For polynomials, local connectivity of Julia sets is an important and muchstudied property, as it leads to a complete description of the topological dynamics as a quotient of a much simpler system, namely angle d-tupling on the circle, where d ≥ 2 is the degree.For a transcendental entire function, local connectivity is less significant, but we may still ask for a description of the topological dynamics as the quotient of a simpler system. To do so, we introduce the notion of docile functions: a transcendental entire function with bounded postsingular set is docile if its dynamics can be described as the quotient of a suitable disjoint-type function. Moreover, we prove docility for the large class of geometrically finite transcendental entire functions with bounded criticality on the Julia set. This can be seen as an analogue of the local connectivity of Julia sets for geometrically finite polynomials, first proved by Douady and Hubbard, and extends previous work of the second author, and of Mihaljević-Brandt, for more restrictive classes of entire functions.Our techniques allow us deduce a number of other results for geometrically finite functions with bounded criticality, concerning bounded Fatou components and the local connectivity of Julia sets. In particular, we show that the Julia set of the sine function is locally connected, answering a question raised by Osborne.