack. 

You can also designate a stack as an Enterprise Stack which makes the stack visible to all account members.  Note: only those with edit privileges for the Enterprise Stack can make changes.  For most account members Enterprise Stacks will be view only.

If you are still wedded to a spreadsheet you always have the option of viewing and downloading your stack in spreadsheet form. Click on the grid icon.

Within the Table View you can also edit key stack annotations, making it easy to update multiple products at a time.

Export

You have the option of downloading/exporting your stack information in a variety of ways:

• As an image
  • Logos
  • Product names
  • Logos and product names
• As an excel file (Stack details) or pdf (from the Table View menu)
• Stack notes may be downloaded as a separate file
• Integration information can be exported from the Stack Maps menu

Create a custom URL

Create custom URLs to share your stack with employees that are not members of your CabinetM account.  You have the option of creating two URLs:  One that will share the stack without all the associated details and annotations and one that will share the stack with all the accompanying information.  Note:  To ensure that your stack information is not shared beyond corporate boundaries, restrict sharing to specific IP addresses in Settings.

You also have the option of adding a link to the default view of the associated Stack Map and providing anyone you share your stack with the ability to see and interact with your Stack Map.