Quote from Timeline

[samwoo]

Hello,

Could we have a functionality that would allow us to quote from the timeline into a new email created from within a request?

Could the quote box be formatted in such a way?

Thanks,

Samuel

Edit:

Could we have it so that we can select multiple posts in the time line to quote from (with the details of who created the post, and at what time etc)?

[Guest Ehsan]

Hi @samwoo,

Thank you for your post. This is a great suggestion. This is not currently available or in our 90-day development board. We can determine this through the pole that you have set up here. How about an option to allow you to email a Timeline Update instead?

Thanks,

Ehsan

[Steve Giller]

Currently we update where appropriate and email (which also updates) when we want to send an email.
This does work but having this as an option would allow for emailing an update that wasn't done by an analyst (or if the owner simply forgot to email it!)

[samwoo]

@Ehsan -

With regards to your idea, while it would definitely work, I am worried about how much control we will have with emailling the timeline updates and the frequency of the emailling.

We might not want to fire an email to the customer each time the timeline has been updated so it might just be the case of figuring out how best to proceed with this if this is the direction we want to go in... maybe for example if an analyst updates a call, there could be a tick box (which we could set by default or not in the settings somewhere) to also email the update to the customer, with a link back to their call in the Portal.

But then also thinking about @DeadMeatGF's response, is we would like the customer to receive updates on calls from non-analysts...

An idea to be played with

Thanks,

Samuel

[Steve Giller]

@samwoo When you want to send an email for the update, then using the email option rather than the update option is very efficient - it takes some getting used to, especially if you have migrated from Supportworks to Service Manager, but it's actually just a reversal of the process that works better once it becomes habit.
Our analysts now prefer it this way around because they're not having to click through an email dialog for every update; and customers are not overwhelmed with emails about every tiny comment on the timeline.

The down-side is that if you do forget to do it that way around you have to replicate the timeline entry in order to email it out, and then the email updates the timeline with effectively a duplicate update, which is where the "Email Update(s)" option would come in handy.

[James Ainsworth]

Thanks @DeadMeatGF, it is great hear about how you are using the email action for the updates.  The different action items (update, phone, email, attachment) were all created with a particular use in mind and it sounds like you are using the email as intended.  When first designed, the Update was considered for internal posts and collaboration with your team members, the Phone action for capturing notes about phone conversations with the customers, and the Email action for all outbound email communications.  Using it like this also helps with locating updates in the timelines using the filter.  However, I also love seeing the different ways that people have used features in ways that were never considered.  

One thought that I had was to link the selection of the timeline visibility with the sending of an email to a customer (excluding email updates).  If an update is made to a request that has a the visibility level of "customer" we could either provide the check box for including an email to the customer or just automatically send an email.  We are just working to complete some changes that would allow the changing of the visibility after the updates have been added to the timeline.  After this we might be in a position to look at the emails to customers when the visibility is set to customer. 

Regards,

James

[Steve Giller]

Personally I would consider having two options:

• Customer
• Customer (email)

That would allow automated emails from the BP, and also allow customer-facing updates that were not emailed out, while removing the additional click of a checkbox.

[samwoo]

Hello,

Just wondering if this idea to quote from the timeline has made it higher or closer to the 90 day window?

At the moment when responding to a customer who sent an email / updated the timeline of a ticket, I do what @Victor does, which is put their comment in quotes then following my response after, would be nice to be able to do this in a more automated way.

Thanks,

Samuel

[Victor]

To be honest what I would like for our support desk as a feature is to actually be able to forward/reply to a previous email message added to the timeline... So, you add an email from a customer to the timeline, maybe have the option to send a reply to that email...later at some point... You can do this if you trace the email in the email interface, etc. ...but would be nice to do this from a request... Same if you send an email to a customer and you want to follow up on that email from a request... then you will have a nice email trail that a customer can review... The reason why I do the quotes is that I know many people get a lot of emails and be quite busy and is sooo easy to lose track on what was sent 3 days ago if you don't have a sort of "reminder"  ... so when you receive something like "Did you get a chance to review our suggestion" (which could have been sent 3 days before) and you don't "quote" this suggestion, people will end up "I have no idea what Victor is talking about"  

[HHH]

@Victor

+1 for your idea to be able to forward/reply to emails from timeline