Woah. Timeline data is crucial. We don’t use Staircase, but given that “If it’s not in Gainsight, it didn’t happen” could technically be written as “If it’s not in fthe] Gainsight iTimeline], it didn’t happen” – this feels like a big oversight.

Given our current data privacy protocols, I’d think we (and probably a lot of other Gainsight customers who do business with companies that are very concerned about their data) would be far more likely to use Staircase if we could choose which data was factored into it.

Pretty sure we were told it was, so big updoot if true 

This has also been a hurdle for us in adoption of Staircase as well.  We also load NPS Survey Responses and CSAT Survey Responses to Timeline, so integrating Timeline data into Staircase would also add in that customer verbatim info to the AI processes as well.  We also have team members tracking items to Timeline who we don’t ingest their emails for security purposes, so the integration would give us that as well.

This is a HUGE gap. All of our CSM inputs are put into Timeline... Omitting this data from Staircase is a major loss in human-centric content.

100%! Like ​@dayn.johnson said “if it’s not on Timeline, it didn’t happen”. This is absolutely true at our org. It’s a shame and frankly, a significant oversight that this major source of critical customer data is not considered. 

I really would have expected this to be a major call out during the sales, or at latest onboarding stage. Clarity and transparency are essential to avoid customer issues- this was a big miss. 

This was not called out in our demo of Staircase directly. Timeline data is crucial. I would also add, having the ability to select what gets included by Activity Type or otherwise, would be something that would be useful to include.  

Dayn beat me to it! We repeat that ad nauseam. So much that is the description of one of our Slack channels
 

As mentioned, many Timeline activities don't originate from synced emails or come from addresses not connected to Staircase. For example, an account could appear "dark" despite clear C-level interactions in its Timeline, solely because that individual's email isn't ingested. This is a crucial miss.

hi, we’re not Gainsight Timeline users, so can’t comment on that piece…...but FWIW, we do use the Timeline in Staircase and have found it pretty powerful and zero work for the CSM (I manage 13 CSM’s, so it’s great to not have to worry about who logged what - SC just picks up what’s actually happened….if things are sync’d of course)

some learnings/observations on my end:

• SC’s Insights, Topics, Lifecycle events are wonderfully insightful (they’ll pick up what you configure and plot it on a timeline for the customer)
  • learning: zero in on key customer outcomes, the lifecycle moments that matter, and the activities that NEED to happen to achieve those - this is what we want to track. (we try to iterate quickly on what we track because, if it’s perceived as noise, CSM’s quickly lose trust)
• sync’ing, sync’ing….I wish I had a silver-bullet answer on this one...learnings on my end
  • I’m told the domain sync is the ‘easy button’ - but, my CTO won’t go for it!...so….
  • I’ve invited/added all customer facing peeps into SC (we can pick up all their activity)
  • slack channels: we have a bunch of customers who work with us over slack - you’ve gotta add those channels manually, but it’s only a one-time effort per customer - easy to add to your onboarding process, and/or your enablement process when a CSM gets notified that a customer is ‘dark’ because you’re not picking up slack activity
  • additional domains: M&A on the customer end - some enablement there, CSM’s should flag that a customer’s got an additional email domain to be added/tracked

Thanks ​@CharlieFerrao, that is great to hear and I really appreciate you sharing those details. 

While the Lifecycle Timeline in Staircase is great, it unfortunately doesn’t offer the full value we would gain from CS Timeline integration. Our CSMs and other team members frequently log critical updates to the CS Timeline, many of which document async interactions that are not captured via the Staircase meeting or email integrations. This can include but is not limited to in-person meeting notes, general CSM updates, details about risk and expansion, goals, strategic planning notes, and more. Without the CS Timeline integration, Staircase is missing out on all of these valuable insights. This can lead to inaccuracies in the issues and insights presented by Staircase as a result of Staircase's inability to consider all relevant information.

It would be fantastic if Staircase integrated with the CS Timeline and facilitated the flow of this information into the Staircase Lifecycle Timeline. However, without this necessary integration, and lacking the ability to manually log these updates in Staircase, this is not currently possible. 

This has delayed our widespread roll out of Staircase and compromised our confidence in the reliability of insights generated from this tool. 

Also very weird considering every single Gainsight AI feature seems to *only* look at Timeline - or close enough, to the point where I almost wonder where they’re going with any other feature (see later comments on this thread if you have some time to kill: 

) - so it’s a very odd choice that on the one hand, Timeline is the only thing that matters, but on the other, a huge blind spot.

Came here to make the same comment as ​@bradley  yeah...timeline is essential

Hey everyone, 

We’ll double check to see if staircase analyzing TL is on the roadmap. However, timeline entries can be analyzed via text analytics i.e survey takeaways. 

If you’d like to learn more about this component of Survey Takeaways I’d recommend you reach out to your CSM/CAM. 
 

Thanks ​@elliot_hullverson! The Text Analytics feature is great, but ideally, Gainsight and Staircase should be aligned. Since Staircase doesn’t take Timeline into account, there’s a clear discrepancy between what CS sees and what Staircase surfaces. For instance, Staircase may flag an account for no contact, even when Text Analytics shows recent, positive sentiment and takeaways from Timeline entries that Staircase isn’t factoring in.

I know others have raised this too, but it’s surprising that nearly every other CS AI feature is centered around Timeline, while Staircase seems to bypass it entirely. I get that it’s a newer product, but a little product parity would go a long way. 

​@Molly.McQ I totally understand where everyone is coming from, I just want to make sure everyone is aware that text analytics via AI takeaways is available in the short term to analyze TL entries until hopefully ST is able to analyze manual TL entries in addition to call transcripts (AI follow up) and emails. 

