The Social Pane made its debut way back with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and it was introduced to show information regarding associated activities, whether it be posts, phone calls, appointments, notes, and much more. Although the interface has not changed very much over time, it continues to be a “go-to” visual for getting a quick run-down of all the touchpoints users have with this record – be it a Contact, Case or Opportunity. From a historical perspective, it’s a one stop-shop in understanding the evolution of a particular record and provides a solid platform for collaboration and communication.

One comment we often hear from users is that it lacks that true chronological and singular view of all these events, as they are separated with multiple tabs. In today’s blog, we’ll be looking at the new and improved Social Pane, known as the “Timeline,” which recently made its debut in Dynamics 365 Unified interfaces.

It is important to mention, this Timeline feature is only available within the Unified Interface (example: Customer Service Hub, Sales Hub). Here is an example of viewing the same Opportunity record in Dynamics 365, in the standard Web client and in the Sales Hub. You’ll notice in the Timeline view, we are able to see posts, notes and activities in one view and opt to filter by record type, activity type and activity status.

Figure 1 Social Pane

Figure 2 Timeline

Clicking on the (+) allows you to easily create records to add to the Timeline.

Figure 3 Creating records in Timeline

Another neat feature is the additional quick actions that you can take on Activity records beyond closing an activity (marking as complete) and opening the record; we can assign it, add the item to a Queue, or delete in-line!

Figure 4 In-line actions

And to top it all off, the Timeline control is available on dashboards and mobile client too.

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