Activity Feed
The Activity Feed is intended to streamline the communication process within the company, for example, among employees who set tasks and those who handle them.
When it is added to a form, you can view comments left by users for a specific record and track changes to its field values in the Activity Feed.
The Activity Feed can be added to table records in the agent and portal interfaces, which allows users to access it without any specific roles.
This article describes the processes of adding the Activity Feed to record forms and configuring it. To learn about the Activity Feed interface and its use, see the Activity Feed article.
Add the Activity Feed to a form
To display the Activity Feed on a form, add the Activity Feed widget to its layout using the form layout settings. To do so, complete the following steps:
- Open the burger menu in the upper-left corner of the form.
- Navigate to Configure → Form → Layout.
- (optional) If the Activity Feed should be displayed in a specific form view, select it in the View name field.
- (optional) If there are several sections on the form, select the desired section in the Section field.
- Find the Activity Feed widget in the Available box and move it to the Selected box.
- Click Save to apply the changes.
Perform these steps for every form for which you need to enable the Activity Feed functionality, since it is not inherited. Every Activity Feed is related to the specified table.
Activity Feed fields
By default, the Activity Feed contains two fields of type Journal Input designed to exchange data between users:
- The Discussion field is used to communicate with the caller – for example, to provide progress updates or ask clarifying questions. These comments are visible to the caller on the portal view of the record.
- The Work notes field is used for internal communication between the agents working on the record. These comments may be technical and can contain information that should not be shared with the caller.
To restrict users with certain roles from viewing or posting comments in a particular Activity Feed field, you can create access control rules (ACL) either for the corresponding Journal Input column or for the corresponding record in the Activity Type (sys_activity_type) table.
You can also use access control rules (ACL) to filter the information displayed in the Activity Feed depending on the roles of the user viewing a record of a specific table.
By default, the system checks the following access rights for the user viewing the record:
- the User (user) table;
- the Display name (display_name) and Photo (photo_id) fields of the User (user) table;
- the user record of the author of the change or comment;
- the table to which the open record belongs;
- the open record itself;
- individual fields of the open record.
Changes that do not display in the Activity Feed are still tracked and stored in the History table.
Create a custom activity type
By default, two commonly used fields of the Journal Input type are delivered for Task objects; these are the Discussion and Work notes fields.
To add custom Journal Input fields, complete the steps below:
- Navigate to System Settings → All Columns.
- Click New and fill in the fields.
- Click Save or Save and exit to apply the changes.
Another way to add a column is via the related lists of a specific table record. Open the table you need to add a new activity type, scroll down to the Related Lists area, select the Columns tab, and click New.
Column form fields
| Field | Mandatory | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Table | Y | Specify a table on the forms of which the Activity Feed widget is enabled (for example, the Task table). |
| Column Type | Y | In this field, select the Journal Input value. |
| Title | Y | Specify a column title for this additional field. It is displayed on the record form and can be localized. |
| Name | Y | This field contains a system column name and is populated automatically once you have filled a column title. |
See the Create Columns article to learn more.
As a result, a new activity type will be created by the system in the Activity Type (sys_activity_type) table.
To configure the new Activity Feed field, complete the steps below:
- Navigate to Activity Feed → Activity Types.
- Open the activity you need and fill in the fields.
- Click Save or Save and exit to apply the changes.
Activity Type form fields
- General
- Specific
- Style
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Y | Specify the Activity Feed field title displayed on the record form. This field is of the Translated Text type, so you can define a title in all the languages you need. See the Localization and Multi-language Support article to learn more. |
| Name | Y | This field contains the system name of the activity and is filled in automatically with the name of the table and field of the Journal Input type. |
| Active | N | Select this checkbox to activate the activity type. |
| User Created | N | This is intended to distinguish a custom activity type from the OOB ones to be able to filter them out if needed. This checkbox is selected by default and is read-only. |
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Title (plural) | N | Specify a title in the plural form. |
| Parent | N | Specify a parent activity type. |
| Table | Y | Specify a table for which this field will be shown in the Activity Feed (for example, Task). |
| Journal Input column | Y | Specify a previously created column of the Journal Input type. |
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Title color | N | Specify a title color that will be displayed in the Activity Feed. |
| Title background color | N | Specify a title background color that will be displayed in the Activity Feed. For example, settings that are shown in the screenshot below  will result in the following:  |
| Icon | N | Add an icon to customize the activity type. The system will display it instead of the default speech bubble icon . |
Configure the field set
You can configure the set of Activity Feed fields. To do so, you need to use the Form layout functionality.
To add or remove an Activity Feed field, complete the following steps:
- Open the record form that you need to configure.
- In the burger menu , navigate to Configure → Form → Layout.
- In the Section field, select the section containing the Activity Feed.
- Move the field of Journal Input type:
- from the Available box to Selected to add the field to the Activity Feed
- from the Selected box to Available to remove the field from the Activity Feed.
- Click Save.
When you create a new record, you will see the added Journal Input fields on the form as text fields with WYSIWYG functionality. After the record is saved, these fields are displayed in the Activity Feed.
Activity Column Filters
When viewing the Activity Feed, users can independently define the set of fields whose changes are displayed in the feed. These personal settings are stored in the Activity Column Filter (sys_activity_column_filter) table.