Hi Community!
As we continue to develop capabilities around Timeline, we wanted to get your feedback on how you would like to use it in the future.
Originally we designed Timeline in response to many customers who wanted a superior note taking tool. They were using systems like OneNote, Evernote and others and it just didn't meet the grade. So we built Timeline.
One of our original goals was to provide a high quality repository of customer notes. Different than SFDC activity history, which logs everything and can get pretty noisy, Timeline would be cleaner and easier to find specific human interactions.
But things evolve and we want to get your input. We've had some customers ask about having the ability to sync every JO or Advanced Outreach email, CTAs, Milestones, NPS survey responses and even health scores to Timeline.
>i]What's your point of view?
Should we keep Timeline as a view of human interactions only or would you want to drop automated, system generated actions in Timeline as well? And if we do drop in a larger number of activities, and that makes Timeline more "noisy" and harder to find specific information, how does that impact usability for your end users?
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I would definitely prefer to keep the noise out and leave Timeline as a place to record actions between the customer and the customer success team. When I am looking for NPS scores or other survey responses they are not far away on the C360. The same thing goes with the other data points mentioned. Thanks for Timeline by the way, it has been a great add to the solution
I would love to have as much info as possible in Timeline but I can also see the use case to reduce the noise, so my ask would be that whatever we decide doing if it can be turned on / off per type of update, that way the solution can be flexible enough to meet everyone's needs. Also, even if from an Admin perspective we enable a lot of system generated updates to happen, it would be good to have an easy way for end users to hide it from their view (maybe some toggles at the top of the screen?). Just my thoughts...
I would also love to have as much information in Timeline as possible (Milestones, survey responses, CTAs, etc) but also have the ability at the admin level to customize and choose what information shows up in Timeline.
Additionally, the ability to push updates to from rules engine and email BCC would make Timeline a no-brainer for our CSMs.
Additionally, the ability to push updates to from rules engine and email BCC would make Timeline a no-brainer for our CSMs.
I agree with having human interactions (emails, calls etc. manually created ) as well as value-adding automated activities added for the CSM to be aware of with the ability to filter or collapse timeline as a CSM what we want to see e.g. last 30 days of activity, summary view vs detailed view etc.
Thanks everyone for the great feedback so far. Keep it coming!
And so great to hear from you Jan!
For anyone who may not know, Jan is one of the original Gainsight employees (single digit employee number if I remember correctly), and will always be considered Gainsight royalty.
And so great to hear from you Jan!
For anyone who may not know, Jan is one of the original Gainsight employees (single digit employee number if I remember correctly), and will always be considered Gainsight royalty.
I agree with everyone above! It would be best if Admins would have the options to include data points in Timeline or not, that way it is very flexible but robust tool that will work for many use cases. I think it works best if we limit the noise but for people that want more information included, the flexibility would be great! Also, we need to increase the timeline activity type quota!
I also think the default reporting fields in the MDA - Timeline Activity object could be improved, or at least the option of editing that object so that we can connect it with Salesforce data. For example, I am not able to create a report displaying timeline activities by CSM per Manager. Instead, I have to go to the Task object in SFDC and this report is very helpful for managers to ensure that their team are utilziing Gainsight properly. Also, we can't report on the External Attendees of the Timeline Activity and that information would be useful for dashboard reports.
I would also love it if Timeline had an integration with Outlook, that way CSMs would have the option of whether or not the Email should also log in Timeline. It would save them a lot of time of having to copy and paste/or summarize the email in the timeline log.
I also think the default reporting fields in the MDA - Timeline Activity object could be improved, or at least the option of editing that object so that we can connect it with Salesforce data. For example, I am not able to create a report displaying timeline activities by CSM per Manager. Instead, I have to go to the Task object in SFDC and this report is very helpful for managers to ensure that their team are utilziing Gainsight properly. Also, we can't report on the External Attendees of the Timeline Activity and that information would be useful for dashboard reports.
I would also love it if Timeline had an integration with Outlook, that way CSMs would have the option of whether or not the Email should also log in Timeline. It would save them a lot of time of having to copy and paste/or summarize the email in the timeline log.
It would be great if timeline could be expanded to be inclusive of more touchpoints - I don't know of a better place to accomplish this. It would be very helpful, for example, to look back at various touchpoints logged in the Timeline to find successes and opportunities for improvement. It would also be important to be able to filter the timeline down for easier consumption. For example, filter down to just CSM logged items, items tagged by channel, items linked to CTAs, etc. This could greatly simplify the user experience for my team.
+1 for @Dan's comment.
@Jan, Great to see your comment here!
@Jan, Great to see your comment here!
We would love the ability to clone Timeline Activities.
