>> Hi again everyone.
I am here with Craig Maas and we're going to go over
Timeline. Craig go ahead, sorry.
>> Sorry. Hi, I'm Craig.
I'm a PM for core customer service,
and I'll be demoing the features we release
for the Timeline in April.
These aren't limited to customer services across all our apps,
so any app that has Timeline
will see these improvements that we've made.
I'm going to be going over
two key areas or two key features that we introduced.
But then I'll touch on a couple of other ones that
also part of the work we did.
The two key ones are going to be we introduced search and then we
also added rich text notes into Timeline.
So I'll go ahead and just start off and walk
through the different functionality and
highlighting where things didn't use to be before
now or how they were different in pre-April to April.
So let's go ahead and
get started with what shows up right at the top.
So prior to April,
we did not have the ability to do a search.
We've introduced a search capability
that looks in the title or the subject
of your Timeline records
and then also will search in
the description or body of the record.
So we're looking to expand the different search areas across time.
But to start with,
those were the ones that we could go after
and make sure we nailed those for April.
So let's just pick some text that we want to see.
We go down, of course,
I didn't really prep for this.
Let's see. Let's look for green,
looks like a reasonable one.
So we hit "Enter," we get back now.
These happened to be all the same from the same e-mail thread,
but these all have the word green in
them because if you expand it somewhere down here,
you have green marks.
So that's any literal keyword match across your timeline results.
A cool part of this is it will
stack with any of your other filters.
So if you have filters already in place,
let's say we're filtering for
activities and then within activities,
it'll come up with counts here in a second.
So I'm just going to filter for activities and tasks,
now I have two tasks.
I'm going to search
for the keyword "Fix" because
now it should only be returning one of these.
So what I'm just trying to show is it will
stack on top of your existing filters.
So if you put some filters in place,
you can then say,
"Hey, I just want to look at e-mails, but now with an e-mails,
I can quickly type a "Search" to actually zero in on
exactly what I remember saying in one of the e-mails or something.
Super cool functionality and really interested or really
feel that it should be
a great addition to the Timeline feature sets.
So app is our search capability.
In addition actually now that we're here,
let me clear this filter really quick.
Let's see, so I'm down here,
it's reloading at the moment.
We introduced another functionality, another filter,
so to allow you to differentiate between
system-generated posts and user-generated posts.
Let me actually just put a post in here.
In a second here, we should see posts go up to two.
Now, if we go down here,
this didn't used to be here.
Pre-April, you couldn't get rid of the system-generated posts.
So right now we will just say,
"Hey, let me just see these two posts."
So you'll see one is
an automated auto-post and
the other one is the post that I just created.
So if you wanted to get rid of
all the posts that were system generated,
you would just check
the user's checkbox and then you would only see
user-generated post or vice
versa if you only wanted to see the auto-post,
you could select that box instead.
So it gives you the ability to reduce noise,
whichever way the noise comes for your business needs.
The post filter is something that's been added.
In addition to that,
we introduced the ability to
enable rich text notes
and we actually have it turned on by default.
It is something that can be turned off by an admin if
your organization is not in a place
where you'd want to utilize rich text notes,
but the default April behavior
will be to have rich text notes now enabled.
So this is a test,
is going to be my title.
The title does not allow for rich text formatting,
but the main body content does.
So if you happen
to have previewed the podcasts with e-mail prior to this,
some of this will be overlap.
Formatting capabilities between e-mail and Rich Text notes are
the same with one current noticeable exception, and that's images.
So we're working for a future release
on enabling the ability to have an in-line images.
Right now, images have been removed
from formatting toolbar just because they were increasing.
We need to have a pattern so we don't bloat
the note size and so we're working on that pattern right now.
Once we have that enabled,
we'll be able to implement
Rich Text with Inline image support across all activities,
that's something looking forward for
a future release, we are targeting.
But for this one,
we have all the Rich formatting capabilities without the images.
Letting you know now,
so there's not a surprise as you're playing around with it.
So let me actually grab some content and here I'll
change the font color to something else and then in this section,
actually, just let me do this one,
I'll change this red one to super-big.
We have the ability to of course,
add formatting, which we didn't have before.
The formatting capabilities are
mirrored off of what is available in Outlook Web Access.
So you have things that are common,
such as copy formatting,
which is a very well-known,
we brought in 68 fonts to select from.
So you have a wide range of fonts available to you.
The normal text sizes, bold, italics,
underline, and then you have font background,
font color, bullets, numbers, indent,
outdent, block quote, alignment,
you can insert a link.
You can also automatically, if you're
typing msn.com or a space after the HTTP or HTTPS with the link,
it'll automatically create a hyperlink that you
can then subsequently edit.
But it's a really cool experience to be able
to one less action you have to take.
We're trying to make
this an easy and desirable piece functionality we're introducing.
So let's see.
So the spot where I was doing
this formatting was to highlight the point that if I
highlight within my big red text
and then I click the "Copy formatting" and I paste it,
it will go ahead and take that and bring it down.
If I do inside where I have just regular bolded text,
it will also honor that and if I take
indeed the plane and then go over something that I'd already done,
it honors all of this.
So just that flexibility should be great if you're
trying to format things that you'd pasted in.
Also to note, formatting from Word, Excel,
and just HTML content should be very
well-persisted between your copy and paste scenario.
So please let us
know if you're seeing something that's different than that.
But the underlying capabilities, again,
this is CKEditor underneath as
the technology that we're
currently using for Rich Text across Dynamics.
