Chapter at a Glance
✓ | Understand different activity types. |
✓ | Understand the Regarding field. |
✓ | Create follow-up activities. |
✓ | View open and completed activities. |
✓ | Create a note. |
✓ | Manage your activities. |
✓ | Send direct e-mail messages. |
In the previous chapters, you learned how to create and manage accounts and contacts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In this chapter, you will learn how to record, manage, and report on the activities and notes related to those records. The word activity is a generic term that Microsoft Dynamics CRM uses to describe business interactions, such as phone calls, tasks, and e-mail messages. Notes are comments or other descriptive text related to a record.
Tracking activities and notes allows you and your company to:
Record the phone calls to and from a particular person or account.
Track customer service calls regarding a product or service.
Assign tasks to ensure a sales representative follows up with new leads in a timely fashion.
Save copies of the e-mail correspondence on a particular topic.
Understand the marketing activities a prospect or customer participated in during his or her history with your firm.
Think back to a time when you called a company with a question, and each time you called about the same topic the representative acted as though you had never spoken with the company before. This type of situation causes frustration for the customer and for the company. If that company had recorded calls and notes related to your request in a customer relationship management system, the representatives could resolve your subsequent calls more quickly because they could access the history of your interaction with the company.
Capturing all of the interactions with your customers and prospects as activities allows you to provide a higher level of customer service, improve sales efficiency, make better business decisions, and market more effectively.
In this chapter, you will learn how to capture tasks, e-mail messages, faxes, appointments, and other customer interactions in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and then relate them to customer and other records to gain a full picture of how your organization communicates with its customers.
Important
The exercises in this chapter require only records created in earlier chapters; none are supplied on the companion CD. For more information about practice files, see "Using the Companion CD" at the beginning of this book.
Troubleshooting
Graphics and operating system–related instructions in this book reflect the Windows Vista user interface. If your computer is running Windows XP and you experience trouble following the instructions as written, refer to the "Information for Readers Running Windows XP" section at the beginning of this book.
Important
The images used in this book reflect the default form and field names in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Because the software offers extensive customization capabilities, it’s possible that some of the record types or fields have been relabeled in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment. If you cannot find the forms, fields, or security roles referenced in this book, contact your system administrator for assistance.
Important
You must know the location of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web site to work the exercises in this book. Check with your system administrator to verify the Web address if you don’t know it.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM uses the term activity to describe several types of interactions. The types of activities are:
Phone Call. Use this to record a received or initiated telephone call.
Task. Use this to record a to-do or follow-up item.
E-Mail. Use this to record a received or sent e-mail message.
Letter. Use this to record the mailing of a physical letter or document.
Fax. Use this to record a received or sent facsimile.
Appointment. Use this to record a meeting or appointment. Many companies use appointments to track conference calls or online meetings, in addition to face-to-face meetings.
Service Activity. Use this to record a service that you performed for a customer.
Tip
To create and use service activities, you must first ensure that your administrator has set up and configured the services, sites, and resources that your company offers. Service activities do not apply to every type of business; they are best suited to businesses that need to schedule customer services in specific time slots. Your business might not use service activities at all.
Campaign Response. Use this to record a customer or prospect response to a marketing campaign. For example, you might create a campaign response to record that a customer registered for a seminar.
See Also
Campaign responses offer unique marketing functionality that differs from that of the other activities. See Chapter 10, to learn more about this activity type.
Tracking activities and notes on customer records helps you and others in your organization understand all of the communication your organization has had with each customer. You can also create search queries, views, and reports to track activities by customer or activity type. For example, a sales manager can view information about her team’s phone calls for review during a weekly sales meeting, or a customer service manager can view the open service activities scheduled for an upcoming week to ensure that his team is available.
See Also
For more information about analyzing data and creating reports in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, see Chapter 16.
The most commonly used data fields in activity records include those listed in the following table.
Data field | Description |
|---|---|
Subject | A brief description of the activity |
Regarding | The customer or other record to which the activity is related |
Description | Additional notes or information about the activity |
Status | The status of the activity, such as Active, Completed, or Canceled |
Duration | The estimated time it will take for the activity to be completed |
Actual Duration | The actual time it takes for the activity to be completed |
Scheduled Start | The estimated start date of the activity |
Due Date | The estimated completion date of the activity |
Actual Start | The date the activity was started |
Actual End | The date the activity was completed |
Each activity record also includes data fields specific to the activity type. For example, only phone call activities contain information about the phone number or the call direction.
Tip
Even though the activity forms include category and sub-category fields, Microsoft Dynamics CRM categories are not related to the categories configured in Microsoft Office Outlook. Consequently, updating an activity’s category in Microsoft Dynamics CRM will not update the activity’s Outlook category. Even though they share the same name, Microsoft Dynamics CRM categories are unrelated to Outlook categories.