The Timeline (and Heartbeat) feature is one that we developed as a way to better highlight important information and history on individual records.

But what is it really?

It's easier to show you the Timeline, rather than try to explain it...

As you see from the above GIF, you can access the Timeline from a consult view of a record. Expanding it will show you: 

• The Heartbeat of the record - the top three to four key pieces of information on a record (we have plans to expand this so you are able to select which fields are displayed here, so watch this space)
• The Timeline of the record - the last 15 items linked to this record, showing you the latest news about what is happening with this individual (or Company or Ticket or anything really)

Navigating the Timeline

To expand the Timeline is simple, just click the icon highlighted in the below screenshot. This will expand the Timeline over the top of the record  you are currently viewing.

To collapse it, just click this icon and away it slides.

If you would like to keep the Timeline expanded at all time and view the Timeline right alongside the other information on your record, click the pin icon.

It will keep the Timeline expanded for ALL records of this particular module. This means that you can pin the Timeline on your Companies for example, but not on your Contacts. And this will be sticky for your user.

To unpin the Timeline, you can either click the pin icon again or click the collapse icon. 

Filtering the Timeline for Maximum Benefit

In addition to user-specific pinning of the Timeline, you can also filter which linked modules are displayed for each module. And this is again, a per user, sticky filter.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves...

To filter the timeline, click the "Filter by" dropdown and select which modules you would like to see, then click "ok"

You can pick as many as you need. You can see when you have a filter on this dropdown when the "ok" button turns orange.

To go back to see ALL linked records, just click the "clear" icon and this will clear your filter.

Now this is the cool part: if you do not clear the filter, OpenCRM will remember how you've set it and use this same filter automatically on all records within this module. 

For example, if on Companies, you really only want to see Invoices and Tickets, but on Opportunities, you only want to see Emails and Activities. It's all remembered, for each individual user.

What am I looking at?

Once you have your Timeline filtered to show exactly what you need, you need to know what you're looking at.

Each item on the Timeline has 5 key pieces of information:

1. Type of Record
2. Record name or subject
3. Date
4. Status
5. Assigned to

By hovering over the Date field, you can easily see whether this is the Created, Modified, or Date Linked. 

Additionally, you can hover over Activities and Email subjects to view the first 100 characters of their Description fields. 

To go to that record, simply click the subject or the left side icon.

HelpDesk Tickets

When it comes to Tickets within the Timeline, we've done something extra. 

If a Ticket is currently overdue, the icon on the left will show as red, alerting you that it needs your attention.

Auditing within the Timeline

In addition to showing linked records on your Timeline, you can also see an audit of all the edits that have taken place on a given record. Simply select "Audit" from the filter menu:

You can even combine this with the linked module information if you'd like see everything at once.