APPLICABILITY: For Pro and Enterprise plans, across all products except VWO Plan.

Being on top of the game is not an option when it comes to learning what fits your website. Running your campaign flawlessly is one significant factor that helps in this pursuit. That’s where comprehensive tracking and seamless collaboration become essential, especially when your campaign is being managed by multiple hands.

To implement this, make use of the Campaign Activity Timeline feature in your campaigns that captures every action - manual (user-initiated) and automated (VWO-driven) action that occurs in the respective campaign. It acts as a detailed logbook that records every action, change, and comment, providing valuable insights into your campaign's journey. 

What You'll Find in the Campaign Activity Timeline

You can access your campaign’s activity timeline by clicking on the Timeline icon in the Campaign control menu on the left. The Activity Timeline pane will then appear. 

DISAMBIGUATION: The Campaign Activity Timeline is a campaign-specific feature that records events within a given campaign, unlike the Activity Timeline feature (under Account Settings > Accounts > More) that captures events across your VWO account.

Each entry in the Activity Timeline pane provides specific details about a particular event within your campaign:

• Activity Type: Specifies the nature of the event – an activity update, a comment, or an automation trigger via the respective icon.
• VWO automation activity/User: Highlights who initiated the action/comment, whether it's VWO or a user.
• Timestamp: This indicates when the event occurred.
• Details: A concise description of what transpired, like "Campaign paused" or "Variation Red (ID: 5) disabled". 

Classification of Entries

The entries that you'll encounter in Activity Timeline are classified as follows:

• Activity: These automatically capture significant actions related to your campaign's operation, like changes in variation status, traffic allocation adjustments, or automatic campaign pausing/resuming based on your pre-set schedule. They ensure you have a complete record of key operational moments, helping you analyze performance and troubleshoot issues. 
• Comment: These are entries you or your team members add manually. This allows you to document observations, decisions, and strategic insights directly within the timeline, creating a collaborative workspace.
• Automation: Generated automatically by VWO. This could include actions like:
  • Pausing a campaign at a specific date and time (when using campaign scheduler).
  • Declaring a variation as a better performer.
  • Automatically adjusting traffic allocation to a better-performing variation in the case of MAB campaigns.

Adding Comments

Comments are your tool to add context and foster collaboration within your team. To add a comment to a campaign, perform the following steps in the Activity Timeline pane:

1. To leave a new comment, type your comment in the text box that appears at the top of the pane.
2. Use "@" to tag specific team members and "#" to reference particular variations or a metric/goal specific to the given campaign.
   
   NOTE: Currently, usage of “#” is not supported in VWO Insights.
3. Click Add Comment to post your comment.
4. To reply to a comment, click on the Reply link beneath the comment.

Managing Comments

To manage the comments in your campaign activity timeline, click on the vertical ellipses along the corresponding comment and perform the following actions appropriately:

• Unsubscribe email notification: By default, VWO sends you an email every time someone tags you in a comment or replies to your comment. If you do not require these notifications, you can use this option to unsubscribe. To resubscribe, select the Subscribe email notification option.
• Edit: Tagged a wrong user? Noticed a typo in your comment? Use this option to edit a comment.
• Delete: If you’re the account owner or an administrator, you can delete anyone’s comments. Anybody else can only delete their own comments.

Filtering Entries

The Activity Timeline pane features filters to streamline your analysis:

• All: Displays all entry types.
• Comments: Shows only comment entries, useful for reviewing team discussions.
• Automation: Shows only automation entries, helpful for understanding automated actions.
• Activity: Shows only activity entries, useful for tracking actions performed by any account user.

Use Cases

Let's explore some scenarios where the Activity Timeline proves invaluable:

• Troubleshooting: Your campaign unexpectedly paused. By checking the Activity Timeline, you discover an automation entry indicating the campaign was set to pause automatically on a specific date, solving the mystery swiftly.
• Collaboration: You notice a significant lift in conversions for a variation.  You add a comment tagging your team members to discuss the possible reasons behind this positive change, fostering collaborative analysis.
• Performance analysis: You're analyzing the overall performance of a long-running campaign. By filtering for activity entries, you can track how changes to traffic allocation or variation disabling/enabling impacted the campaign's results over time, gaining insights for future campaign optimizations.

By leveraging the Activity Timeline, you ensure a deeper understanding of your campaigns, paving the way for more impactful decisions and successful experimentation.