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The future of milestones vs. Timeline

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I would love to get a good understanding of what's our vision for the Milestones concept in Gainsight. Several enhancements, and specifically Timeline, make its future uncertain in mind. 





I'd love more clarity on the following topics: 





1. Are we planning to continue to use milestones as a separate concept from activities? 


2. A key point of interest in milestones has been the ability to overlay them on graphs / usage date. Since we are moving away from the built-in SFDC usage section (aka as History and our demos) and moving to related-list usage repots from MDA - are we planning to support a similar concept of overlaying milestones on usage data to track correlation between a milestone and a usage pattern? 


3. If we are continuing to use milestones, and specifically given the fact they are currently only available within the "usage" section in 360 that we are moving away from, will there be a separate milestone tabs planned? 


4. How do we think about the future of milestones given Timeline? There is a lot of overlap and I'd think if we keep both, at a minimum we have to show Milestones from the Timeline view. 


5. I liked the concept of dropping milestones specifically from CTA or automatically when specific types of CTAs close - if we are moving away from milestones, can we replicate a similar concept with activities? 





Thank you!


Nadav
Yes, I'm interested in understanding how we support the manual additional of Milestones when the customer does not have that usage section, too. This came up on a customer call yesterday. Adding rules driven Milestones is great but not feasible for every situation. Adding the Milestone manually from a CTA with the little orange button creates a Milestone that is not as descriptive in title - it might just say "Event Created" or "Event Completed" for a Training CTA that was marked as a Milestone, with the Name and Reason just showing in the Comments. Whereas, if a users adds the Milestone manually in the Usage section, they choose from those MIlestones that were created as options by their Admin and the title can be descriptive and specific.





It would be great to have the ability to add Milestones from Timeline (choosing from the list of configured categories) and have all Milestones appear in Timeline, including rules-driven ones.
I too would like to see what the product folks see as preferred mechanisms and uses for each of these features. 





It's fair to say that there is some overlap with some of our features now, and some of this will depend on how they fit into a customer's business framework, existing processes. But in instances where we have more of a 'clean slate' to recommend and advise, it would be nice to think in terms of 'recommended approaches'. 
Here's a link to post from a customer who wants Milestones in Timeline and is asking if we have an ETA: https://console.getsatisfaction.com/gainsight/conversations/be-able-to-add-milestones-from-timeline?... 
Hi,





Great discussion! 


The vision is to make milestones a part of timeline. Milestones will become an activity type and you will be able to add milestone directly from timeline page. Along with this, the capability to overlay milestone on usage graph will continue to be available but we still need figure out few more things like the behavior after moving away from usage section, etc. I will keep you updated once we have clarity on them. 





Thanks,


Nitisha
Nitisha, what are the options a customer has to add Milestones if they are not able to have a Usage section in C360 where they can manually choose and add Milestones, then view them chronologically in the Milestones tab? I have a couple customers that are asking what they can do without that section being set up for them in C360 right now. Can the Milestones piece be a stand-alone in C360? They know they can drop Milestones automatically with rules but also want to be able to develop a list CSMs can choose from to create a specific Milestone manually. How can that be done?





Per my comments above, if you just use the orange Milestone icon in Cockpit then 1) you have to have a CTA associated with the Milestone (so, in some cases, they'd have to create a CTA for the sole purpose of flagging it as a Milestone) and 2) it tends to display very little detail when you do that, (assuming they create a report to show them in C360). Am I missing any other options?
Hi Tracy - right now customers can only manually log milestones on the C360 when the usage section is enabled. 





Nitisha - what I would like to see is a Milestones section very similar to what's currently available on the R360. That kind of functionality on the C360 would solve for Tracy's question and as a bonus, looks really slick.
Yes, that would be great! Spencer, can the Usage section be enabled for purposes of accessing that Milestones, even if no Usage graph is set up?
Yes, but unfortunately you cannot disable the other tabs within that Usage section
And it seems like maybe there is an issue displaying Scorecard metrics on that graph in Usage section with 2.0? That would give some additional value to having it on, besides Milestones.
Team - it would really be great to get an update on this. I keep on getting questions from customers on whether to invest in milestone functionality and specifically customers who are worried the ability to overlay milestones on timeseries reports will no longer be supported - can you please share the latest on our vision and next steps here? 
Hi Nadav,





"Milestone" will become an activity type in timeline and all milestones will be visible in customer timeline. We will also ensure that the ability to overlay milestones on timeseries reports continues to work as now (infact, along with milestones, user will be able to overlay other activity types too). I don't have an ETA for it but eventually the milestones will automatically integrate with timeline.





Thanks,


Nitisha
Nitisha, will we be adding sub-categories for Activity types, so that an interaction or event could be more than one thing? One of my custoemrs, CSOD, has been asking about this, too.





I, personally, would envision that a Milestone is not the Activity type itself but a designator for a specific Activity. Our team just rolled out a process whereby there is an Activity type "Exec Touchpoint." But that c/would also be a Milestone and also be a meeting, such as an EBR or renewal discussion. Sub-categories could solve for this by allowing a user to log a meeting and designate it as an Exec Touchpoint and as a Milestone and potentially even other things, like an "Expansion Conversation," which is another type of Activity we have in GonG. Then we would not have to choose just one of those or create multiple Timeline entries to capture the right categories.





Are there plans around that?
Tracy, I believe in the Fall release we will have the ability to add picklists to activity layout. So for example we can add a picklist called "Category" under call and add 5 types of calls there. I think this can essentially be used for "sub-categories" 





Let me know if that makes sense
Yes, that's great! I think that will work for CSOD's use case. We should also make sure that we use this internally so we don't have potentially redundant Activities.
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