I know our ST team is working on the “auto logging” of emails to TL as an iterative enhancement (not sure of ETA yet) but this has been a highly requested feature.

Much appreciated, ​@elliot_hullverson! 

Thanks everyone for the detailed feedback – this thread perfectly captures why Timeline ingestion is so critical for Staircase.

You're absolutely right, and I hear the frustration. This should have been clearer during onboarding.
Timeline ingestion is a priority for us and was planned as our focus directly after email auto-ingestion to Timeline. From what I’m hearing here, these are your top use cases of Timeline ingestion into Staircase:

• Admin selection of which Timeline Types to sync to Staircase
• Capture of CSM TL “Update” type to allow Human-in-the-loop influence of AI analysis with things like strategic planning notes, updates and goals.
• Capture un-recorded and In-person meeting notes and unrecorded calls to fill in the gaps of auto-detected meetings. For some organizations, this can be a regular occurence and is throwing the wrong insights (no reach out, customer dark) because there is no visibility into in-person engagements or video calls on a customer’s meeting system, not your own.
• QBR/EBR prep materials or strategic documentation
• Risk escalations and renewal save actions taken by the team, accounting for actions taken on alerts (also a use case for bringing in CTA actioning into Staircase)
• Survey responses (more on this below)

To give you some insight, this has been our integration priority map...

1. Initial Embed in CS   
2. AI Follow-Up via Staircase for most call vendors  
3. Current Focus: Email auto-ingestion to Timeline
4. Next Priority:  Ingestion from CS into Staircase for AI analysis

We have been prioritizing broad spectrum engagement capture from Staircase into Timeline first to drive value to your teams and AI systems within Gainsight CS, eliminating the need for most manual capture and also making other departments and teams engagement data accessible within the Gainsight ecosystem. We also view Multi-Product Association by AI as a dependency for Email Auto-Logging for our many R360/Relationships customers so that Timeline doesn’t become a total mess.

Our vision is full-spectrum capture: every customer engagement should inform our AI and your teams, whether automatically captured or manually logged.
 

The "If it's not in Timeline, it didn't happen" reality

@dayn.johnson @romihache @sarahmiracle – You've nailed it. That principle is exactly why Timeline ingestion is essential, not optional. The current state where Staircase can flag accounts as "dark" despite rich Timeline activity is unacceptable and undermines trust in the insights. I’m hoping we can drive some priority based on your feedback to make this happen.
Can I ask… do you view Timeline ingestion to Staircase with AI analysis as more important and valuable for your teams than Email Auto-Logging to Timeline?

Survey Ingestion Strategy

@heather_hansen – Your point about NPS/CSAT survey responses is spot-on. We're planning survey data integration, and I love the efficiency of using Timeline as the ingestion path for joint customers. Rather than building API connectors to every survey platform, we can say "bring it into Gainsight Timeline and we'll ingest it from there." This is going directly into our survey feature planning.

What This Enables

Timeline ingestion will allow us to evolve the Notes experience in Staircase with:

• Timeline entry types that influence health scoring
• Manual sentiment indicators that augment AI analysis
• Update categories that flow into Account Notes
• Strategic context that's currently invisible to our AI

I'll push for priority on this with both our Timeline team and Staircase team. The email auto-ingestion work is laying the technical foundation, but manual Timeline entry ingestion is the critical next step to make Staircase truly comprehensive.

Your feedback on the onboarding communication gap is also noted – we need to be clearer about current limitations and roadmap timing.

Keep the use cases coming – this level of specificity helps us build the right solution.

Notably, my views here come from a place where we do not currently have Staircase.

As such, Email Auto-Logging to Timeline seems to hold more value, at least for our use case. Giving Staircase direct access to all of our Slack channels and full access to our email is basically a non-starter based on our security and legal teams’ review processes.

If our CSMs have to forward or reply to customer emails for them to be logged to the timeline, those extra steps significantly decrease the likelihood that our timeline will accurately reflect true account health.

​@bradybluhm FWIW, my priority would be the opposite since we’re already getting the emails via Staircase.

​@bradybluhm , if helpful: for non-slack activity, SC picks things up automatically and plots them on a timeline of lifecycle events. And you can configure your ‘lifecycle events’ & ‘topics’ (they can be created & customized, based on keywords) 

for slack activity, you do have to manually add the slack channels you’d like to monitor - example, we have several dedicated slack channels for customers who choose to engage via slack.

Thanks ​@bradybluhm! It’s great to hear that Timeline ingestion is prioritized next and that these use cases are helpful, and I really appreciate all the great input from the community!

From my perspective, Timeline ingestion and email auto-logging are equally important, but they solve different problems. Auto-logging helps capture day-to-day activity that might otherwise slip through, while Timeline reflects this, plus the strategic, human-led content that’s critical for accuracy and trust in the insights. 

That said, if I had to prioritize, I would prioritize Timeline ingestion over the email connectivity for the same reason mentioned by ​@heather_hansen. For all configured users, Staircase is automatically logging and analyzing emails, so based on this existing integration, this isn’t a problem for our team. 

Alternatively, our entire team relies heavily on Timeline to document high-value interactions, planning, and account strategies. Email insights are just a sliver of the full picture, whereas Timeline is the whole canvas. The fact that these insights are currently excluded poses a much broader and concerning risk for us, undermining the reliability of Staircase insights. 

Building on earlier comments from the group, I want to highlight a couple of associated pain points: 

• Sensitive communication channels - as noted above, there are some privacy restrictions that prevent some users from having emails ingested at all. This could be an account-specific request, or relate to any established data protection regulations. Timeline is the only way to capture those insights and interactions.
• Strategic notes - internal planning sessions, renewal strategy discussions, feature request details, success plans, etc., live in Timeline and these updates often contain insights and signals that email auto-capture tools miss entirely.