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Report on Timeline Comments?

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darkknight
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I’m trying to determine if my CSMs are leveraging the Comment function in Timeline.  I don’t see a way to pull comments into an Activity Timeline report.  Is this possible?

 

Timeline entry with comments

 

Activity Timeline report grouped by Subject

 

roja_kode 6 months ago

You can create report on all types of activity. Activity Comments object has a lookup to activity timeline object, so it gives you all options to see comments belongs to which activity/account, etc.

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Jeffrey Kirkpatrick

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darkknight
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@spencer_engel do you happen to know?

Jeffrey Kirkpatrick
spencer_engel
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@spencer_engel do you happen to know?

Hi @darkknight those are not reportable right now. @nitisha_rathi is this something that’s on the roadmap? I feel like I heard something about it but wasn’t sure if it was picked up.

 
nitisha_rathi
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This is not on the roadmap yet.

@darkknight can you please share your use-case? Thanks!

chris_mudd
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@nitisha_rathi 

I have a use case where I have a customer who would like to be able to report on comments using scorecard/timeline feature we released recently.  The customer wants to pull comments that are being used when setting the score.  For context, they are wanting to use this feature to collect product feedback.  

   
jeremy_curry
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I simply can’t understand releasing a feature like this with no ability to report on it :thinking:

N
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@nitisha_rathi To expand on the use case that Chris posted, we would like our CSMs to respond to why customers may not be using a certain feature. These features are included in our scorecard 2.0 so we’d like that information to live there for easy reference in the future. We in fact were going to use this functionality to collect feedback in a recent exercise with our CS team but had to use another option since we could not scaleably get the feedback out of the system. 

S
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@johnheintschel We are also working with support team on this and then they redirected us to here.  Can you please work with product team to get it prioritized.

 

@amanda_neil fyi

heather_hansen
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We have a need for this as well. 

sierra_evans
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@nitisha_rathi +1 for this request! We would like to report on how many times our executives tagged in timeline posts reply via comment. So a report allowing us to report the comment, creator, date etc. would be very helpful. This will demonstrate for our teams that execs are actively reviewing their timeline entries. 

davebrown2242
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@darkknight, yet another find. This will be important as we continue to change the mindset of the team to leverage Timeline over comments as we modernize our CSM team utilization of Gainsight. Data exists; we need to be able to recall it.

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darkknight
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@davebrown2242  @sierra_evans @heather_hansen  sadly it appears GS flagged this as “Not Planned”

 

Jeffrey Kirkpatrick
davebrown2242
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@darkknight @sierra_evans @heather_hansen; I am also out of luck migrating our previous Scorecard 1.0 comment to the Scorecard 2.0 > Overall measure AND post to global timeline. Support said I am out of luck on that one.  I am working on shifting our CSMs to leverage Timeline for updates and activities over the previously leveraged CTAs for history.

 

Why is there not an option in the migration using Rules Engine to publish the measure to Account Timeline?  

 

I could not find an idea/discussion on this but I am still hunting in the search.  Seems short sided to not allow us to determine what we publish to account timeline… think about a team using a previous CS platform; or moving from older functionality to newer functionality.  A simple checkbox on Set Score 2.0 action would solve this (in my humble opinion).

 

From GS Support:
 

However, I want to let you know that these comments will not be logged in the Global timeline or Account timeline.

After migration, there are two ways to set score, manually or rules:

  • If you set the comment manually, the comment will be logged in the Scorecard timeline and Global timeline too.
  • If you set the comment via a rule, the comment will be logged in the Scorecard timeline but not in the Global timeline.


Hence, in this case too, we have possibilities of logging comments as activities only in the Scorecard timeline and Global timeline but it is not possible to log at Account level.

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heather_hansen
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@darkknight @sierra_evans @davebrown2242  Yikes.  Yeah, I basically just told our team to stop using it for now because we’re not able to report on it.  Our use case was a little different than Sierra’s.  One of our team uses a custom Timeline activity to track at risk accounts with actions taken, and they were using the comment to update where they were with mitigating the risk.  (I didn’t suggest this...they came upon this themselves.)  I agree that if someone can add data somewhere, we need to be able to report on that, otherwise, it’s kind of useless.

darkknight
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@nitisha_rathi  Can this please be reconsidered?

Jeffrey Kirkpatrick
dan_ahrens
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@darkknight @sierra_evans @davebrown2242  Yikes.  Yeah, I basically just told our team to stop using it for now because we’re not able to report on it.  Our use case was a little different than Sierra’s.  One of our team uses a custom Timeline activity to track at risk accounts with actions taken, and they were using the comment to update where they were with mitigating the risk.  (I didn’t suggest this...they came upon this themselves.)  I agree that if someone can add data somewhere, we need to be able to report on that, otherwise, it’s kind of useless.

