Insight

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In short: Insights help you turn user feedback into actionable observations that guide product development. You can automatically generate Insights from Interview transcripts or create them manually to capture key findings. Each Insight can be later transformed into an Opportunity, ensuring your team stays focused on solving meaningful user problems and driving impactful outcomes.

What are Insights?

Insights are key observations and findings that emerge during the discovery phase of product development. They distill valuable information from user feedback, helping teams understand pain points, preferences, and emerging trends. By analyzing and organizing these insights, you can identify meaningful patterns to prioritize product opportunities effectively.

In Timebook, Insights are structured objects with a dedicated module for management. They act as the bridge between Interviews and Opportunities, ensuring that valuable feedback is translated into actionable product strategies. Timebook creates an environment where you can link these objects with little effort to ensure a smooth flow from data gathering to product innovation.

You can create Insights manually within the dedicated module, but Timebook also supports a more efficient, AI-powered approach. By analyzing transcripts attached to Interview objects, Timebook can automatically generate Insights, reducing manual effort and uncovering themes you might otherwise overlook.

For more information on transcript handling and connecting Insights to Interviews, see Managing Interview transcripts

This is what an Insight card looks like in the expanded view.

As a Team Admin or Owner, you must first enable the Insight feature in your Team’s settings. You can also customize the [Insights] module’s behavior by creating custom statuses or increasing automatization by integrating with Git.

For more information, see Insight settings

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Managing Insights in a dedicated module

Timebook has a dedicated module for managing Insights, offering a centralized space to capture, organize, and analyze key observations from user feedback. The [Insights] module is designed to help you structure findings, identify patterns, and connect them to actionable opportunities.

You can access Insight-related data in two ways:

• From the Discovery section: Open the [Insights] module in the [Discovery] section of the Navigator to view all Insights across your entire Timebook Workplace.

• From a specific Team: Open the [Insights] module within a Team to see only the Insights assigned to that Team, offering a more focused view.

Manage all Inisghts across your Workplace or focus on specific Team only.

As a Product Manager, you can use the [Insights] module to turn user feedback into actionable themes that guide decision-making. By connecting Insights to Opportunities, you ensure your product strategy aligns with user needs and business objectives.

As a UX Researcher, you can leverage Insights to organize findings from Interviews and identify patterns that will drive designs and product development. This ensures your team stays focused on solving the most impactful user problems.

The [Insights] module holds all the relevant product discovery data, which you can customize using various layouts, filters, and grouping options. Additionally, you can save these customized views as public for all members to access or keep them private for your personal use.

We have dedicated articles that explain how to manage data views and layouts in several Timebook modules, including this one.

For more information, see Layouts & views

Creating an Insight

The most common way to create an Insight is by using the [Generate Insights] feature while managing Interview transcripts. This automatically generates Insights based on feedback and links them directly to the original Interview object. For more information, see Interview

You can also create Insights manually within the [Insights] module, which helps document observations or findings not tied to a specific transcript. Whether created automatically or manually, each Insight can be further refined and transformed into an Opportunity or a Work Item.

You can create new Insights directly in Timebook, but if you already have data in a .csv file, you can import it instead. During the import process, you can map columns from your file to Timebook properties to ensure your data is structured correctly.

For more information, see Importing data into Timebook

To create an Insight manually:

This is how you create an Insight manually using the dedicated module.

1. Click the [+] button at the top of the list of Insights. The button placement may vary depending on your chosen data layout.

2. Give your new Insight a meaningful name. At this stage, you can also:

   • Add a short description.

   • Change the Insight’s status.

3. Click [Create...] to save your changes. The new Insight is added to the list.

4. Open the Insight to edit its details and access all the available options and properties.

When editing an Insight, explore sections and tabs on its card to easily access all management options. See below for more information.

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Insight cards

In Timebook, each Insight has its own card that displays all the options and properties you can use to manage it. In different layouts, you can also use cards to move your Insights around. For instance, you can drag and drop an Insight card to:

• Mark the status and progress of the Insight in the Board layout.

• Change the Insight’s position in the List layout.

After you open an Insight card, you can manage and navigate using the options in the top bar.

The top bar of an Insight card gives you plenty of additional options.

Options available in the top bar

1. [Navigation arrows] These arrows help you navigate between recently opened objects. Use the arrows to quickly return to the previous object and then move back to the original one. This is especially useful when navigating between linked objects or parent and sub-objects.

2. [Parent object indicator] If your Insight has a defined parent object, we will show the parent’s type and name here. You can click the indicator to open the parent object’s card.

3. [Item ID] This field shows the unique number of your Insight in Timebook. Click the ID field to copy it for future reference.

4. The following options are available in the top-right corner of the card:

   • [Generate] Use this button to generate Opportunities from this Insight. See below for more information.

   • [Collapse/Expand] This button lets you show or hide the right-side drawer. The drawer contains all the properties of your Insight, such as status and creation details. Expand the drawer to modify properties or collapse it to focus on the description or attachments.

   • [Copy link] Use this button to copy a link to your Insight for quick sharing with others.

