In this article you will learn to get comfortable in your Copper account and personalize it to your liking!
Getting to know your Copper Account
→ Activity Feed
Start your day by logging into Copper and seeing your Feed. This is a space to see you and your team’s activity in one location.
Click here to check out a day in the life of using Copper Feed.
Activity:
View your team’s activities. Use the 'Following' filter to see your own activity or select 'All' to see everyone's emails, meetings, and more.
Tasks:
See what tasks have due dates coming soon.
Meetings:
See your upcoming meetings and click into the associated records to compare.
Suggested Contacts:
Copper finds contacts you’ve emailed recently that you might want to add. These suggestions are based on the people you email with most often.
Important: These contacts won't be added automatically. You'll need to click add to add them to Copper.
→ Leads, People, Companies
Record pages (Leads, People, Companies) have the same three-column design.
Details (left column):
Here is where you will see all of your fields
Copper's default fields can be rearranged or hidden to fit your specific needs. Learn more here.
This is where you will also be able to add custom fields (more to come in the next chapter).
Think about what information you need for each record type. Do you want to know how your leads heard about you? Do you need expected budgets and scope? How do you want to organize and filter this information?
Activity (middle column):
Log Activity: What types of activity or interactions do you want to capture details on? Activities can be internal administrative or external meetings and interactions.
Notes: Add details to your record, like notes or activity logs. Use the @mention feature to communicate directly with colleagues within Copper. This keeps conversations organized and ensures important messages are seen.
Email: Every email you send from within the Copper app will come directly from you and include your Gmail signature. It will also appear in your sent folder. Likewise, any email you send in Gmail associated with a contact will appear in the activity feed too.
Related (right column):
People, Companies, Opportunities
You'll see a quick overview of related records. If you’re in a contact record, you’ll see related opportunities. If you’re in a company record, you’ll see opportunities and contacts. If you’re in an opportunity, you’ll see related people and companies.
Tasks
Who needs to write down a list on paper when you have it built directly into Copper? This allows you to create your task and relate them directly to any record type.
Tasks will appear in: The related record, the Task page in the navigation, in email reminders and your Google Calendar.
Files
When sending or receiving an email with an attachment, it will be automatically attached to the file section, along with the date the email is sent.
Calendars
All of your calendar events booked with people in Copper will sync here. You can also book events from here and will connect you to your calendar.
→ Tasks section
Copper Tasks help you keep track of all your tasks in one place and manage completed and ongoing tasks through filters and lists, making it easy to stay on top of your daily work and requirements.
Details
All of your Copper and Custom Fields
Activity Type - Just like in People, companies and Pipelines, you can track the type of activity you are doing, typically we recommend using “To Do” activity type for tasks
Notes
This is a place to add any extra notes when working on a task
Customizing your Copper Account
Everything that we are reviewing in this section can be found under “Settings” in your main Menu.
→ Account Settings
Adding/Removing Users: When setting up your Copper account, you need to determine how many seats you need and at what level (Business, Professional or Started). Once that is determined and added, you can add these Users in Copper.
Quick tip: Remember to use 'Users' for your employees and 'People' for your external contacts. You can edit users name and permissions within Copper, but if you need to change their email address, you will need to reach out to our support team using the little pink ? at the bottom of your screen.
Go to Settings > Account Settings > Company & Invite new users - follow the prompts to add new users
Select their permissions (Admin/User, Sync/ etc.)
Remember when you click next, you will have the option to assign to their seat or invite them to a trial
→ User vs. Admin
When adding new users, you'll need to assign them a role: User or Admin
Admins can customize Copper. They can create Pipelines, set up automations, and make other changes. It's best to limit the number of admins to avoid confusion.
Users are your team members who use Copper daily to manage contacts and processes, such as your sales and account teams.
→ Currency
By default our currency is set to USD but we have the ability to pick whichever currency works best for your company and can also select multiple currencies if needed.
Go to Settings > Account Settings > Currencies - select your default currency and select any others if required
→ Personal Preferences
Each User will want to update their preferences to make their Copper account their own.
Settings > Personal Preferences (Will take you here by default when you click settings) - update the below features individually by user.
