Timeline Activity Types Quota

Hi Manmeet, if I understand your use case correctly, you have different types of Calls, Emails, etc that you'd like to be able to categorize for reporting purposes, etc. 

We added a new feature in the November release that I believe is perfect for your use case. You can now add a custom dropdown field to an activity type (see this article). So you could add your subcategories as custom fields - for example you could have the following types under Call:

* Call - Kickoff
* Call - Project Status
* Call - Escalation
* Call - Executive Outreach
and so on. 

This would also reduce the administrative overhead for any custom fields that you may have, as instead of having to build and maintain a large number of unique activity fields, you can have the parent activity type fields and then sub categories under each parent activity type. 

Hope this works for your use case!

Hi Dan,

Thanks for that suggestion. I don't think it's quite what I was looking for though! 

This would be good for reporting but that wasn't my biggest concern in suggesting this idea. I would rather have the CSMs be able to easily log what activity they are doing, that is specific enough, and can then be easily searched for in Timeline using either the "Select Types" option using the search bar. 

Using these custom fields, does not allow for this easy navigation. If I use custom fields to account for the different types of "Calls" we might be logging, then I can't easily filter to only "Call - Kickoff" entries unless we coach the CSMs on putting that information into the subject line or the notes. That wouldn't be too much to ask from our CSMs but I'd rather give them more flexibility in using Timeline. This feels to restrictive. 

I will keep this in mind though! I could see potential in using this option instead of increasing the quota. For now though, I will just have to consolidate the Types we have created. I was hoping to avoid adding another field for CSMs to have to select since we are re-rolling out Gainsight after poor adoption from our first attempt. 

Hi Dan - Circling back to see if we have any plans to address the above. I have a number of customers that are asking to increase the limit beyond 11 types and/or to allow them to change the standard (Update, Call, Email, Meeting). 

Hi Dan, we would also love to increase the limit. Our use case is slightly different: We have many Activity Types on our Task and Event records and when we sync Timeline to Tasks the mapping requires an exact match or the types become invalid picklist selections and don't appear on much of our standard Salesforce reporting or get handled correctly by other automation.

Hi Lauren, Steven, 
We are looking into adding additional room for custom types. I'll let Nitisha share more details on that. 

Hi,

As Dan commented, we are looking into increasing activity types quota but have you tried using dropdown field to differentiate between similar activity types? E.g. A field in Meeting activity type can differentiate if its an internal meeting, customer meeting, etc.
You can also map this field with Salesforce fields and sync the correct value to Salesforce.

Thanks,
Nitisha 

We have use cases where we need to add more activity types and would like to re purpose the standard GS ones, but we cannot.  We would like the ability to add more.  We have renamed types and fields where possible, but ability to have more types would be appreciated

Any sort of ETA on this? I had a customer ask about this today.

We need more types as well, or the ability to filter on categories or custom fields. Given Type is the only filter option now beside Author and Date, we need to add more types, especially with the new Global timeline feature, just too many update and meeting activities to work through.

Hi Nitisha,

I think I missed this comment when it was posted!

So, if we were to use a drop-down menu, say for "Logging a Call", within the drop-down we could have options like "LVM", "No-Show", "Cancelled", etc.

When that Activity syncs to SFDC, normally it would log as Type = "Call", but if we were to map those drop-down options, would that overwrite it? E.g. if we logged a Call but in the drop-down menu selected "No-Show". The Type in SFDC would be "No-Show"? Or stay as "Call"?

I like this option (if I understand it correctly), however the issue would still be with organizing the Timeline in Gainsight by Types. It kind of makes that functionality redundant if all different types of calls are logged under "Call. The CSM would not be able to quickly find their "No Shows" vs "Training Call" etc.

+1, we're currently maxed out. Any update on this?