 Hi @heather_hansen - the most common workflow we see around the use case you describe, and which we recommend is to use a CTA to track the risk (which gives you broader visibility and allows application of a playbook, etc). Then on the CTA, you can track every update as a distinct Timeline update. This gives you better visibility over time vs. just creating a single timeline activity entry and adding comments to it. Further, using the CTA Timeline allows you to track different activity types and customer meetings (with respective internal and external attendees) that are associated with that Risk event. It’s truly a complete Timeline of consciousness around that Risk event.

 

Here’s an example of how that CTA Risk activity feed would look in practice (we use this process internally at Gainsight): 

 

Dan Ahrens - Director, Product Operations, Gainsight
darkknight
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@dan_ahrens Then, what is the point of the Timeline comments?  Inevitably someone is going to reply to an entry with important information/updates.  We cannot police every end user to make sure they are consistently crossing every T and dotting every lowercase J.

I agree with @heather_hansen  and several other commenters on here:  if we’re capturing data - any data - in Gainsight, then we should have the ability to extract it from the system.

Jeffrey Kirkpatrick
sierra_evans
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@dan_ahrens our team is undergoing a large-scale effort to switch from logging CTAs to using Timeline to track our engagements with clients. This has been a positive change as our team and execs have embraced the enhanced functionality of timeline. We are using it for executive updates and executive meetings, which aren’t always risks that would necessitate the launch of a CTA. I agree with others that it seems shortsighted to provide functionality that teams like and use, but which cannot be reported on. Please reconsider, as the workflow you cite does not fit all use cases.

@darkknight @heather_hansen @davebrown2242 @nitisha_rathi 

darkknight
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Agree @sierra_evans - not everyone is going to do it like Gainsight.  Need to be flexible to other intentions and use cases.

Jeffrey Kirkpatrick
heather_hansen
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@dan_ahrens Ideally, that would be the path that I would take.  However, that team isn’t currently using CTAs and is only using Timeline Activities, so it’s not currently an option.

dan_ahrens
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 @dan_ahrens Then, what is the point of the Timeline comments?  Inevitably someone is going to reply to an entry with important information/updates.  We cannot police every end user to make sure they are consistently crossing every T and dotting every lowercase J.

I agree with @heather_hansen  and several other commenters on here:  if we’re capturing data - any data - in Gainsight, then we should have the ability to extract it from the system.

Hi Jeff - the purpose of Timeline comments is to have a dialog/discussion primarily related to the specific update. For example, a CSM might have an onsite EBR with a customer and post their notes and a copy of the deck to Timeline. They may @mention some other team members for questions or follow up. Those teammates might then add their comments or input as a comment associated with the EBR event. A new event (customer email, phone call, survey response, etc) would logically be a new Timeline activity event. It’s very similar to the feed/social experience in business apps like Chatter or consumer apps like Facebook.

Dan Ahrens - Director, Product Operations, Gainsight
davebrown2242
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@dan_ahrens @darkknight @heather_hansen 

Explanation makes sense, and I think we would all agree to that use case. The only thing missing is the ability to analyze the correspondences or count the number of comments/activity on given Timeline Activity types.   Some of the reasons can be to better identify patterns of additional work effort, which teams are collaborating effectively, timing of responses when someone is requesting assistance via @mentions… etc.  Who knows what stories we can tell from the Timeline Comment data; definitely pointing out the shortcoming of admin abilities to access it in general.

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darkknight
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...and you can report on/export Comments from Chatter:

 

 

Jeffrey Kirkpatrick
jnoble100
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+1 for this. Can’t see why you wouldn’t be able to report on the comments. We use timelines activities extensively - and for risks - and the comments are a critical part of how we use them.

spencer_engel
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I think at the very least we need to be able to see if an activity had a recent comment via the Last Modified Date or something. Right now, we have no visibility into whether an activity has had any comments made to it at all. The Last Modified Date on the Timeline Activity object only applies to the activity itself, not its comments. 

 
phani_kumar
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@nitisha_rathi

I have a use case where I have a customer who would like to be able to report on comments using scorecard/timeline feature we released recently.  The customer wants to pull comments that are being used when setting the score.  For context, they are wanting to use this feature to collect product feedback.  

   

+1.Nice to have this option to create reports using timeline comments.

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