Setting Single To Do Activities for a Group of Contacts

As well as setting a single To Do Activity against a single Contact record in Data Manager you can also create a new To Do Activity for a group of Contacts.

Create a new Single To Do Activity to a Group of Contacts

To create a new single To Do Activity to a group of Contacts from your Data Manager Contacts database:

1. Go to the Data Manager Home Screen.

2. Click the Contacts button.

3. Click the Person Icon to the left of any Contact's First Name (it doesn't matter which Contact you select at this stage). You will now be viewing the full details for the selected Contact. You will now need to search for the Contacts that you wish to create the single To Do Activity for so they are in a found subset of records (for example all Customers or Potential Customers). See the section on Searching the Contacts Database for more information on performing a Find.

Important: You can confirm the total Contacts you will be creating the new single To Do Activity for by viewing the navigation details in the top right hand corner to see how many Contacts are in the current found set. For example in the screenshot below there are 50 Contact records in total but there is a foundset of 3 records at present. When I create the new single To Do Acitivity it will only be created for those 3 records.

4. Once you have found the Contacts you wish to set the new single To Do Activity to and confirmed you have the correct current found set click the Action Plans tab - this displays any To Do Activities/Action Plans previously entered for the Contact you are viewing (it doesn't matter which Contact you are viewing at this stage but you will usually be viewing the first Contact in the found set):

5. Click the Icon under the Action Plans tab with the double green plus button to create a new single To Do Activity to the current found set of Contacts.

A new window will appear where you can enter the details for the New To Do Activity:

This is where you enter the details of the new To Do Activity for the current found set of Contacts. The fields in this screen are as follows:

Task Due Date: enter the date this new To Do Activity is due to be completed/performed. A popup calendar will appear that you can use to select the required date. This is the date it will appear in your To Do List.

Activity Type: enter the Activity Type. You can select from the drop down value list, for example SMS, Email, Phone Call etc.

Letter Code: if the Activity Type is Letter you can select one of the Data Manager Letters from the Microsoft Word Mail Merge Letters database using the drop down value list.

User Account Name: the Data Manager User Account Name who will be assigned the To Do Activity (it will appear in their To Do List). You can select a User Account Name from the drop down value list.

Task Description: this is where you can type in a description for this To Do Activity. Note that if the Activity Type is Letter the Description for the selected Letter will be inserted automatically and cannot be changed. If the Activity Type is SMS and you are using an SMS Template the SMS Template description will be inserted automatically and cannot be changed. If the Activity Type is Email and you are using an Email Template the Email Template description will be inserted automatically and cannot be changed.

Task Completed: this indicates if the To Do Activity has been completed or not. By default this field is set to No. You will generally mark this To Do Activity as completed when it appears in your To Do List and you have performed/completed the activity. However if you are going to complete the bulk To Do Activity immediately you can click Yes now so you will not have to click Yes for each To Do Activity that you are about to create.

There are also 2 green buttons on the right hand side of the screen that perform as follows:

Cancel: click this to cancel the New To Do Activity and return to the Contacts database

Continue: click this to proceed and create a new To Do Activity for the current found set of Contacts and return to the Contacts database

After you have clicked the Continue button a progress bar will appear on the screen whilst Data Manager creates the new activities for each Contact in your current found set:

If the Activity Type for the bulk To Do Activity was Letter Data Manager will then perform the mail merge to the current found set of Contacts using the selected Microsoft Word Mail Merge letter which will open. You can then proceed with the mail merge in Microsoft Word. Otherwise when this has finished you will now see the new To Do Activity that you have just created in the list of Action Plans for each Contact in your current found set. To the right of each To Do Activity are 3 buttons that perform as follows.

- click this button to deleted this To Do Activity (Once you delete a To Do Activity it is permanently deleted and cannot be retrieved except from a backup copy that you have previously made of your copy of Data Manager. See the Backups section for information on backing up Data Manager). When you delete a Email Message in Data Manger you are presented with a warning dialog box confirming that you wish to delete this To Do Activity, allowing you to cancel the deletion in case you accidentally clicked this button. You can bypass the confirming dialog box by holding down the SHIFT key when pressing the delete button.

- if the selected To Do Activity was created as part of an Action Plan and you would like to change the due date for this To Do Activity click this button to shuffle the date. Any other To Do Activities that were set as part of the same Action Plan that are NOT completed will also be shuffled based on the Interval Days (see the Action Plans chapter for more information on creating Action Plans in Data Manager).

The 3rd button is the button to perform the To Do Activity and changes depending on the Activity Type (if it is NOT one of the below Activity Types this button is blank). You click this button

The total number of To Do Activities for the Contact you are viewing also appears on the right hand side of the Action Plans tab in red: