What is a digital adoption platform?
A digital adoption platform (DAP) adds guidance to a software application to help people learn and use it. Its tools can include walkthroughs, tooltips, checklists, usage analytics, and contextual help for employees or customers.
What a digital adoption platform does
A DAP helps people learn tasks within an application. For employees, that might mean submitting an expense report or updating a customer record. For customers, it might mean connecting an integration or configuring their workspace.
Guidance can take several forms. A tooltip explains a control, a checklist tracks setup, and a walkthrough helps someone complete a task. Targeting determines who sees the guidance. Usage analytics help a team review what people try and where they stop.
Scripted and assistant-led guidance
With scripted guidance, a team chooses the steps, writes the instructions, and defines when they appear. Those instructions need review when the application changes. The freshness tax discusses that maintenance work.
An assistant can use product knowledge to answer questions and generate task-specific guidance. Its knowledge, permissions, and available actions determine what it can help with. Scripted flows and assistants can be used together.
Our digital adoption platform comparison and Frigade vs Pendo page offer more detail for evaluating options.
What to ask before you buy
Start with a workflow you want to improve. Check how the platform handles it for different roles and account states, and how your team will maintain the guidance.
Then review installation, supported web or mobile surfaces, targeting, analytics, and accessibility. Ask what happens when a user needs support or an action fails. Include hosting and data requirements in the evaluation if they affect which services you can use.
How Frigade fits
Frigade Assistant learns workflows by using your product, then answers questions and guides users through tasks. Suggestions let your team introduce those tasks to a chosen audience. Frigade Engage provides code-defined tours and checklists for flows where your team wants to specify the sequence.
Common questions
- Is a digital adoption platform the same as a product tour tool?
- The categories overlap. A product tour tool focuses on guided sequences, while a DAP may also include checklists, help panels, audience targeting, and usage analytics. Compare the capabilities you need rather than relying on the category label.
- Do DAPs only work for internal enterprise software?
- No. A DAP can help employees use applications their company has purchased, or help customers use a software company’s own product. Installation, permissions, and the available guidance formats depend on the platform and the application.