The Gap
Activity Timeline includes two system fields "Internal Attendees" (multi-select Users) and "External Attendees" (multi-select Company Persons) that work great for capturing multiple people on a single record. But this field type is locked to system-built fields. Admins can't create custom multi-select lookup fields against the User or Company Person objects on any other object (Company, Relationship, custom objects, etc.).
This forces awkward workarounds: stacking multiple single-select fields, building related lists that don't surface well in dashboards, or creating custom join objects that complicate reporting and rules.
Two Concrete Use Cases
1. Assigning multiple technical advisors to a Company
In our model, every Company has at least one Reliability Success Manager (RSM) who is the technical advisor accountable for site-level success. Larger accounts often have several RSMs across sites. We need a single field on the Company object that holds all of them, so we can:
- Display the full advisor team on Company 360 layouts without cluttering the page with five "RSM 2," "RSM 3," "RSM 4" fields
- Drive Rules Engine logic (notifications, CTAs, capacity calculations) against the full set
- Report on advisor workload and book-of-business distribution accurately
Today, modeling this cleanly is impossible without either a custom object (overkill for a simple assignment) or rigid single-select slots that break the moment a fifth advisor joins.
2. Tracking multiple champions per Company
Most enterprise accounts have more than one champion often a primary executive sponsor plus operational champions at individual sites. We need to flag all of them as Company Persons in one field so we can:
- See at a glance who our advocates are during renewal and expansion planning
- Trigger risk CTAs when any champion's status changes (departed, role change, sentiment drop)
- Filter and segment accounts by champion coverage in dashboards
The current options force us to either pick "the one champion" (inaccurate) or maintain the relationship outside Gainsight (defeats the purpose of a system of record).
Why This Matters Beyond These Two Cases
The same pattern shows up everywhere: deal teams, exec sponsors on both sides, implementation contacts, support escalation contacts, QBR attendees as a standing list. Any time the real-world relationship is one-to-many between a record and people, we hit this wall.
The Ask
Allow admins to create custom fields of type "Multi-Select User Lookup" and "Multi-Select Company Person Lookup" on any standard or custom object — the same field types Activity Timeline already uses internally. Ideally with full Rules Engine, Reports, and Layout support so they behave like first-class fields.
Impact
This unlocks cleaner data models, simpler page layouts, and significantly more powerful automation for any team managing multi-stakeholder accounts — which, at the enterprise level, is essentially every team using Gainsight.
+1 if you'd use this!