Activity Feed

The Activity Feed module is intended to line up the communication process among users within the same company, for example, among employees who set tasks and those who handle them.

This functionality allows you to monitor either on Additional Comments or Work Notes left within a record or tracking the record field changes (all record fields or a field set specified by the user).

Activity Feed can be used in table records in both of the main interfaces (agent interface and <![CDATA[Self-Service Portal), which enables the use of the module without specific roles.

Create an activity feed

To use a feed on forms, you need to configure the Activity Feed widget first. To do so, complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to Portal Structure → Widgets.
2. Click New to create a new widget.
3. Fill in the fields as described below.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.

After saving the record, it will be available for adding to the record form by the Form Layout functionality as described below.

Add widget to forms

Add an activity feed widget created in the previous step to the record form using the Form Layout functionality. To do so, complete the steps below:

1. Open the hamburger menu to the top left of the form.
2. Navigate to the Configure → Form → Layout item and click it.
3. Find the Activity Feed widget in the Available area and move it to the Selected area.
4. Click Save to apply the changes. 

After this, your changes are displayed on the record form.

By default, two activity feed fields are available:

• Additional Comment
• Work Note

When the Activity Feed is added to the form with fields of the Journal Input type, these fields are hidden on the form. The Activity Feed displays input fields and activity types corresponding to the hidden ones. Input fields have the same logic as hidden fields. For example, they become mandatory or hidden from the widget under certain conditions.

See the Creating custom activity feed field section of this article to customize your activity feed.

Activity feed default view

After a widget is created and added to a form layout as described above, create a new record or open an existing one to find the activity feed view as shown below (this screenshot is given as an example; the out-of-the-box version in your application may differ).

The Additional Comments and Work Notes fields are both of the Journal Input type and intended for user communication.

1. The Additional Comments field is for communication with the caller. It may contain progress updates or clarifying questions. These comments are visible to the requestor on the portal view of the record.
2. The Work Notes field is for internal communications among the task fulfillers (agents). These comments may be technical and can contain information that should not be shared with the caller.

Besides that, the Activity Feed displays the history of field changes. It displays information the fields whose values have been changed.

• Previous values are in grey color. The new values are in black color.
• Field changes are displayed according to the <![CDATA[history display settings.

By selecting the tabs under the input field, you can filter out the displayed information.

Filtration

The displayed information can be filtered for specified users or user roles by using the ACL functionality. Thereby, the activity feed view can look different for users granted different roles. To filter displayed information, Create an ACL Rule for information filtering.

To display changes of the specified fields in the History section instead of all fields changes, use the Select fields handler functionality: 

1. Click the three dots on the right to open the kebab menu.
2. Click the Select fields.
3. Unselect fields whosechanges should not be displayed in the activity feed.
4. Click Apply.

If History contains fields that have been changed but are not selected in the Select fields handler, they will be replaced by the No fields selected text:

Even if the field value changes are not displayed here, they are logged and can be reached in the History dictionary.

Create a custom feed type

By default, two commonly used fields of the <![CDATA[Journal Input type are delivered for Task objects; these are the Additional Comment and Work Notes fields.

To add custom journal input fields, complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to System Definition → All Columns.
2. Click New and fill in the fields.
3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.

Configure a feed set

You can easily configure the set of activity feed fields using the <![CDATA[Form layout functionality.

To add or remove an activity feed field, perform the following steps:

1. Open the record form that you need to configure.
2. In the hamburger menu , navigate to Configure → Form → Layout.
3. In the Section field, select the section containing the Activity Feed.
4. Move the field of the <![CDATA[Journal Input type:
   • from the Available section to Selected to add the field to the Activity Feed.
   • from the Selected section to Available to remove the field from the Activity Feed.
5. Click Save.

Customization

To configure a new activity feed field, complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to Activity Feed → Activity Types.
2. Open the activity you need and fill in the fields.
3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.