Enable others to edit a Timeline note to make it collaborative

Related products: None

Both our account managers and CSMs use Timeline which is great, the bad part is that they aren't able to collaborate on meeting notes. We have situations where there is a customer meeting, and then both the CSM and AM post notes recapping their insights from the meeting and it clogs up the timeline. 





Is an improvement coming where team members can collaborate on a timeline post?
Hi Jackie, 





Thanks for using Timeline and we're really stoked to hear that your teams are using it. We do have plans on our roadmap to extend the capability of Timeline activities to include message threading, social features like being able to notify someone via an @mention and maybe even reaction emojis letting you give a post a thumbs up.





How does that sound?
Another use case I have heard is for manager reviews to be able to comment specifically on a timeline entry created by their team.  Customer was also concerned about cluttering timeline in that scenario.
That sounds great, Dan. How far out on the roadmap are these new features approximately?
Hi Jackie, we don't have ETA details on that functionality right now other than it's on our medium term roadmap. We have some shorter term features that we're hyper focused on right now - like being able to integrate emails you send to customers into Timeline 'automatically' - but as soon as we tackle these nearer term challenges we'll be looking to expand our "social" type capabilities. 





Please do check out our quarterly roadmap webinar too (next one is scheduled for Sept 12, 2018) where our Chief Product Officer shares short term priorities and longer term vision. Look for an email invitation from our team closer to the event so you can sign up!
Great thanks Dan. 
+1 on this request.  As we start to work with other departments, it would be nice for them to add onto the already existent Timeline Entry with their own notes.  Rather than creating a new Timeline Post and it being out of order from the original.  [Like a way to group them]
Hi All,  Make sense, we will definitely consider your request, but let us see how does other customers need this functionality. Gathering the inputs from other customers for better results !





@All Please hit Like or +1 to increase the priority in the road-map





Thanks for posting!
I like this as well.  This is the third post I've seen about this functionality and agree it is lacking. 
I'm adding our team to this list. We look forward to when you can thread an activity in timeline.




+1. This would be great for our company as we have situations where multiple people (CSM and CS Director, for example) want to combine notes/takeaways for one business review without cluttering up the Timeline.




Adding a comment to push the urgency on this request. My CS teams are super collaborative and not being able to edit each other's timeline entries is causing a lot of inefficiencies for them. A suggestion might be if they are an "Internal Attendee" on the activity, they should be able to edit the note. Thanks!




Hi Jackie, Kaye,





The approach we are taking with collaboration is to allow other internal users to add comments in a thread to the original post (similar to how it's done here on community, on Facebook, on Slack, etc). We are hoping to have this shipped before the end of this year. :)




Has this been considered yet for Gainsight NXT? Our CSMs ran into this today and I didn’t notice any user settings that allow us to make this possible.

 

@dan_ahrens 


Has this been considered yet for Gainsight NXT? Our CSMs ran into this today and I didn’t notice any user settings that allow us to make this possible.

 

@dan_ahrens

HI @dan_kenner - threaded comments is released functionality and is available on all Gainsight editions currently. 


Yes I’m familiar with threaded comments. While the functionality is a good workaround, I still wondered about the actual editing of the event. Since the comment functionality exists, is there no intent to allow other users to edit them?


Yes I’m familiar with threaded comments. While the functionality is a good workaround, I still wondered about the actual editing of the event. Since the comment functionality exists, is there no intent to allow other users to edit them?

It’s under consideration by the team. Few business collaboration tools with social commenting features allow all users to edit content regardless of who created it. Usually the need for collaboration is achieved through comment threads and allowing admins the access to edit the original post, if needed. 

 

For example, on this community platform, a regular user can comment on Jackie’s original post, but they can’t edit Jackie’s original post. Only Jackie or an admin can edit her post. This is a pretty standard approach. 


This is a feature that would be ideal for our CSMs to have as they also work collaboratively and it would be ideal for multiple people to be able to contribute to a timeline entry. 

The use case I encountered today though was that I was unable to edit Timeline entries (I needed to back date the activity type for 8 entries since the beginning of the quarter) and was unable to do so even though I’m a GS SuperAdmin with our company. 

To the point mentioned above, I understand if it’s not a function that is available for everyone but included in the Timeline permissions, it’d be great to have an edit function available to Admins. 


@eku_malcolm As of now, this is not in our short term roadmap. We will let you know once we add it to our short term roadmap.


Yes I’m familiar with threaded comments. While the functionality is a good workaround, I still wondered about the actual editing of the event. Since the comment functionality exists, is there no intent to allow other users to edit them?

It’s under consideration by the team. Few business collaboration tools with social commenting features allow all users to edit content regardless of who created it. Usually the need for collaboration is achieved through comment threads and allowing admins the access to edit the original post, if needed. 

 

For example, on this community platform, a regular user can comment on Jackie’s original post, but they can’t edit Jackie’s original post. Only Jackie or an admin can edit her post. This is a pretty standard approach. 

It would be good for the Admin or SuperUsers to be able to edit timeline entries though. Sometimes we need to make some configuration changes or have a new process and need to make field updates to previous timeline entries


@dan_ahrens @Cornelia 

Hi GS team,

I am a bit confused here: is this implemented?

The ask is to have a permission set that allows collaboration in editing timeline entries. Today we have specialized teams that focus on workshops and advanced CSM objectives - rather than pinging each other back in forth via Teams and email - would much rather edit the timeline note directly.  This could be a forward thinking add for the future of Many:Many CS models now in existence. 

 

Not only would this increase the accuracy of the notes taken, it would reduce the time required to record these critical and value added activities.
 

Happy to discuss directly if needed.