   • [Watch] If you’re not the creator or assignee but still want to stay informed, you can watch an object to track changes. You can also assign others as watchers. Once you start watching, you’ll receive notifications about all important updates. All your watched objects are easily accessible in the [Watched] tab of My Work.

   • [...] Use this additional menu for more options. You can [Duplicate] your Insight to create an identical copy in the same location, [Link parent] to select a parent object for your Insight, or [Delete] it if it’s no longer needed.

You can safely close an Insight card by clicking out of it. We will save all the changes you made to the Insight.

Generating objects from Insights

You can use existing Insights to generate Opportunities and Work Items to quickly turn feedback into actionable steps. Once generated, you can assign the new item to the appropriate Team, ensuring that the right people are involved in driving the next steps forward.

To generate an Opportunity or a Work Item from an Insight:

This is how you generate an Opportunity from an Insight.

When you generate a new item from an Insight, several details from the original Insight are automatically carried over, ensuring consistency and saving you time. The copied details include:

• Name

• Description

• Tags

• Links and attachments

• Watchers

The items you generate from an Insight will be displayed in the [Related] section of its card.

See below for more information.

Insight card: Sections

When you look at the left side of an Insight card, you’ll notice several sections. Each section has a specific purpose: to help you describe the feedback, categorize it, or add supporting resources.

You can collapse or expand Inisght card sections to focus on what’s relevant.

Here’s an overview of the sections of an Insight card and their purpose:

Name

This field will be prepopulated if you generated the Insight using Timebook’s AI capabilities. For more information on AI-generated Insights, see Managing Interview transcripts

You can edit this field at any time to rename your Insight. Next to this field is a switch that lets you change the type of your Insight. Click the icon next to the name to select a different type.

Tags

This section allows you to categorize your Insight using tags. Tags help you find and identify objects in Timebook, as you can filter or group content by tags in various modules.

You can [Add tags] using the dedicated button or remove them by hovering over a tag and clicking [X]. For more information, see Tags

Description

This field will be pre-filled if the Insight was generated using Timebook’s AI features. In that case, the Description will include sections like “Pain points,” “Feature requests,” and “Value” to provide better context. For more information on AI-generated Insights, see Managing Interview transcripts

You can edit this field to modify your Insight’s description at any time. Enter text here, or press “/” to access advanced options. Use them to format your description, link other Timebook elements, or insert embedded content from external sources.

These text-formatting options are similar to those available in Timebook Documents. For more information, see Blocks

Links & attachments

This section is where you can support an Insight with links to external resources or attachments, such as files or Timebook Documents. Click the [+] button and choose the type of resource you want to add. Next, provide the link and a brief description.

Each linked resource type is marked with a dedicated icon, so you can quickly distinguish Figma links from Loom links, for example.

Sub-items

In Timebook, you can create a hierarchy of Insights by adding sub-items. They represent work that must be completed before the parent Insight is marked as done. Click the [+] button in this section to create sub-items, or use the [Link] button to browse and select existing objects to turn them into sub-items.

All sub-items are displayed in this section and grouped by the Teams they belong to. You can unlink these sub-items from the main Insight by clicking the [...] icon and selecting [Unlink].

Related

While [Sub-items] show the parent-child relationship, the [Related] section focuses on dependencies between your Insight and other Timebook objects. Click the [+] button in this section and use the dropdown menu to select the type of dependency, such as “Is blocked by,” “Supports,” or “Generated from.” Next, use the search bar to find and link an existing Timebook object.

Here, you can link your Insight to other object types; for example, you can create a link between an Insight and a Goal or a Work Item. In addition, this section automatically displays all Opportunities generated from the Insight. See above for more information on generating objects from Insights.

The sections presented above are not exclusive to Insight cards.

Cards of other object types in Timebook, such as Interviews or Work Items, have nearly identical designs.

Insight card: Tabs

When you look at the right side of an Insight card, you’ll notice several tabs. They allow you to further define your Insight, provide an update, and track changes over time.

Use the tabs on the right to make the most of the Insight card.

Here’s an overview of the Insight card tabs and their purpose:

Tab name	How to use it
Properties	In this tab, you can view and edit various properties of an Insight, such as assigning it to a specific Team or updating its Status. The tab also includes the [Quote match] property unique to Insights. This score measures how closely the quotes in the transcript match the Insight generated by AI. A high score means the quotes clearly describe a problem, requiring little rewording to create the Insight For more information, see our separate article dedicated to Properties
Comments	This tab allows Workplace members to communicate, share updates, and collaborate directly within the Insight. They can ask questions, provide updates, or offer feedback, making it a central communication hub. You can mention others using the @ symbol and notify specific people directly. For more information, see Comments
Activity	This tab tracks all actions and changes made to this Insight, providing a detailed history of events. It displays them in chronological order, showing when changes were made and by whom. The information in this tab is generated automatically, usually including status updates, reassignments, and comments.

We put all the tabs in a drawer, so you can hide them by clicking the [Collapse/Expand] button at the top of your Insight card.

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Related articles

Insight settings

Interview

Opportunity