Question

Quick question regarding the 5.10 release on 11/28

  • 10 November 2017
  • 6 replies
  • 70 views
manmeet_dosanjh
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    Timeline: notes
    are available in reporting; attachment limit increased to 30 MB; and
    option to sync activities to SFDC Events or Tasks

I saw that the release includes the option to sync Timeline Activities to SFDC. What does this entail exactly? What is being synced? Does this include the "Notes" and the "Type"? Will it push as an open Task or closed? 



Thanks!

6 replies

ben
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Very good question. We would like to use Timeline more, but that syncing bit is very important to us. I think there is some syncing now, just not sure what exactly or when.
-Ben
karl_rumelhart
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What is new is the option to sync to SFDC Events. Syncing to Tasks is already supported. 
manmeet_dosanjh
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Oh, the email specifically states timeline syncing though. So that's why I was confused. 



The issue right now with using Timeline Activities is that:

1) the actual Activity does not sync with SFDC, only if there is a subset task associated, then that task will sync. Just would be helpful for our sales team to know what is going on with an account or for the CSA's that are prospecting accounts and trying to book demos. 

2) The "Notes" section of the TL Activity does not sync to SalesForce either.

3) Neither does the Activity "Type", and I know that an Activity is not the same thing as a SFDC Task but in function they are essentially the same, would be great if the Type would sync for reporting purposes. 



I was really hoping that the next release would address some of these issues. 



This is an issue for our company due to our CS Associates that book Demo's for our CSMs need that visibility across SFDC. For our CSA's to get credit for booking a Demo, CSMs currently have to go back into SFDC and log the activity, sicnce "Type" does not get pushed over. Not everyone in our company uses/or has access to GS and this transparency is crucial, especially for CSA's and our sales team. 
lila_meyer
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Timeline Activities can currently be synced to SFDC Activities. With the Fall release, we're adding the option for Admins to instead sync Timeline Activities to SFDC Events. I've added the Product Manager for Timeline to this thread for further comment. Additional info about the current syncing functionality is available here.
Lila Meyer, Dir. Global Education Services
nitisha_rathi
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Hi Manmeet,



Gainsight has two different syncs to SFDC -



1. Sync of Activities



2. Sync of Cockpit Tasks



Activities Sync -





In this, activities get synched to SFDC tasks/ events and we have given lot of flexibility in configuring this sync




  • You can choose to sync in SFDC task or event object (coming in fall release)
  • You can enable sync at activity type level e.g. you can choose to sync meetings & calls but not updates




  • We give a default sync mapping but you can add more fields to the mapping. 




  • You can map activity type while syncing too. 
  • Notes are automatically mapped











Cockpit Task Sync -





In this, cockpit tasks get synced to SFDC tasks




  • You can enable sync for all tasks, you can enable them at playbook level or you can choose to sync them manually
  • We give a default sync mapping but you can add more fields to the mapping. 
  • You can map task type while syncing too











In case Activity has a follow-up tasks -




  • In an activity has a follow-up tasks and sync is enabled for both activities and tasks, then both of them will sync to salesforce separately

Please let me know if you have any more questions and I will be happy to clarify.



Thanks,



Nitisha
manmeet_dosanjh
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Hi Nitisha,



Thank you for the detailed response, but I have already looked through these sections in Admin multiple times and have also posted in Community before regarding some of the difficulties of CTAs and Timeline Activities syncing to salesforce. This doesn't really address any of the issues I mentioned.



The "Activity" does not sync properly, it logs in SFDC under the 'Call to Action' object, which is not a huge issue, just annoying for CSMs to have to look in that object but then have to go over to 'Open Activities', which is where the 'Tasks' from Cockpit or from Timeline log. Having to check in both locations isn't efficient. 



I see that the 'Note' is synced to 'Description' in the Field Mapping, however, the Notes from TL Activities do not appear in the SFDC log. That sync has always been set up and notes have never transferred over us. Not sure why that is? Also, this does not include any Notes/Descriptions/Comments from CTAs right? That doesn't sync to SFDC from Cockpit/CTA tasks?



Also, not sure what you mean about the "Type" syncing over? The Timeline Activity logs in the Call to Action object with the 'Type' = 'Activity' everytime. Even if you are logging a call, a meeting, email, and any other custom activity types. Which makes zero sense on why it would be setup this way.



The follow up 'Tasks' always log as an "Email" in SFDC (since that is set up as the Default), which means that information is not being pushed over to SFDC to overwrite that default setting. This is the same whether the Task was created in Timeline or in Cockpit. 



I have worked directly with Gainsight support on this Type mapping issue and we had to set up a workaround, where we added a new field to the CTA detail window, where the CSM can manually enter what the type is and with 3 different rules, we are able push that information to the "Type" field in SFDC. This workaround is inefficient and does not include Timeline Activites that do not have a follow up task (since there is no CTA detail window for these).

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