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nadav_shemtov
nadav_shemtov
Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
May 25, 2017

The future of milestones vs. Timeline

  • May 25, 2017
  • 14 replies
  • 82 views
I would love to get a good understanding of what's our vision for the Milestones concept in Gainsight. Several enhancements, and specifically Timeline, make its future uncertain in mind. 

I'd love more clarity on the following topics: 

1. Are we planning to continue to use milestones as a separate concept from activities? 
2. A key point of interest in milestones has been the ability to overlay them on graphs / usage date. Since we are moving away from the built-in SFDC usage section (aka as History and our demos) and moving to related-list usage repots from MDA - are we planning to support a similar concept of overlaying milestones on usage data to track correlation between a milestone and a usage pattern? 
3. If we are continuing to use milestones, and specifically given the fact they are currently only available within the "usage" section in 360 that we are moving away from, will there be a separate milestone tabs planned? 
4. How do we think about the future of milestones given Timeline? There is a lot of overlap and I'd think if we keep both, at a minimum we have to show Milestones from the Timeline view. 
5. I liked the concept of dropping milestones specifically from CTA or automatically when specific types of CTAs close - if we are moving away from milestones, can we replicate a similar concept with activities? 

Thank you!
Nadav

      14 replies

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      nitisha_rathi
      nitisha_rathi
      Expert ⭐️⭐️
      November 15, 2017
      Hi Nadav,

      "Milestone" will become an activity type in timeline and all milestones will be visible in customer timeline. We will also ensure that the ability to overlay milestones on timeseries reports continues to work as now (infact, along with milestones, user will be able to overlay other activity types too). I don't have an ETA for it but eventually the milestones will automatically integrate with timeline.

      Thanks,
      Nitisha
      tzundelgainsightcom
      tzundelgainsightcom
      Helper ⭐️⭐️
      November 15, 2017
      Nitisha, will we be adding sub-categories for Activity types, so that an interaction or event could be more than one thing? One of my custoemrs, CSOD, has been asking about this, too.

      I, personally, would envision that a Milestone is not the Activity type itself but a designator for a specific Activity. Our team just rolled out a process whereby there is an Activity type "Exec Touchpoint." But that c/would also be a Milestone and also be a meeting, such as an EBR or renewal discussion. Sub-categories could solve for this by allowing a user to log a meeting and designate it as an Exec Touchpoint and as a Milestone and potentially even other things, like an "Expansion Conversation," which is another type of Activity we have in GonG. Then we would not have to choose just one of those or create multiple Timeline entries to capture the right categories.

      Are there plans around that?
      nadav_shemtov
      nadav_shemtovAuthor
      Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
      November 15, 2017
      Tracy, I believe in the Fall release we will have the ability to add picklists to activity layout. So for example we can add a picklist called "Category" under call and add 5 types of calls there. I think this can essentially be used for "sub-categories" 

      Let me know if that makes sense
      tzundelgainsightcom
      tzundelgainsightcom
      Helper ⭐️⭐️
      November 15, 2017
      Yes, that's great! I think that will work for CSOD's use case. We should also make sure that we use this internally so we don't have potentially redundant Activities.
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