Activities can be created from customer or other records as well as from the application menu toolbar in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Because activities are critical to developing a complete view of each customer’s interaction with your company, you’ll find several locations from which you can quickly create new activities. You can even schedule follow-up activities from an existing activity! For instance, you can enter notes from a phone call with a client contact, and then schedule a follow-up appointment activity based on a time and date discussed with the customer during your call. By doing so, you can save the phone call activity as Completed while also ensuring that the dialog with your customer continues by scheduling the future appointment.
In all record types for which you can create activities, Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides the following ways to create a new activity:
You can click the Follow Up button in the entity menu toolbar to open the Form Assistant pane, which displays the necessary fields to quickly create an activity.
You can use the Actions menu in the entity menu toolbar to open an Add Activity submenu that allows you to quickly select the activity type you want to create.
You can use the Activities option in the left navigation area of the form. From this view, you can click the New Activity button in the grid toolbar to create an activity.
Any time an activity is created from a specific record, that record is automatically populated in the new activity’s Regarding field. When you create a new activity from an existing lead, account, or contact, Microsoft Dynamics CRM can also populate other activity fields in a record, such as the phone number in a phone call or the recipient in an e-mail message.
In this exercise, you will create a phone call activity from a contact record. When you create a phone call record by using this technique, Microsoft Dynamics CRM automatically populates the mapped fields, such as the call recipient, the phone number, and the phone call’s Regarding value.
Note
USE the Mike Snyder contact record you created in Chapter 3. If you cannot locate the Mike Snyder record in your system, select a different contact record for this exercise.
BE SURE TO use the Internet Explorer Web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web site before beginning this exercise.
Navigate to the Contacts view and open the Mike Snyder contact record or any contact record in your system. Ensure that the contact record includes a phone number in the Business Phone field.
In the toolbar, click the Actions button, and then click the Add Activity submenu. On the submenu, click Phone Call.
A phone call record opens and is populated with data from the contact record.
Click Incoming near the upper right of the form.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM automatically switches the values in the Sender and Recipient fields. This direction field indicates whether you placed the call or the contact called you.
In the Subject field, type Spoke with customer.
In the form toolbar, click Save.
Click Actions in the toolbar, and then click Close Phone Call.
The Close Phone Call dialog box opens.
In this dialog box, you can select a value to record how you closed out the phone call.
Select Made, and then click OK.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM closes the phone call as a completed activity.
Tip
The other types of activities can be created by using processes similar to those you just learned for creating tasks and phone calls; therefore, we won’t repeat the exercises for each activity type. Chapter 5, shows how to create appointments, tasks, and e-mail messages in Outlook that can be saved into Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Tip
Certain activity types can be converted to opportunities and cases. You can convert phone calls, faxes, e-mail messages, appointments, and letters to sales opportunities or service requests by clicking the Convert Activity button on the form toolbar. Opportunities are detailed in Chapter 6, and cases are covered in Chapter 11.