Also, we would like the ability to make Notes not mandatory (sometimes on a quick update the Subject and Notes both being mandatory makes for duplicative work for the CSMs)
Also, we would like the ability to make Notes not mandatory (sometimes on a quick update the Subject and Notes both being mandatory makes for duplicative work for the CSMs)
We are just getting started with Gainsight, but these are a couple things I think would be really beneficial.
In terms of adding more functionality while keeping noise to a minimum, I think a good solution here would be to add more filters to Timeline so if you want to remove automated postings you can just turn them off in the viewing filters. For me there are three ways I would like it be improved:
1. Zendesk integration so that details of support issues / resolutions are logged automatically to the timeline. In our company, support calls represent the majority of human to human interactions after the client has been onboarded, so would be essential to provide a holistic timeline of the customer journey
2. Gmail integration so that emails are automatically tracked. Having the guys copy paste emails into timeline will slow them down and I want Gainsight to increase their efficiency and minimise administration. Perhaps emails could be tagged as important for filtering?
3. @mentions so that people can move away from slack for internal communication about a client.
Forgive me if any of these changes are already in place, or in progress. Please let me know if so, I am still only learning the functionality.
In terms of adding more functionality while keeping noise to a minimum, I think a good solution here would be to add more filters to Timeline so if you want to remove automated postings you can just turn them off in the viewing filters. For me there are three ways I would like it be improved:
1. Zendesk integration so that details of support issues / resolutions are logged automatically to the timeline. In our company, support calls represent the majority of human to human interactions after the client has been onboarded, so would be essential to provide a holistic timeline of the customer journey
2. Gmail integration so that emails are automatically tracked. Having the guys copy paste emails into timeline will slow them down and I want Gainsight to increase their efficiency and minimise administration. Perhaps emails could be tagged as important for filtering?
3. @mentions so that people can move away from slack for internal communication about a client.
Forgive me if any of these changes are already in place, or in progress. Please let me know if so, I am still only learning the functionality.
I love this whole post! Especially the comments about adding "@" capabilities! I also greatly agree with keeping the nose out of Timeline. But also to provide the capabilities of being able to send emails to the Timeline. Users should know Timeline Emails from general nose emails.
Agreed about the Case data. We don't use Zendesk but we do have Case Management through SFDC so it should be *straightforward* to log to timeline. Don't hate me for saying "straightforward" :)
I definitely agree that the case data would be helpful. The email integration would be super helpful since you would free up the time to cut and paste these into the timeline. That is also a much bigger issue due to all of the different mail solutions and the desire to not fill up the timeline with a bunch of back and forth emails to schedule a meeting. Some type of email plug in that allows the user to select which emails to add to the timeline would cut the noise and make it easier on the success team to record the relevant emails
Great suggestions and ideas!
And for those interested in automating the copying of emails to Timeline - we're getting closer on this and might have something ready to go by the end of summer (timing subject to change as we go through final testing and QA processes).
And for those interested in automating the copying of emails to Timeline - we're getting closer on this and might have something ready to go by the end of summer (timing subject to change as we go through final testing and QA processes).
I could hug you right now!
That's great news! Looking forward to that
For it to live up to the name "Timeline," it seems like an opportunity to present all the touches to the client, both manual and automated. Seeing the sequence of interactions would be helpful, but I'm glad you're mindful of the risk of too much content. If we were sending regular automated outreaches, for example, I could see them crowding out the high value content. I'd second the ideas presented already for filtering based on date range and type of interaction (CTA, Survey response, email, etc.)
Change the activity type after you create a timeline activity. Sometimes, our CSM's choose the incorrect activity type and would like to change it as opposed to deleting it and recreating the whole thing.
Hi Dan,
Really enjoy timeline as it is... biggest ask from our team currently is the ability to save filters in global timeline.
Really enjoy timeline as it is... biggest ask from our team currently is the ability to save filters in global timeline.
Hi Christopher,
The ability to save filters in Global Timeline as views is in the near time roadmap.
Thanks,
The ability to save filters in Global Timeline as views is in the near time roadmap.
Thanks,
Woohoo! With the release of Global Timeline - this became a request ask. Mainly so that they could set Timeline to only themselves.
Speaking as an end user as well as on behalf of many of my customers, I'd really like to see two things:
- The ability to comment on Timeline activities (much like you can on Chatter posts). Use case would be a manager adding thoughts on a recent timeline activity posted by one of his/her CSMs.
- Being able to @mention other internal users in either activities or comments (per my idea above), which would then ideally push notifications via email or some other method to the mentioned user.
The @mention feature is being implemented now. You can expect to see this feature in Timeline soon.
Just to confirm, we can now see survey response data in the timeline?
Just to confirm, we can now see survey response data in the timeline?
I meant survey data onto the timeline. Sorry for the confusion, is that possible now? A lot of these comments are old and I just want to confirm.
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