Link existing CTAs to new Timeline entries

Related products: None

We'd like the following use case to be supported when existing CTAs exist.







  1. Create new Timeline entry when having a meeting with a customer





  2. Discuss existing actions (CTAs) with the customer





  3. Link to an existing CTA rather than creating a new CTA to avoid duplication and moving out of the Timeline window








The linking of existing CTAs into a new Timelin entry will allow better usability, increase efficiency when using the functionality and reduce the number of clicks.



Hi Jason,





 





Thanks for bringing this up!





 





Do you want to create tasks from Timeline and map to an existing CTA's or do you want to directly select a CTA while creating a Timeline(and create tasks from cockpit)?





 





 





 




Hi Sai,





We'd like to do the following:







  1. Create a new Timeline entry





  2. Be able to pull in existing CTAs from cockpit into the Timeline entry for discussion with the customer





  3. Be able to update these with the latest status (e.g. comment on where the CTA is at etc)



Imagine you are having a recurring meeting with a customer and you have outstanding actions (CTAs) from your previous discussions. One of your agenda items would be to discuss outstanding CTAs and confirm if this has progressed (e.g. update, close the CTA).





By pulling this into Timeline in an efficient manner (i.e. not going back and forth from Cockpit and copying it into the notes section and then going into Cockpit after the meeting to manually update), this will reduce the effort required from the CSM.





Happy to discuss further!





Thanks,





Jason




Hi Jason,





 





Thanks for quick reply!





 





We are currently thinking on solving such use-cases, we will update you here once we take it for release. 





 





Keep posting!





 





 





 




Hi Sai,





Can you confirm if this potential solution would fix a slightly different use case? Here's ours:





Many of our users are forgetting to post to the timeline of a CTA and instead post directly into the account timeline. We would like a way to clean these up with the ability to link an account timeline entry to an existing CTA, after the timeline entry has been created. So that anyone looking at that particular CTA afterwards, would see the timeline entry.





Thanks!





Lyne




Similar to @mentions of people, it would be great to use a hashtag (or some other character) to pull up a list of CTAs and associate the CTA to the Activity from the Timeline.





Also, when we visit customers, we often have multiple CTAs that are discussed. So, when logging a Meeting for example in Timeline, we could associate multiple CTAs to the Activity, and it would then appear in multiple CTA Timelines.




I second @lyne_therien_4d94b5's comment




I agree with @jason_hoe  and @lyne_therien. Both are valid scenarios in our case and will help us streamline proper logging and adoption of our CTA and timeline processes.

Right now some do it directly and it defaults to activity type CTAs. However, it should have belonged to a Risk to Lifecycle CTA which exists sometimes and in other times needs to be created as a result.

There is no going back and changing once the timeline entry is added today.


@sai_ram Did you have a chance to review the additional use cases from this post? Starting with mine, 8 months ago. We would love to hear if there are any plans to address these use cases. thanks!


@sai_ram where does this stand?


Hello! I’d love to add my vote to this one.

 

People find a lot of value from the timeline entries because it’s fast but they’d like to associate it with a CTA that’s already in place.

 

I suppose the main ask is flexibility around the relationship associations between CTAs, Tasks, and the Timeline.

 


Thanks for the post. This is something planned on our short-term roadmap and the tentative delivery date is early Q3.


We are interested if this use case will also solve an issue we are experiencing. Our CSMs use the gmail plugin or bcc to timeline often in their communication with their customers. Many times these emails are in relation to a CTA they have already created and are already tracking, but since the timeline post was created via bcc or gmail plugin, they can’t go back to their timeline entry to associate it with an existing CTA. Will this also solve for this?


@mendisueshort yes it’ll solve that use case as well.


Was this released in Q3? I had this come up as a question and don’t see a way to do this in the tool today.

 

Edit: I think I found it in the release notes. Is it this?https://support.gainsight.com/SFDC_Edition/Timeline/Admin_Guides/Configure_Associated_Records_to_Timeline

Edit 2: The above release is something different so will add that we have a similar use case “I want to track a CTA from start to finish and i want to associate all the emails and meetings with it”


@jkolle The association to CTA from the Email is not shipped yet but in the roadmap.


was this rolled out?


Wondering the same thing.