Overview
Custom Fields and Activities are further ways to customise your sales opportunity / prospect workflow. This article will cover the benefits of these additions, and steps on how to create them.
Custom Fields
There is likely to be custom information, unique to your organisation, that needs to be captured within your workflows. Specifically, information tied to the case record itself, rather than the individual or organisation that the record is based on.
Most case custom fields are connected to either:
A specific case type
A case instance
To create a custom case field, follow the steps below:
Step 1: Create Custom Fieldset
Navigate to Administer --> Customise Data and Screens --> Custom Fields
Select Add Set of Custom Fields add the bottom of the screen
Details of how to populate this screen are in our Custom Fields guide
Sales Opportunity-specific points:
Used For:
You can choose for this fieldset to apply to a specific Case Type, multiple Case Types or an entire Case Instance.
Display Style
Inline: Fieldset is shown in the main Summary tab of a record
Tab: Fieldset is shown in a Details tab of the record
Example:
Step 2: Create Custom Field(s)
Once you have your custom fieldset, you will need to create the custom field(s) within. This is also covered in our Custom Fields guide
Activities
Within your sales opportunity workflows, there may be specific timestamps that need to be documented in detail, such as tasks, milestones or communications. These could be anticipated, or ad hoc events.
For example, there may be an internal process of following up on a lead after there has been no response for one week. In contrast, as part of a specific lead, your team may like to log on the record that the lead was spotted at a recent business convention.
Activities add another layer that can be reported on in your CiviPlus site, and further categorises your most important workflows and processes.
Activities can be used to cover all of these eventualities. CiviPlus comes with default Activity Types that can be used immediately. For more custom processes, custom activity types can be created. For both inbuilt and custom activities, they can be utilised in Timelines on individual case records - covered later in this article collection.
Inbuilt Activity Types
To locate the Activity Types that already exist in your system:
Navigate to Administer --> Customise Data and Screens --> Activity Types
Examples of default activity types are shown below:
Inbuilt activity types may be sufficient for simpler workflows.
Custom Activity Types
Once you have reviewed the existing activity types in CiviPlus, you may still require custom activities to be created. To create custom activity types, follow the steps here:
Navigate to Administer --> Customise Data and Screens --> Activity Types
Select Add Activity Type at the bottom of the page
Label: The visible title of the activity type
Description: Internal description
Activity Category: The kind of activity
Task
Communication
Milestone
Alert
Order: The position of the activity type in the list
Icon: Select an icon that will be attached to the activity type when it is used
Component: You can decide whether this new Activity Type can be created for Contacts and Cases, or Cases only
Pick the broader option if the information captured in the activity is relevant outside of the individual workflow record
Enabled: Tick this once you wish the Activity Type to be active in the system
Our Timelines and Sequences article describes how to incorporate specific activity types within your case types.