Emails and Activities: General Information

Marketing and sales employees need to communicate with leads to introduce products and services to them, and gather any valuable information that may help in building the relationship between the company and these potential customers. MYOB Acumatica provides easy-to-use capabilities for tracking communication with leads.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

  • Create an email and send it to a lead
  • Register a phone call by creating an activity of the Phone Call type
  • Create a task related to lead qualification
  • Create an event associated with a lead

Applicable Scenarios

You may need to learn how to communicate with leads or contacts in MYOB Acumatica in scenarios that include the following:

  • You need to confirm a lead's contact information.
  • You need to find out lead's needs and provide the lead with the needed information.
  • You need to arrange a meeting with a lead or a contact.

Use of Emails and Activities in MYOB Acumatica

In MYOB Acumatica, you can track communication with your leads, prospects, and existing customers by using emails and activities. You can associate emails and activities with leads, contacts, business accounts, marketing lists, marketing campaigns, opportunities, and cases. Emails and activities are listed on the Activities tab of the following forms, which are or can be related to the customer relationship management (CRM) functional area:

By using the buttons on the table toolbar of the Activities tab, you can create an email, a task, or an event by clicking Create Email,Create Task, or Create Event, respectively; alternatively, you can create activities of various types by clicking one of the actions on the Create Activity menu. The email or activity opens in a pop-up window, in which you can specify the needed settings and save this email or activity.

You can hide an activity from the Customer Portal users by selecting the Internal check box in the Summary area of the Activity (CR306010), Task (CR306020), or Event (CR306030) form. The hidden activity will be available to only the internal MYOB Acumatica users.

Pinning of Emails and Activities

In MYOB Acumatica, you can pin the most important emails and activities—such as tasks, notes, or phone calls—to the top of the activities list so that you can quickly access and keep track of them. On the Activities tab of the form, you can select an activity and click the Pin/Unpin button to pin the activity to the top of the list. Once you have pinned an activity, it is moved to the top of the list and the Pin icon is shown in the Is Pinned column.

You can also click a pinned activity and click the Pin/Unpin button to unpin the activity. If you unpinned an activity from the list, an icon is no longer shown in the Is Pinned column, and the activity is moved to the appropriate location based on the sorting settings.

The Activities Tab

By using the Activities tabs on the Leads (CR301000), Contacts (CR302000), Business Accounts (CR303000), Opportunities (CR304000), Cases (CR306000), Marketing Lists (CR204000), and Marketing Campaigns (CR202000) forms, you can create activities and associate them with the particular entity. The Projects (PM301000) and Project Tasks (PM302000) forms also include an Activities tab on which you can view only activities associated with the project or task, respectively.

All activities (including current, completed, and not-yet-started ones) related to the selected entity—that is, the lead, contact, business account, opportunity, case, marketing list, marketing campaign, project, or project task you are viewing—are listed on the Activities tab. You can view the details of the task, event, or activity by clicking the value in the Summary column, which is a link to the corresponding task, event, or activity.

The list of activities or tasks is presented in a tabular format. The column with the unlabeled header contains icons that indicate the type of the activity in each row. The following icons are used:

  • is used for the Phone Call activity type.
  • is used for the Email activity type.
  • is used for the Task activity type.
  • is used for the Event activity type.
  • is used for the Chat activity type.
  • Custom icons for activities of other types can be used if they are defined on the Activity Types (CR102000) form.

The table has a number of columns with icons as column headings.

You can use the icons in the table rows in the following ways:

  • To attach a file to an activity, click the Files icon () in the row related to the activity, and the Files dialog box opens. (For detailed instructions on using this dialog box, see To Attach a File to a Record Detail.) Once you have attached a file, the File Attached icon () is instead displayed.
  • To add a note to the activity, click the Notes icon () in the row related to the activity. The Enter Record Note dialog box opens; for instructions on how to use this dialog box, see To Attach a Note to a Record Detail. Once you have attached a note, the Note Attached () icon is instead shown in the row. To read the note, click the icon.
  • In the column with the Complete Icon () in the column header, note the black check mark if it appears. This check mark indicates that the related activity has been completed.
  • Notice the column with the Priority Icon () in the column header. The icon in this row indicates the priority of an email, task and event:
    • If the exclamation mark () appears, the priority level is high.
    • If the black arrow () is displayed, the priority level is low.
    • If the column is empty, the priority level is normal.
  • Note the column with the Reminder Icon () in the column header, which indicates whether a reminder has been configured for the activity. If this column is empty for a particular row, a reminder was not set for the activity. If a white bell () is displayed in this column, a reminder has been configured for the activity.

Ability to Add User-Defined Fields to CRM Forms

User-defined fields are site-specific elements that have been defined to track information deemed as important to the organization. An administrator and customizer—a user with particular access rights in the system—can add user-defined fields to such CRM forms as Activity (CR306010), Task (CR306020), and Event (CR306030) form. For details, see Adjustment of the MYOB Acumatica UI: Managing User-Defined Fields.

Copying of User-Defined Fields Between Activities, Tasks, Events, and Other Entities

The values of user-defined fields can be copied between activities on the Activity (CR306010) form, tasks on the Task (CR306020) form, events on the Event (CR306030) form and an associated entity to which user-defined fields can be added.

In this context, the original record is the record from which the associated record is created. If you create an activity, task, or event from another task, event, or any entity in the system to which user-defined fields can be added, and both the original entity and the new entity has any of the same user-defined fields, the values of these fields are automatically copied to the new entity.

If both the new entity (activity, task, or event) and the original entity have default values that are defined for the same user-defined field, the field value from the original entity is copied to the corresponding field of the new entity.

For more details about the copying of user-defined fields between CRM entities, see Leads: General Information, Business Accounts: General Information, Contacts: General Information, Opportunities: General Information, or Cases: General Information.