CRM and the Calendar

When developing our other CRM products we always had a way to schedule a call back for a customer, but we were always missing an important part of the process. How to see what you’ve already scheduled for the day and in the case of scheduling for another employee, how to see what they have scheduled. So when we started working on our call backs, we decided that Lizzy should actually allow us to review, not only our schedule, but also the schedule of any other user or team.

To do this, we decided that instead of scheduling a call over on the call log itself, we have Lizzy taking you to the actual calendar page. Don’t worry, that call you started logging is still running and you can get back to it by clicking the running call link in the control panel on the left, or click the users name at the top right where the call counter is running, and then click Log Correspondence in the contacts menu. Lizzy knows there is already a call/email or fax running so she takes you back to it.

Once on the calendar, you want to choose the day you wish to add the call back. You can flip between weekly, monthly or daily views, and once you’ve found the special day, click on the cell to popup the add new event dialog. Click on the notebook to edit the event as we want to be specific about what we’re doing. You’ll notice that Lizzy brings up the dialog for adding a new event with everything already filled in for you. All you need to do is tell her what time, set your alert type and save it.

Don’t bother typing in the note section for the call back either because Lizzy is going to link your call log note directly to the calendar so you can review the note later without leaving the calendar. While we’re discussing notes, notice that you can easily create new topics while logging that call. What good is a 400 word document covering 10 different issues? Why not create a separate topic for each, well, Topic, and contain the information within them. This allows for much quicker reviews and keeps information grouped together.

We’ll write again later on the processes of logging a call, so for now, happy clicking…

–glenn hancock