Every record in a model-driven app can carry two different kinds of supporting information: Notes (the annotation table — free-text comments, optionally with an attached file) and Activities (emails, phone calls, appointments, tasks, and any custom activity tables a solution adds). Neither is available on a table by default. They are two separate settings I have to turn on in the table's properties before Dataverse lets me attach them to a record, and the Timeline control is the form component that actually displays them once they are enabled.

Enabling notes and activities on a table

I started by creating a new solution to keep the customization isolated, naming it "Notes Activities."

Inside the solution I selected New > Table > Table (advanced properties) so I could set everything up front rather than after the fact.

I named the new table "Asset," with the plural name "Assets," and left Enable attachments unchecked for the moment.

Once the table was created, I reopened its properties and checked Enable attachments (including notes and files) — despite the name, this is also the switch for Notes. Turning it on lets app users add notes, and attach files to those notes, on records of this table.

I expanded Advanced options and, under "Make this table an option when," checked Creating a new activity — this is what lets activity records like email, phone call, and task be associated with records of this table, i.e. it makes the table a valid "Regarding" target for an activity.

Both are one-way switches. Once I turned them on and saved, there was no way to turn them back off again, so I made sure I actually wanted notes and activities on this table before publishing the change.

Adding the Timeline control to the form

With both settings enabled, I opened the Asset table's main form in the form designer, selected Components in the left navigation, and dragged Timeline into a section. Until I saved and published, the timeline area on the form just showed "Almost there," since the designer has no real record to load data for.

The component's configuration panel let me choose which Record types appear — Activities, Notes, and Posts are all on by default — and, once I expanded Record settings, which specific activity types are enabled, how the timeline is sorted by default, and whether users can create records directly from the timeline.

Demonstration of Timeline control

Configuring the table and form is one thing, but I wanted to see the timeline actually working against a real record, so I built a quick model-driven app around the Asset table. I selected App > Model-driven app from the New menu.

I named the new app "Assets."

The app opened in the app designer with no pages yet.

I selected Add page > Dataverse table to surface the Asset table in the app.

I picked the Asset table from the list and added it.

I selected Save and Publish to make the app available to play.

The published Assets app opened to an empty Active Assets view.

I created a new Asset record named "Neil's Laptop." Before the first save, the timeline area just prompted me to save the record first.

Once I saved, the timeline became active, with a search bar and a note entry field ready to go.

I added a note to confirm Notes were working end to end.

The note appeared on the timeline, and the create-a-timeline-record menu listed Email alongside the other activity types I'd enabled earlier — confirmation that the Asset table was now a valid "Regarding" target for activities.

I created a test email regarding the Asset record.

The Asset's timeline then showed both the email and the note together, confirming notes and activities were both working end to end on a custom table.

Rolling up activities from custom related records

I wanted to see whether the Asset table's activities could roll up onto a related record's timeline the same way they do for Account and Contact. I'd already added a Primary Contact lookup field to Asset — a many-to-one relationship to Contact — and set it to John Doe on my "Neil's Laptop" record, which already had a note and a test email on its own timeline.

With the default Referential relationship behavior, Asset never showed up anywhere on John Doe's timeline. The setting that actually matters turned out to be the relationship's own behavior, not anything in the Timeline component. I opened the Primary Contact relationship from the Asset table's Relationships list.

Its Advanced options showed a Type of behavior dropdown, defaulted to Referential, with Parental and Custom as the other choices.

These three behaviors control how actions on the parent record — delete, assign, share, and so on — cascade down to the child. Referential keeps the two records loosely linked, with no cascading: deleting the parent leaves the child alone (or blocks the delete, if Restrict Delete is set). Parental is the tight coupling — child records follow the parent's delete, assign, and share actions, and that's also the behavior that exposes the Rollup View setting I needed. Custom lets you pick each of those cascade actions individually instead of taking the Parental bundle as a whole, which is exactly what I saw when I looked at this same relationship from Contact's side further down.

Switching it to Parental revealed a new Rollup View property underneath, which I set to Cascade All.

Viewed from Contact's side, the same relationship showed up as Custom behavior, with Rollup View sitting alongside Delete, Assign, Share, Unshare, and Reparent — all set to Cascade All.

I added Contact as a page in my Assets app so I could view and edit Contact records directly.

On Contact's main form, I set the timeline's Activity rollup type to Related and republished.

John Doe's own timeline then showed the test email — the one I'd created regarding the Neil's Laptop Asset record, not regarding John Doe directly.

To prove it was a genuine rollup and not a duplicate, I opened the email from Contact's timeline and edited its body to add "(asset related email edited)."

Back on the Asset record itself, the edit was there.

And refreshing John Doe's Contact record again, the edited email was still showing — but the note never rolled up alongside it.

So the custom-table rollup does seem to work.

Notes didn't make the same trip, though — only the email rolled up.

Reopening the relationship from Contact's side, it now showed simply as Parental behavior with Rollup View set to Cascade All, instead of the six-way Custom breakdown I'd seen right after first saving it.

Notes turned out to have their own, separate Note rollup type setting under the Timeline's Notes section, still sitting at None even with Activities set to Extended.

I changed it to Related.

I selected Save and Publish again.

This time John Doe's timeline showed both the rolled-up email and the rolled-up note from Neil's Laptop.

So Notes do roll up too — they just need their own Note rollup type turned on separately from Activities, rather than riding along with the Activity rollup type setting.