Interactions and follow-ups
What happened with a contact, a company or a deal, on one timeline: notes, calls, meetings, emails and follow-ups with a due moment and a reminder.
An interaction is something that happened with a person: a note, a call, a meeting, an email or a follow-up. It is logged once and appears wherever it belongs: a call with a contact about a deal is on the contact's timeline, their company's and the deal's.
Note
An administrator can switch the CRM off for a workspace (Modules and features). If you do not see it in yours, it is switched off there: ask an administrator if you need it.
The timeline
A contact's page, a company's page and a deal's page each have a Timeline, newest first. It holds the interactions that concern the record, and with them what the workspace already knows:
- on a contact: the tickets and requests they raised through their account, and the deals they are on, once those are won or lost;
- on a company: the tickets and requests that name it, its deals as they are won or lost, and its contracts as they started, for those who may see its billing;
- on a deal: its interactions alone, since the deal's page has its own history below.
Show narrows the timeline to one kind, or to the tickets, deals and contracts alone, and Logged by to what one member logged. Twenty-five items are shown at a time; Show older adds the next. What somebody else logs while you have the page open appears by itself.
Anyone who may see the CRM sees the timelines (see Who may see and change the CRM). An interaction about a deal is seen only by those who may see the deal, on every timeline it is on, and customers never see any.
Logging an interaction
Log interaction opens a dialog that asks for what its kind needs:
| Kind | What it records |
|---|---|
| Note | Something to remember, at a moment. |
| Call | A call, when it happened and how long it lasted. |
| Meeting | A meeting, when and how long. |
| An email you want on the record, logged by hand. Mail you BCC or forward to your logging address, and mail you write from Alba, are logged by themselves: see Email and the CRM. | |
| Follow-up | Something to do: see Follow-ups. |
Every kind has a subject and notes, written in Markdown. When starts at now and takes any moment, in your own time zone. How long is written as 30m or 1h 15m; a number alone is minutes. On a company's or a deal's timeline, With names the contact it was with, from the company's contacts and the deal's people, and the interaction is then on that contact's timeline too. A contact's own timeline needs no such choice, and an interaction logged there is also on their company's.
On a contact's page, Log a call beside a phone number opens the dialog with a call already chosen.
Logging needs the right to edit the CRM for the company concerned. You can change or delete the interactions you logged; someone who manages the CRM for the company can change or delete anybody's. An email that was sent or received is the exception: it can be deleted, never changed. Delete takes an interaction off every timeline it is on. Nothing is lost for good: the contact's and the company's History say who logged, changed and deleted each one.
Recording the time as well
A call or a meeting is often time you bill. Tick Also log the time, as an activity and the interaction also makes an activity of the same length at the same moment, under your name: on the deal when it is logged from a deal, otherwise for the company. The box is offered where you may log time, and the interaction is marked time logged. The activity is then an activity like any other, changed and deleted under Time; changing or deleting the interaction leaves it as it is.
In your calendar
With your calendar connected, a call or meeting you schedule here is put in your calendar, and a meeting in your calendar that a contact is invited to is logged here as a meeting. Both stay in step as either changes.
Follow-ups
A follow-up is an interaction with something still to do: it has a due moment, which is optional, and a member it is assigned to, you unless you choose somebody else who may read the company it is about (where it is about no company, somebody with a workspace CRM role).
- A record's open follow-ups are listed above its timeline, the soonest due first, with Done for the member they are assigned to and for whoever may change them. One past its moment says overdue.
- Your own open follow-ups are on your home page, under Follow-ups, each leading to the contact, company or deal it is about.
- When a follow-up comes due, the member it is assigned to is told: in the bell at the top of the page, and by email with the rest of their notifications. A follow-up marked done, deleted, moved to another moment or given to somebody else before then says nothing at the old moment.
A done follow-up stays on the timeline, marked done, and Reopen makes it open again.