Add History and Notes to Schedule Activity

[#1]

I must admit that there are many things that confuse me about ACT! because things can be simplified much more.

Case in point:  I want to schedule an activity to go to a website and register on it.  I already have the weblink in the history tab, but this means I have to leave the Schedule Activity Form, go to the history tab, copy the link, open the schedule activity form again and paste it into the details tab.

There are a total of 9 clicks to open the Schedule Activity form, close it, go to the history tab, open the specific history line(or click, and paste from the preview tab), open the schedule activity form again, click the details tab and then paste it and then close the form.

I propose adding a history tab and notes tab to the tabs in the schedule activity Form and have the compilation of all the histories and notes that are associated with the Associated Companies and groups right there.  Have a checkbox next to each list entry so one could add the specific history/note from the sublist of the history/note and have it appear in the details tab appending all the information if more than one checkbox is clicked.

How many clicks will this save?  Tons. And lots of confusion navigating the layouts for the info.

Pat

[#2]

I understand your pain point on activities, but I'm a little unclear on the History tab suggestion.

I'll offer my own use case and see if the suggestion still stands -  I schedule a to-do to go to the ACT! community site to check out Ideas.  I get the alert and nav to the Activity - I would have liked to simply linked information in the activity that was relevant to accomplishing this task - i.e. a link to the website, or even perhaps a link to the contact, opportunity, custom sub entity item, History etc... in ACT! which would display in a modal dialog next to the activity. 

Basically, I want to have a crib notes access to all pertinent info to accomplish an activity then close the activity out.  Also, (because I'm lazy) it would be great if the system just associated some of these items for me.  Then I'd be productive enough to answer a few more ideas!

Is this the same idea as what you have here?

[#3]

Yes and no.  Your example is a very good one and I highly suggest it for future versions.  The idea I suggested has bits and pieces in the database already.    The difference I believe lies in where the changes are being made.  Your idea looks like you would like to get things completed on the task list level and it assumes that you are doing your actions logically.  In my example,  I was in MY CONTACT RECORD (or any contact for that matter) and I saved the website to the history tab already.  Let's say I also have a note pertaining to my activity that I came up with 1 week ago and typed it in the notes section.  So in other words, I have bits and pieces in the database already.

The next step involves creating the activity with a "schedule activity" form.  What to do?  I have something in the history tab with the internet address link and I also have a note I had entered in the notes tab last week. I want those pieces pulled together and pasted in the details section.

Now I want to create the activity, but my ideas are all over the place. NOTE: My history and note have the correct associations with it because I properly created the correct association in the first place

NOW I am creating the activity.  I fill in the date, activity type etc. I get to ASSOCIATE WITH and fill in the association.  With a history and note tab(respectively) within the Schedule Activity form, the database would automatically be able to "pull/coolect" the proper associations and auto fill/complete the tabs in the "schedule Activity form" from information already in the database.  So now I have everything in one place.

I can click on the queried note tab and the queried history tab and see the history/notesONLY based on the association defined in the ASSOCIATE WITH: section of the Schedule Activity form.  

Seeing that I don't have to travel around kingdom come to find those notes/history, I can drag/drop or a checkmark the item I want in the DETAILS tab.  It's also ALL THERE AT ONE"S FINGERTIPS.

I hope I was clear.  I am not a programmer, but if you have any more questions, let me know.

Pat

[#4]

Ok I get it.  

From an information association perspective the database actually already does link up most of this data.  There are a couple of places where adding relationship meta information might help, but I think where we struggle in delivering items like what you describe is in our user interface controls.  We'll be looking at this topic on a whole and I'll include your use case description here.  

Great stuff. 

[#5]

An idea came to my mind,

Every contact has history and notes specific to the contact.  In other words, my contact, for example, has history and notes only referring to me.  The same goes for all other contacts because the notes and history should be only pertaining to the contact. 

How about this idea:  Why not have an extra tab that "pulls" all the notes and histories from the associations? In other words, if I associate my contact record to a company, the tab could pull all notes from that company along with all other associations.

This tab would be similar to the notes/history tab in companies and groups. You can see all the notes or histories from all because information is dumped there from all other places.

Then, you supercharge the tab with multiple context menu items like:  schedule activities where if you multi-select notes or histories, it would go into the details tab etc. 

It would be great if you could somehow pull all the field data from the associations and find a way of creating a tab with that too.  Bring in the field name and field data from "the associations" created.

Just trying to help.

-Pat