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 a week ago

The member Activity Timeline is an interactive tool that allows you to track and document important notes, calls, emails, tasks, and other member activities!

Not only that, but it also gives you 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, you can also manually add credits to a member's record using Timeline Activities.

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


View a Member's Timeline Activities

This Activity Timeline appears as the first tab on both company and person records, no matter their 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, you'll see the following categories of activities:

  • 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

Tasks

Tasks are actionable items added to a member's record that can be assigned to an association admin. Using tasks makes it easy for your team to stay on top of what needs to be done in terms of member management and communication!

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

  • They can be assigned to a staff member, then 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.


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 you'll see activities for the member whose record you are on and any activities for its direct staff and/or sub-companies. If desired, you can update the filter so it will show activities for the Member Only, or for All Related records associated with the member.

Dates and Upcoming/Overdue/Historical Sections

You'll notice that the Activity Timeline on a member 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 two sections:

  1. 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.

  2. Historical - Historical shows your past activities and completed tasks.

In both sections, the activities are organized from the most recent dates at the top of the list to further away at the bottom. 

Exporting the Timeline

Don't forget! Anywhere you see the Excel icon in Novi in the top right-hand corner of a list, it means you're looking at an exportable list. If you need to export the timeline for a member, simply click the icon and a .csv file will be created.


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