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Activity Timeline Tracking

A guide to the Activity Timeline on member records, which includes automated entries as well as custom notes and tasks entered by admins.

Melisa Smith avatar
Written by Melisa Smith
Updated over 4 months ago

A record's Activity Timeline is an interactive tool that allows admins to track and document important notes, calls, emails, tasks, and other member activities!

Not only that, but it also gives easy-to-access insight on what changes have been made to the record in terms of membership changes, event registrations, and ecommerce purchases.

As an added bonus, admins can also manually add credits to a record using Timeline Activities.

The Timeline tab is only visible to admins on the backend, so the users will not see these internal notes and tasks.


View a Records's Timeline Activities

This Activity Timeline appears as the first tab on both company and individual records, no matter the membership status.

Read on to learn more about the different types of activities and the features of the timeline below!


Types of Activities & Tasks

On the timeline, the following categories of activities are displayed:

  • System Activities

  • Custom Activities

  • Tasks

  • Credits

System Activities

These are activities automatically generated by the system when a membership, event, or ecommerce update occurs.

Membership: All Activities

  • New Membership Created

  • Membership Renewed

  • Membership Non-Renewed

  • Membership Expired

  • Started/Stopped Inheriting - (the record has started or stopped inheriting benefits from a certain record)

  • Membership Dates Changed - (manually - not due to a renewal)

  • Membership Removed - (appears when an admin removes a member type)

  • Membership Approved/Unapproved

  • Dependent Membership Added/Removed - (only when it results in a change of membership status)

  • Member Activated/Deactivated

  • Novi API Feed Update


Membership: Inheritance Changes

  • This only displays if at least one member type has inheriting members.

  • Started/Stopped Inheriting Member Benefits from... (the record has started or stopped inheriting benefits from a certain record)


Membership: Key Dates

  • New Membership Created

  • Membership Renewed

  • Membership Non-Renewed

  • Membership Expired

  • Membership Dates Changed - (manually - not due to a renewal)

Membership: Seat Updates

  • This only displays if at least one member type is seat based.

  • Seats Added/Removed

Parent Change:

  • This displays when the parent member of a record is changed

  • This will initially display the date that the change is made in Novi, but this activity is editable for admins (ex: Joe Smith left Company A for Company B In May but the update was made in June - admins can change the date on the activity to May)

  • This activity type can also be added manually (see below)

Ecommerce:

  • Ecommerce order activities appear when someone places an order, or an admin creates an order for them on the backend.

  • This could also reflect a product add-on that was purchased during an event or membership checkout.

Events:

  • Upcoming and historical event registrations for the member will be displayed.

  • Note that the date of the activity is the date of the event, not the date of the member's registration.

  • Multiple tickets for the same event appear as one entry, and canceled registrations won't appear on the timeline.

  • If credits are set up on the ticket(s) purchased for this attendee, the number of credits and the Credit Type will show on the related event activity. Note that these credits are only considered to be earned if the person is marked as Attended.

Custom Activities

These are activities added by an admin to be logged & tracked. The available custom activity types are:

  • Note

  • Meeting

  • Call

  • Email

  • Task - more info below

  • Credits - more info below

  • Parent Change - more info below

  • Custom Activity Types created by Association Admins -more info below

Tasks

Tasks are actionable items added to a record that can be assigned to an Association Ddmin. Using tasks makes it easy for admins to stay on top of what needs to be done in terms of database management and communication!

  • Tasks can be found on a record's Activity Timeline or in the Task Center.

  • Tasks can be assigned to admins, and when a task has been marked as completed, it will move from the Upcoming/Overdue section of the timeline to the Historical section.

  • Overdue tasks appear in red, so you always know what needs to be done first!

Credits

This type of activity allows admins to manually add Continuing Education Credits to member records without using a Novi event ticket.

Parent Change

This type of activity allows admins to reflect changes of employment or company ownership for records.

If the parent member field is updated on a record, this activity will be added automatically to the timeline (but with the ability to be edited). Admins can also add this manually. However, a manually added parent change does NOT update the linked parent record and would be for informational purposes only.

Custom Activity Types

Admins can create custom activity types to track specific tasks not included in the predefined options above.


Additional Features of the Timeline

Use the filter and search tools to filter the timeline by:

  • Subject

  • Notes you've added

  • Date (from/to)

  • Activity Type(s)

  • Relationship Type*

  • Date

*Note: The timeline is filtered to show Relationship Type: Member & Children by default, meaning activities for current record being viewed and any activities for the record's direct staff and/or sub-companies. The Filter can be updated to show activities for the Member Only, or for All Related records associated with the member.

Dates and Pinned/Upcoming/Overdue/Historical Sections

The Activity Timeline on a record lists the dates the activities occurred, or the date a task is scheduled for above the activities themselves.

From there, activities are split into three sections:

  1. Pinned - Clicking on the thumbtack icon to the right of the activity pins the activity to the top of the timeline. Use as needed, as all admins will see pinned activities.

  2. Upcoming/Overdue - Overdue will only appear if overdue tasks exist. The Upcoming section will show you activities with a date coming up in the future.

  3. Historical - Historical shows past activities and completed tasks.

Pinned activities always remain at the top of the activity timeline. After the pinned section, the activities are organized from the most recent dates in ascending order.

Exporting the Timeline

Don't forget - an Excel icon in Novi in the top right-hand corner of a list means it can exported! To export the timeline, click the Excel icon and a CSV file will be downloaded directly or be available in the Alert Center.


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