A timeline is only useful if people read it, and people stop reading a timeline that is full of noise. What you leave out matters as much as what you put in.
What belongs on a timeline
- What was said — a call, a meeting, a decision and the reason for it.
- What was sent, and to whom.
- Meaningful status changes, with context.
- Anything a future reader would need in order to understand the record.
What does not
- Every field change. That is the Activity Log's job, and duplicating it makes the timeline unusable.
- Automated noise. An entry written on every save teaches people to stop reading the timeline — after which it stops being useful for anything.
- Anything you would not want a customer to read, unless it is marked internal.
Adding entries automatically
The Workflow Builder writes to the timeline in two places: the Status node records status changes, and the E-mail node records the message it intended to send. Table rules can add entries too. Use this sparingly — one entry marking a significant transition is valuable; an entry for every step of a workflow is not.
Housekeeping and data protection
Timelines grow steadily and are rarely deleted, since their value is largely historical. Where you keep high volumes of records, include the Activity Stream in your capacity planning — and note that anything visible to a customer is also something you may have to produce in response to a subject access request.