Title: How do I create an Activity in Act!?
Question: How do I create an Activity in Act!?
Product Details:
Product Family: Act!
Product: Act! Pro, Act! Premium, Act! Premium (access via web)
Version: 2011 and later
Answer:
What are Activities?
Activities are appointments such as meetings and tasks, such as job related to-do items that you would like to schedule and track. By default, there are six Activity Types:
Additionally, you can create custom Activity Types if the default Activity Types do not suit your needs. For more information on creating custom Activity types, refer to the following knowledgebase article:
How to create and manage custom Activity Types in Act!
Scheduling Activities
Activities must be scheduled with at least contact or user in the database, however, you can also select multiple contacts. Personal activities can be scheduled with your My Record.
To schedule an activity:
Available Options when Scheduling Activities
The Schedule Activity window has options in several tabs:
General
The General tab is where all the primary information about the activity is entered, such as when, how long, who with, etc. The following options are available on the General Tab:
Details
The Details tab allows you to enter more detailed information about the activity, such as discussion points, or notes about what was discussed during the meeting. Additionally, you can attach files or shortcuts to files related to the activity.
Recurrence
The Recurrence tab allows you to schedule the activity as a recurring event. These can be configured to be Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly, and each option has options to more finely tune it. For example, you can schedule the activity to be for every other day/week/month/year, etc.
Availability (requires Act! Premium)
The Availability tab allows you to view the availability of any user or resource the activity is scheduled with. This enables you to find and select a time slot that all users and resources are available for the activity.
Question: How do I create an Activity in Act!?
Product Details:
Product Family: Act!
Product: Act! Pro, Act! Premium, Act! Premium (access via web)
Version: 2011 and later
Answer:
What are Activities?
Activities are appointments such as meetings and tasks, such as job related to-do items that you would like to schedule and track. By default, there are six Activity Types:
- Appointment
- Call
- Meeting
- To-do
- Personal Activity
- Vacation
Additionally, you can create custom Activity Types if the default Activity Types do not suit your needs. For more information on creating custom Activity types, refer to the following knowledgebase article:
How to create and manage custom Activity Types in Act!
Scheduling Activities
Activities must be scheduled with at least contact or user in the database, however, you can also select multiple contacts. Personal activities can be scheduled with your My Record.
To schedule an activity:
- Navigate to a contact you’d like to schedule an activity with, or if you want to schedule a personal activity, navigate to your My Record
Note: Alternatively, you can schedule an activity with multiple contacts by selecting multiple contacts in a List View, then moving on to step 2
- Choose the appropriate activity type from the Global Toolbar, or click Schedule > Other, then choose an activity type from the list
- Enter in the activity details, then click OK when done
Available Options when Scheduling Activities
The Schedule Activity window has options in several tabs:
General
The General tab is where all the primary information about the activity is entered, such as when, how long, who with, etc. The following options are available on the General Tab:
- Start Date: The date that the activity starts
- Start Time: The time the activity starts. This can be entered manually, if you need to schedule an activity for a non-standard time. Alternatively, this can be set to timeless if an activity doesn’t have a specific start time
- Duration: How long the activity is scheduled for
- End Date: The date the activity ends
- End Time: The time the activity ends. If you set a duration for the activity, this is already entered.
- Use Banner: Allows you to keep the activity “pinned” at the top of the calendar views. This can be used with timed and timeless activities, however since timeless activities do not appear on the Daily or Work Week Calendar views, Use Banner is useful for being able to view timeless activities in those views.
- Schedule With: Shows who the activity is scheduled with. Contacts can be added to this by clicking the Contacts drop-down, then choosing Select Contacts...
- Send invatation e-mail: If enabled, after saving the activity, a Microsoft Outlook Meeting invitation window will appear, allowing you to email an invitation to attendees that they can add to their personal calendars, regardless of whether they also use Act!.
- Associate With: Allows you to associate the activity with a group or a company. By default, any company linked to the contact or contacts you are scheduling with will automatically be added here. You can add Groups to this, or additional companies if desired by clicking the [...] button
- Regarding: This is kind of like a subject for your activity. You can manually type a summary for the activity here, select from a list of pre-defined options, or edit the list values to create your own defaults
-
Resources (requires Act! Premium): If you have office resources that are shared amongst the organization, for example a projector or conference room, this allows you to reserve it so that other Act! users in your database know that you’ll be using it during that time.
Note: Resources will only be able to be selected if they have been added to the database before scheduling the activity. For more information about managing activity resources, refer to the following knowledgebase article:
How to Add and Manage Activity Resources in ACT!
- Location (requires Act! Premium): This is where the meeting is happening. If you’ve configured resources that are also locations, these can also be resources, however you can also manually type a location in at the time of scheduling the activity
- Priority: This is the level of Importance for this activity
- Color: This allows you to color code your meetings. By default, this will change based off of the priority you have set. Low is black, Medium is blue, and High is red. This can also be manually set after choosing a priority by clicking the [...] button next to the color
- Ring Alarm: Allows you to choose if and when you receive a reminder for the activity
- Schedule For: Allows you to schedule this activity on behalf of another user
- Create separate activity for each contact: If scheduling activities with multiple contacts, rather than creating one activity that includes all contacts, each individual contact gets their own individual activity in the calendar
- Private: Allows you to make this activity visible to only yourself or the user it is scheduled for
Details
The Details tab allows you to enter more detailed information about the activity, such as discussion points, or notes about what was discussed during the meeting. Additionally, you can attach files or shortcuts to files related to the activity.
Recurrence
The Recurrence tab allows you to schedule the activity as a recurring event. These can be configured to be Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly, and each option has options to more finely tune it. For example, you can schedule the activity to be for every other day/week/month/year, etc.
Availability (requires Act! Premium)
The Availability tab allows you to view the availability of any user or resource the activity is scheduled with. This enables you to find and select a time slot that all users and resources are available for the activity.