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Ability to add rich formatting in Gainsight text (CTAs, tasks, descriptions, etc.)

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On behalf of a customer - it would be great to be able to have rich formatting available in Gainsight. Bolding, underlining, coloring, type face, indenting, bullets, etc-- things that will make playbook tasks jump out or link to additional materials. Currently, this can be done in a text app and then copied and pasted in. But it does not translate well and it looks poor aesthetically (haphazard).





Thanks!
This is crazily painful for us - I've spent hours trying to format task descriptions, it shouldnt be this hard.


The tasks window is so crazily small (as it cant be resized / popped out), that we need to be able to have hyperlinks with a shortened URL (eg click here), and we are keeping a fair amount of information in our description, so it needs to be easy to format.


The only way to do this is copy in from something like Word, but once a URL is in, it cant be formatted further or amended, however, the process of copying brings over random Word formats (eg double spacing, which although not present in the source formatting, appears in the task formatting)





If we were using tasks to contain small amounts of information, I wouldnt mind, but we are using it to describe in-depth best practices, and link off to further documentation (which the user may, or may not want to view), so formatting is desperately needed





Thanks


Nick
Hi Nick,





We are improving cockpit usability. Ability to add rich text and increase in cockpit detail view width will be available in fall release.





Thanks,


Nitisha
I love that you can do rich text formatting in Timeline - but it is sorely needed elsewhere - basically anywhere you can add free text: Playbook, CTA, Task comments and descriptions, Scorecard Comments (including when setting via Rules engine), etc.





Right now I'm trying to add several comments to a Set Score 2.0 action, but when it writes to the customer's score comments, it's all in one line which makes it difficult to read.  I don't suppose there is a secret way of which I am not aware to insert a carriage return there?
YES, YES, YES to all of the above. This is very painful for us. Would also like to embed pictures, attach documents, pull in Salesforce Knowledge Articles into the Playbooks. 





Did this come out in the Fall release? 
Did this come out in the Fall release?
We would also love to have this ability, especially for success plans and playbooks. It would really help improve the user experience for our AM/CSM team. 





Is this still planned for a future release? 
It's so painful to not have rich text editing in playbook tasks.  It's taking forever to set up the tasks and the results still look awful half the time.   
How soon before this is available?  This is a MAJOR pain trying to get Task Descriptions in the playbooks formatted appropriately.  
Just an example.... I can copy from a word doc and use “Paste and Match Style” into a Task Description (in Playbook builder) and the formatting with bullets is ok, but I lose any hyperlinks, bold highlights, etc.:








When I copy from Word and use regular Paste (so that I can include the hyperlinks and bold highlights) then when the Playbook is used with a CTA, it looks like this in the Playbook editor:








(incidentally, if I don’t add an extra blank bullet line in my source file, then the last line doesn’t get a bullet when I paste it, as shown above)





BUT, when the Playbook gets applied to a CTA, it ends up looking like this:

















I had to scroll down to capture that last line in a screen shot.





Another example where I did copy/paste and it looked somewhat normal in the Playbook builder, but applying to CTA ended up like this:











This is VERY painful and time consuming.  Is there a workaround for this?  
Discovered a new problem...I tried entering each item line by line into the Description field in Playbook builder, with a carriage return and a manual bullet on each line...and I get an error:  "Unable to save the Task. Data entered in the Text field(s) cannot be saved, shorten the data and try again."











It's the same verbiage I previously copy/pasted into the Description field and it let me save the playbook.   
It's still horrific


I [i]think that the first time any paste is done into the description field, then the paragraph-level formatting from the source is adopted into that field (eg line-spacing), and from then on, you can only change it on a line by line basis. And yes, if anything other than plain text is displayed in the template field, then you are in the lap of your preferred deity as to what it gets displayed as a task under a CTA/Objective.  


Frankly I've given up, and we are entering a single hyperlink to a SharePoint-based Word document that contains the formatting that we want.


The formatting similar to that available in Timeline would be fine. I can understand it being a problem if the current field was text only, so underlying data structures would need completely revamping, but here there is obviously some rich-text formatting capability so the underlying data structure can cope to a certain extent  
We've considered using the single hyperlink too, and it just a [i]sad solution from my perspective because undermines the value of using playbooks in GS in the first place -- your tasks & job aids are no longer in the same tool. 





Agreed that formatting similar to the timeline would be sufficient. 
Hi Jeff,





This pop-up would be thrown when the character limit of the copied text is more than limit of the Description field. (Quick Question: Apart from Description, do you have any there text or long text field added as custom field in task layout?)


Sometime when you copy paste the text from MS Word, it considers some formatting as extra lines (same issue will be seen when you paste same content in notepad or sublime).





Regarding your earlier post, its again related to formatting from MS Word, but i will check why its behaving differently in Playbook task and task under CTA and get back to you.





Regards,


Hitesh
Hi Hitesh - I would understand the error if it wasn't the SAME content I previous copy/pasted and saved.





If I copy/paste the entire paragraph into the Task Descriptoin, and click save - it saves all the text.





If I enter the same text one line at a time, with a carriage return in between each, and click save, it pops up the error.





On the MS Word & formatting....so - how do we add bullets, bold/underline, hyperlinked text to a Task Description?  As you can see from other comments on this post, I'm not alone in needing a solid, consistent way to format text.
Hi Jeff,





In UI whenever we add space or extra link, in backend we store few extra characters to support formatting when rendering it or when playbook is applied. This must be the case that is reaching the limit of the character and your are seeing the issue.


If possible can you send me the MS word that you are using, so that i can see and say exactly whats happening. (send me on hsharma@gainsight.com)





Also i agree to your point that we need to improve on Formatting and we are actively working towards it, to come up with a concrete solution.





Regards,


Hitesh
Hitesh what is the character limit for the Task Description box?
@Hayley, Sorry for the delay here. Rich text formatting capabilities are supported while logging an activity: Users have access to all the capabilities of a rich text editor while logging an activity. We are actively working on CTA  also
@All, Sorry for the Inconvenience, Your inputs are precious for us and I agree supporting of rich text formatting should be there on all other areas of the product. 





I am escalating this to our respective Product Managers, We will get back to you soon.
Sai, any updates here?  This is very very painful.  Because we are a Microsoft shop, I am having to copy/paste from Microsoft into my personal Google Drive account.  Reformat it in Google, then copy paste it to Gainsight.    If I have to make any playbook changes, I have to change it in Google Drive, then copy/paste it to Gainsight AND back to the source Microsoft doc.





This has taken me countless hours.  
We are using Timeline to do that formatting, as that seems to strip out all of the unwanted tags/formatting that cause the biggest problems, and from there into the Description.


There are a few things that need an extra tweak, but it has changed the task description from utterly unusable, to just about acceptable.


It would be MUCH better to have the full solution, though!!! 


 
That’s a creative idea and may save some time - but agreed it isn’t a solution. It’s disappointing that something that so basic - that was originally requested 2 years ago - has yet to be fixed.
@aditya_marla



Any update on this request?  I know with GS Horizons, there is an overhaul to the cockpit view.  Has rich text formatting in playbooks and possibly CTAs been incorporated to GS Horizons?   Is there an ETA at all?

 

Thanks

a.

Hi @andorfuhrer 

In NXT the rich text formatting is possible in playbook task descriptions as well as in the CTA comments

Regards

Happy its in NXT but also sad its just in NXT.  Thanks for the reply!

 

A.

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