Time Zone: Set your timezone so your calendar and tasks sync to the correct timezone for you.
Email Settings: Majority of this is set by default but a few items to call out:
Email Preference: By default, email links open in Gmail. However, we strongly recommend changing this setting to "Send and reply from Copper" during the account owner's initial login. This setting allows you and your team (as it will be set for other users you add) to send new emails and reply to emails directly from within Copper.
Remember, any email sent from inside of Copper comes directly from your Google account, save a copy in your Google sent folder and even append your Google signature - nothing Copper about it, all Google - Cool hey?
Visibility - By default, all emails are visible to other team members within Copper. This is a common company practice as it fosters collaboration and transparency. We recommend maintaining this default visibility. You can always mark specific emails as private if necessary. Sharing email communications is a key benefit of a CRM system. It allows for easy access and understanding of past interactions with contacts, enables smooth coverage for colleagues during their absence, and helps avoid duplicate contact outreach by ensuring everyone is aware of ongoing communication efforts.
If team-wide visibility is not suitable for your team, you can set your default email visibility to "Private" and mark individual emails as "Public" when you want to share them with your team.
We often observe this approach where senior management may prefer private emails by default, while sales teams often benefit from public visibility.
Email templates: Copper's Email Templates provide a significant time-saving solution that allow you to quickly draft professional emails.
Two types of email templates can be created: individual templates created and used by individual users, and shared templates created by administrators and accessible to the entire team, promoting consistent communication and improving overall team efficiency.
Email templates can be created using many great Copper functions directly:
New and exciting AI generated Templates - why think about what you need to write when Copper AI can write it for you!
You can add many features to a template: merge fields, hyperlinks, attachments, images and fonts.
Using Copper Templates - Copper templates can be used not only in Copper (Under Contacts individually or Bulk emails) but also in your Gmail directly if you have the Chrome Extension installed (if you haven’t already, go and install it now).
Notifications: Notifications determine how you receive updates from Copper, such as through email, the mobile app, or within the web application itself. You have the flexibility to customize your notification preferences by unchecking specific notifications within the Copper interface.
We recommend keeping all notifications enabled initially to gain a full understanding of the system. Once familiar, you can then disable any notifications that are not relevant to your workflow.
→ Team
Goal Settings: Define your team's goals for using a CRM. Consider your desired level of team collaboration. Will all team members require access to all contacts and Pipelines? Or should teams be organized into groups (e.g., Sales, Marketing, Management) with varying levels of access to information?
If you envision a fully collaborative environment where all team members have access to all information, you can skip the team setup process.
Visibility and Permissions: This is mostly used when you want the Sales team only seeing their Pipeline and the Marketing team seeing their Pipeline, as an example.
You will want to determine who is part of what team, and in that team, what they can see (i.e. certain Pipelines, all contacts or just contacts on that team, or their own contacts).
Remember: When using Team Permissions, ensure that each team member is assigned to at least one team. Remember that team members can belong to multiple teams if needed.
→ Customizations: This section is available to Admin only and whatever you update here will be global for all users in your Copper account. Go to: Settings > Customize
Manage Fields on Record: This section is in relation to the “details” part of your Leads / People / Companies / Pipelines / Tasks records in Copper. This is where your default and custom fields sit.
Copper default fields: You cannot edit any Copper default fields but can deactivate some of them if they are not needed (if there are some that you do not need but cannot deactivate, i recommend making a section (notes on that just below) “Not in Use” and move it to the bottom.
Create Custom Fields: To effectively utilize Copper, determine the specific information you need to track for each record (People, Companies, etc.). Consider how you will segment, filter, and report on your data within Copper. This analysis will help identify the necessary custom fields. Determine the appropriate record type for each field (e.g., "Website" is a Company field, "Job Title" is a Person field). Note that the same custom field can be added to multiple record types if needed. Click here to learn more.
Adding Custom fields:
Is simply done by clicking “Add Custom Field” at the top right of the screen.
