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Configure Associated Records to Timeline

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This article includes certain sub-features that are not enabled by default and available on-demand, which are indicated within the article. To request early access, please submit a support ticket. If you choose not to access these features early, they will be available in your tenants automatically with the upcoming major release.

This article explains how to configure Associated Records in Timeline.

Overview

The Associated Records helps admins to associate a Timeline activity with more than one record such as Company, Relationship, Cases, or CTAs. This allows Timeline activities to accurately represent real world events where there are multiple customers and simplifies the experience for end users.

Example Business Use Case: When a CSM facilitates a networking call between two customers and takes notes to attach it to Timeline, he can associate both the records to Timeline activity that will appear in both the accounts in Timeline. This reduces the time and effort required to log the activities effectively.

Configure Associations for Company or Relationship Types 

Configure objects to CTAs, Case, Company, Success Plan or Relationship at different levels (Company and Relationships) for Associated Records.
The following are the conditions which explains the impact at various levels when you add a record type in a specific level:

  • Company: When a record type is added at this level, admins can view it only while creating Associated Records for a Company entity.
  • Relationship Type: When a Record Type is added at the Relationship level, it becomes available to Admins when creating Associated Records for Relationships under that type. To create an Associated Record Type for a Relationship, first select the applicable Relationship Type. The new Associated Record Type then apply only to Relationships that belong to the selected Relationship Type.

To configure associated records:

  1. Navigate to Administration > Timeline > General.  
  2. From the Associated Records section, click Configuration. The Associated Records Configuration slide-out panel appears. 

    Associated record configuration
     
  3. Select a Configure For option from the dropdown list. This can be company or relationships. 
    Turn on the required Associated Records Configuration toggle. For example, Associate Activity with Success Plans toggle. The Enable Success Plan Object dialog box appears. 

    Associate activity with success plan toggle.
     
  4. Click OK. 
    Note: The dialog box appears only when the toggle is turned on for the first time. 

    Enable success plan object toggle.

The Associate Activity with Success Plans feature is not enabled by default and available on-demand. To request early access, please submit a support ticket. 

For more information on how to configure timeline settings, refer to the Configure General Settings and Activity Type article.

Configure Search Fields and Filters

After turning on the desired Associated Records configuration toggle, you can define filter criteria for searchable fields that appear when users add an Associated Record to a Timeline Activity. The following steps use Associate Activity with Success Plans as an example. You can follow the same steps for other Associated Record types.

To add filter criteria and select search fields:

  1. Expand the Associate Activity with Success Plans section. The following settings are available:
    • Searchable Fields:
      • Name
      • Type
      • Status
      • Owner
        By default, Name and Owner are selected. 
    • Display Field:
      • The default is Name. To modify, select a field from the dropdown list. 
    • Filter Criteria:
      • Default: Status = Active

        Filter search results for success plan.

        Determines which Success Plans appear in search results

        Associate activity with success plan.
         
  2. Click Save. Once done, users can associate Timeline activities with existing Success Plans directly from the Associated Records section.

    End user view for associated records as success plan

The available results are based on the configured filter criteria.

  • Only existing Success Plans can be associated.
  • Cases in Associated Record are enabled only if the Cases Object has been enabled in the Customer's tenant. 
  • Case object also gets enabled when there is Zendesk connection in Customer's instance.
  • When the Case object is configured, the Activity Sync dropdown also displays the Case object as an available option.
  • Admins have the option to turn OFF the above records in the Associated Records section.
  • Selection of maximum four fields are permitted as a part of searchable fields.
  • To delete a specific field use the bin icon beside the searchable field.

For more information on how Company, and Relationship inherits configuration from global search configuration in the admin section, refer to the Admin Configuration: Company and Configure Relationships articles.
For more information on the different fields in Gainsight, refer to the Gainsight Object Glossary article. 

Create Reports on Associated Records

In the Report Builder, you can create reports on Salesforce and Gainsight data. After creating reports, the data is displayed in a variety of table and chart formats to be added  on the Dashboards.

To create a new report using Associated Records;

  1. Navigate to Administration > Analytics > Report Builder. The existing list of reports appears.
    Note: Edit any of the reports by clicking the existing report. For more information, refer to the Reports List View and Settings article.

  2. Click Create Report. The Untitled Report page appears.

  3. From the Select Object dropdown list, select the Data Source. Here, Matrix Data source is selected, and once selected the data source will display all the Gainsight objects.

  4. Select one of the two objects listed below, and the fields from the selected object will be displayed in the Fields section. 

Object Name Description

Activity Associated records - 2 years

Reports from the past 2 years are displayed.

Note: Gainsight recommends using this option to retrieve the data in a more efficient and faster way.

Activity Associated records - All

This option would provide all the records of Associated Records.

  1. Drag-and-drop the required fields from the Fields section to Show Me and Group By.

  2. Click Run Report, the default data is displayed in a table type visualization.

For more information on how to create a report and the functionality of the different tabs, refer to the How to Build Basic Reports article.