Tasks have both short-term and long-term benefits to your workflow. Short-term, a task helps remind your team to attend a meeting, call a client or take action on another to-do list item. Long-term, you can report on the volume of different types of tasks and how long they're taking. This will help you fine-tune your workflow. The 'Activity Type' field on tasks helps you track interaction stats and create this type of report.
In this module, we'll tackle the following:
Understand the 'Activity Type' field
When you create a task, you have the option to indicate an Activity Type. For example, is the action a phone call, a meeting, or something else?
By default, your 'Activity Type' field comes with three options:
Phone Call
Meeting
To-do (must be enabled under Settings > Manage Activity Types)
You can also add custom activity types to tailor Copper to your workflow.
You can make Activity Types even more meaningful after you complete the task and log the activity:
All activity types (except to-do's) are sent to your interaction stats on a lead, person, company or opportunity record. This helps you understand how frequently you're interacting with a contact and when the last interaction took place.
If you're on the Professional or Business plan, all activity types are sent to the 'Activity by User' report. This lets you see the volume of tasks by each activity type, by each of your users, and by any time period you specify.
Let's look at how each of these options play out:
First, we'll explore the interactions feature at the record level. In the screencast below, we click the checkbox to complete a task and a notification appears toward the bottom of the screen. This notification confirms the task is complete and offers an option to 'Log Activity.' When we click 'Log Activity,' we leave final notes about the completion. Above the space where we leave notes is the 'Activity Type,' which you can leave as is or change before saving.
In the next screenshot, you'll see the result of clicking 'Log Activity' at the record level. In this example, we can see the number of interactions, the date of the most recent interaction and the number of inactive days associated with the Person named Alex Gordon.
Note: You cannot log an activity for a task that is not associated with any record (i.e. lead, person, company, opportunity, or project). When you mark an unassociated task as complete, the notification that confirms the completion won't have a 'Log Activity' option.
Next, let's take a look at how logging activity shows up in the 'Activity by User' report. If you're on the Professional or Business plans, you'll see this pre-built report under the 'Reports' section of the lefthand menu. This allows you to view interactions within a specific time period, by user and by interaction type.
Define your Workflow
For help deciding how you'll use the Activity Type field on tasks, ask yourself the following questions:
Do you want to log activities before or after an action has been taken?
If before, create a task. You can set a reminder date to notify you when the task is coming due.
If after, create an activity in the record profile. This is a quicker way to get the data into your interaction stats and your 'Activity by User' report.
How will you engage your contacts and opportunities? Will it be more than a phone call, meeting or to-do?
If yes, create custom activity types.
Is it important to know how long it's been since you're interacted with a contact, or how many times you've interacted?
This is measured in the interaction stats for a record. If this is important to measure, you should not use the 'to-do' activity type, as this won't count as an interaction. You can use 'phone call' or 'meeting' or any custom activity type you've created.
Note: When you mark a Task as complete, the activity won't count toward your interaction stats until you log the activity type.
Do you want to report on how many interactions your team members are having across all contacts and the most common interaction types each team member has?
If yes, you'll want to ensure your team members log activity type after marking a task as complete.
Note: When you mark a Task as complete, the activity type won't be sent to the 'Activity by User' report until you log the activity type.
Create custom activity types
Your admins can add new Activity Types beyond 'meeting,' 'phone call' and 'to-do.' Just follow the steps below:
Sign into your Copper account and click Settings from the lefthand menu.
Scroll down to the 'Customize' section and click 'Manage Activity Types'
Click the 'Create new activity type' button.
Give the activity type a name, select an icon to represent it in the activity feed and choose whether you'd like it to count as an interaction.
Click 'Save.'
Please note: If you'd like the option to filter your records by a custom activity type, you must check “Count as interactions” when creating your custom activity.
Log Activity when marking a task as complete
To make a task count as an interaction with a contact and to make the task's 'Activity Type' value show up in your 'Activity by User' report, you'll need to log the activity type associated with the task after you mark the task as complete.
Follow the instructions below:
Sign into your Copper Account and click 'Tasks' from the lefthand menu.
Hover over the circle to the left of the task name and click the square that appears.
Look for the notification pop-up letting you know the task was saved. Click the 'Log Activity' link in that notification.
Leave notes indicating what happened in the interaction and select the appropriate 'Activity Type' if it's not currently set to the one you want.
Click the 'Log Activity' button to save your update.
Still have questions?
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