When creating a custom field, select the most appropriate field type. For list-based data (e.g., job titles, company industries), using a Dropdown or Multi-Select field is highly recommended. This enhances data consistency and improves filtering and searching capabilities. Text fields can be prone to inconsistencies in data entry, making it difficult to accurately filter and search for specific information. After selecting the field type, provide a clear and concise label for the field. This label will be displayed within Copper. You can also:
Add as a Filter check box
Create the same fields in multiple records (i.e. in your Pipeline also)
Set a field key - this is used for workflow automations that we will talk about later in this document. (Note: it needs to be all lowercase and no spaces- i.e. Product Type would be product_type)
Creating Sections: This gives you the ability to organize your fields and the details section a little more. For example, we usually recommend making a “Contact details” field in the people section to include: email, phone, social media, address. Think about what other sections you might want. Once you create the section you too can move it around by dragging the = on the left of the section.
Moving and rearranging fields: By clicking and dragging the little = on the left of the field will allow you to move a field up and down into a position that works for your workflow and ideally keeping most important fields at the top (Top of page is top of mind for team members to update and review)
Editing Custom fields: The Custom Fields section provides a central location for managing all your custom fields. Within this section, you can rename existing fields, add more options to Dropdown or Multi-Select fields, and extend the usage of a custom field to other record types.
Important Note: Once a field is created, its field type and internal key cannot be changed. If changes to these attributes are necessary, you will need to delete the existing field and create a new one with the desired settings.
Related Sections: Within each record type (People, Companies, etc.), you'll find several "Related" sections. These sections allow you to easily link and navigate between related records within Copper. There are different related records for each record type and can remove the ones you don’t need.
Manage Activity Types: By default, Copper tracks email communications and calendar events within the "Activity" section of each record. You may have other types of interactions or activities that you wish to log, such as phone calls, meetings, site visits, or social media engagements. Copper provides four default activity types. You can easily customize this list by adding new activity types to track unique interactions that are relevant to your specific business needs.
When selecting activity types, you want to determine “Was this an interaction or an internal activity I want to capture details on”
For those that count as interactions will count to your contacts Interactions / Last Contacted Date and Inactive Days.
Manage Tags: Tags are a flexible way to categorize records (People, Companies, etc.) based on shared characteristics that may not be easily captured by custom fields. For example, if you attend a conference and meet 10 people, you can tag all of them with "Conference 2024." This allows you to easily filter and view all attendees in one place, making it simple to follow up with them later. Tags are specific to each record type. You can manage all created tags within Copper, including adding, editing, and deleting them. Additionally, you can easily view all records associated with a specific tag.
Rename Records: Each company may have its own preferred terminology for the different record types within Copper (e.g., "Company" vs. "Account," "People" vs. "Contacts"). To accommodate these variations, Copper allows you to customize the display names for these record types. This ensures that the CRM aligns with your company's existing vocabulary and improves user adoption.
Sources: Where did your new lead or opportunity come from? Source is a field that shows in the details section of Leads and Pipeline records. It will come with a standard set of sources which you can change or add more.
Leads: By Default are turned off in Copper but you have the option to toggle it on in settings. We will explain the difference between Leads and People in the next section, Chapter 3.
Another key feature in this section allows you to define the specific status options used to qualify leads.
People: The "Contact Type" field categorizes how a person or company interacts with your business. Copper includes default options like "Potential Customer" and "Current Customer." You can customize these options to better reflect your specific business needs and terminology. For example, you might add contact types such as "Partner," "Vendor," "Competitor," or "Influencer.
Pipelines: Pipelines represent a process from start to finish and can be any repeatable linear process. You can have a Pipeline for Opportunities, Projects or other Items. We will work through Pipelines and your processes a little further down in Chapter 4.
Stages: In each Pipeline, you can determine what stages are required and can set them here and/or by using one of our Pipeline templates to get started.
During the stage creation in an opportunity Pipeline you can set your win percentages which will allow the “Win Probability” field to populate as you move from stage to stage and help with opportunity forecasting.
Loss reasons: Track lost deals to understand why they fell through. Use Copper's 'Loss Reasons' field to identify common issues and improve future sales efforts. Customize the default loss reasons to fit your specific needs.