So the nice part is,
this is the same core functionality
that knowledge management uses,
it's the same thing that in
a marketing campaign builder, they use,
it's what we're using in e-mail
and if you even look in my Power Platform
underneath there Rich Text experiences are also
CKEditor as the technology that's driving that.
So there's commonality across,
it's creating just HTML payload, something that's special.
I guess there wasn't a Rich Text and notes before,
so this is hard to know a comparison.
But the rich text capabilities in e-mail,
that table functionality is very limited.
Once you actually pasted a table in,
when you right-click on it, it looked like this,
just your standard browser right-click.
However, with the work we did,
you now have the ability to select cells within a table.
You can right-click and now you get functionality
around modifying the properties of a cell.
You can now do things like setting the background color,
you could actually also set
different border options if you wanted to, etc.
But the cool part is your formatting capabilities work
within the context of the table.
Your right-click gives you table relevant functionality.
Pasted tables, same thing applies.
Now, the only difference between this and e-mail is images.
So and again, feature release we
will get images are actively working on it right now,
it just didn't make it in time for April, unfortunately.
So this is the Rich Text capability I
think our customers should really find
this useful and if they don't find it useful,
they can go into "Advanced Settings".
We're just going to go into "Administration" and "System Settings".
Now, on the General tab, scroll down.
Down at the bottom, we have
Enable rich text notes in Timeline, just uncheck that.
"Okay", we're knock out and you will no
longer have the rich text notes enabled.
Now, when you do that,
if you go back in here
and you add the note and you've turned off rich text notes,
you will see the literal,
so it's still on for this.
I'm actually going to turn it off and show you because
this is bares understanding.
I've turned it off. I just need to refresh my page.
What we're going to see is we'll see
the literal HTML tags in the content.
This is really why we introduced
the ability so you can turn it off if you're in
a mode where your business is spanning between WebClient and UCI,
because this is what is actually underneath the text.
If you are in this position,
you should disable it for your organization,
but if your organization is a UCI,
focused, or you're not splitting
notes access between WebClient and UCI,
you definitely would want to leave it off.
But you do have the option.
But I wanted to call out that the consequence of enabling it
for an organization that's splitting between WebClient and UCI,
you will see that literal HTML,
the actual payload of the content.
Now, let me finish up with just a couple of
the other changes that we made to the Timeline.
We're back onto it, it looks nice again.
Now we're back, rich text, all good.
The other ones, if you weren't
familiar with the layout from before,
it might not be as easy to notice,
but prior to April,
the icon to denote what type of record it
was appeared over on the right-hand side.
Then, when you hovered,
it would move down with the date below.
What we've done is basically,
we wanted to give it a consistent location,
so you always know where to look for it.
It's always upper left corner of the record.
This is where as you scan down,
you'll see all the different types of timeline records at
a glance, and that's consistent.
We also got very value-add,
good feedback that it makes no sense to
remove the timestamp from timeline records,
which we absolutely agreed with.
We've corrected that.
Now, the date and time always
exist in the bottom right-hand corner,
and will always display the long date format.
Again, we'll take your personalization settings and we apply them,
but it will be the long date version of that,
which will include the time.
This is just the way the system works,
it will sometimes only show
the time and it won't have the date on it.
But that's actually more of a Dynamics platform thing.
However, whenever you look at old records,
you'll always see both the date and at the timestamp.
Super important because if you're looking
like, "Hey, what was the e-mail response between these things,"
it's very hard to determine if you don't have
the timestamp to actually see it was
30 minutes or it was four hours.
That's another big change now.
The other, I think this might be actually the final one that
we introduced was the status tag.
Now, at a glance,
you can look down and see active records
versus overdue records versus closed records.
So e-mails that have been sent or received are considered closed,
a draft state e-mail is considered
active and also represented by the icon here.
But and this was sent e-mail.
That little icon comes from the top when it's received.
This was an oversight from what was available in WebClient,
so we corrected it by having these tags available.
At this time, the tags can't be turned off.
So we're often interested in feedback if
people have a problem with them or if
that's something they would like to see as we
go forward in a future release.
The naming on these is actually aligned to our filters.
If you look in the filters and you look under the statuses,
you'll see the same exact statuses available.
The idea is if you filter by active,
you're going to see all the ones that
have the active status flag on
them as opposed to seeing a mixture of other things.
Of course, notes and post don't have status because
they inherently don't have the construct of a state.
Again, if you wanted to limit it only
to see the activities that have are active,
you would check both of those boxes.
Then, the other thing you're seeing here,
which probably isn't quite as noticeable,
is that we used to,
when you actually checked this box,
we would destroy this whole pane and then rebuild it.
As part of April, we also persist it,
so you actually can interact with it
while it's reloading the next set of records.
If you check one and then you go,
"I actually wanted to also check
that one," you're able to do that,
and then it just cancels
the first request and replaces it with a second,
so you'll get back the end result that you're after
without having to re-expand or to re-find where you want.
That in probably more words than I should have
taken are all the features that we introduced for timeline.
I'm happy to get any feedback that you might have on it,
but hope you've enjoyed this demo. Back to you, Leslie.
>> Awesome. Thank you, Craig. Appreciate it.
As Craig mentioned, please use the comment fields
below on this video if you would like
to have a deeper dive or
any particular functionality around the Timeline.
For us to go into a deeper dive,
let us know, like our video,
let us hear from you
if we're on track with what you're looking for,
and if what we're providing here
is helping you with your customers.
Thank you and we'll talk with you soon.