An activity is a record of communication with a client. This includes schedule items, tasks, documents, emails, and call records. Activities are also known as interactions. Activities can be single events, such as a schedule item reminding you to call a client, or they can be recurring events, such as a weekly status meeting.

Viewing activities on the Activities card

You can view and access an entity's activities by selecting the entity in the data table on the Contacts workspace, selecting the Summary tab on the detail page, and viewing the Activities card. This card displays activities related to the selected entity, including activities grouped by:

• Today
• This Week
• Last Week
• Older

You can use the Activities card to:

• Add a new activity by clicking the Add button  and select the type of activity you want to add.
• Roll up all of the activities for a company on the Activities card. For more information, see Rolling up activities in the Activities tab.
• Expand an activity to reveal more information and take action directly from the card:
  • Mark an activity as complete
  • Delete an activity
  • Edit an activity
  • Add a call record or send an email from the More Actions menu

To open the Activities tab for an entity on the Contacts workspace, where you can search and filter your activities in a data table, click the View All button on the Activities card.

Viewing activities in the Activities tab and data table

The Activities tab for a selected entity or account plan displays a data table that shows the activity records for the entity. In the Activities tab, you can search for and filter activity records, add new activities, and manage existing activity records. NexJ provides the following predefined filters that enable you to find records quickly that match the filter criteria:

• All Items
• Schedule Items
• Tasks
• Documents
• Email

For more information about searching for and filtering records, see Searching and filtering in NexJ CRM.

Viewing activities in other workspaces

You can also see activities in other locations in NexJ CRM. You can see:

• Activities associated with a specific opportunity in the Activities tab on the Opportunities workspace.
• Activities associated with a specific service request in the Activities tab on the Service Requests workspace.
• Activities associated with a specific account plan in the Activities tab on the Account Plan details page, on the Contacts workspace.

Adding activities 

From the Activities card or the Activities tab, you can add an activity to an entity or account plan's record by clicking the Add button and selecting the required activity template. For more information on adding call records, see Working with call records.

For more information about adding specific types of activities, see:

• Adding schedule items
• Adding tasks
• Adding a document to an entity's record
• Creating call records associated with other activities

• Creating standalone call records

• Adding activity plans

Specifying view and edit security for activities

You can apply view and edit security to any activity you add.

To restrict viewing and editing of an activity to a group of users or to yourself when adding a new activity, navigate to the Security tab in the New dialog, and select the appropriate view and edit security options.

You cannot modify view security and edit security settings for an activity after it has been created. If you want to restrict view and edit access to a document, you must set it when you add the activity.

For more information about applying security, see Security settings for objects in NexJ CRM.

Adding activity plans

An activity plan is a predefined sequence of activities that can be created for a client, rather than creating each of the activities individually. Add an activity plan to create a set of activities for the entity.

Two types of activity plans are available. Choose the one that reflects how you want the activity plan steps to relate to one another:

• An activity plan consists on a number of ordered steps, where each step's creation depends on the creation or completion of the previous step. After you add an activity plan to the contact, the first activity is created relative to the start of the activity plan. Subsequent activities are created relative to the creation or completion of the previous step, as defined in the activity plan template.
• A targeted activity plan consists of one target activity step and multiple other steps, which are all created relative to the target activity, not to each other. After you add an activity plan to the contact, the target activity is created either on a specified date or relative to the activity plan start or end date. Other activities are created relative to the start or end date of the target activity. If a step's create date is in the past based on the definition in the target activity plan template, the activity associated with the step is created immediately.

After you add an activity plan for a contact, the activities included in its steps are created as defined in the template.

To add a new activity plan to an entity's record, from the Activities tab, click the Add button , select Activity Plan, and then select the name of the activity plan template you want to use.

When adding a new activity plan, the New Activity Plan dialog includes the following fields:

Modifying activity plans

You can modify activity plan details after you have created plans and assigned them to entities to accommodate the changing needs of individual entities.

When modifying steps, you can:

• Add steps for an assigned activity plan.

  Activity plan steps can be added to an existing activity plan, from the Assigned Steps section of the Steps tab. When adding activity plan steps to an existing activity plan, the new activity plan steps are created immediately. You cannot associate the creation of new steps with the creation or completion of other activity plan steps.

• Delete activity plan steps to remove an activity assigned to a contact.

  While creating an activity plan, you cannot delete any steps inherited from the template that have not yet been created. These steps populate the Future Steps section. You can only delete template steps once they are created. These steps populate the Assigned Steps section. Any steps that have been added to the activity plan apart from the template also populate the Assigned Steps section and can be deleted.

  After you delete a step, any future steps with creating dates set to the creation or completion of the step you just deleted will not be created.

• Use the Recurrence tab to make a step a recurring series.

  You can only add recurrence to tasks and schedule items when you are creating the activity plan for a client. You cannot specify recurrence when you are creating the activity plan template.

You can also add, delete, and replace activity plan attachments and activity plan step attachments.

Adding a document to an entity's record

To add a new document to an entity's record, from the Activities card or the Activities tab, click the Add button , select the Document activity template, and select the document type.

When adding a new document, the New Document dialog includes the following fields:

For information on adding documents using the Document Manager, see Managing documents.

Adding advisory and hold notes

With NexJ Process Management enabled, you have access to ready-to-use advisory and hold notes. You can add advisory and hold notes to entity records by clicking the Add button , selecting the Document menu, and selecting the required note to open a form.

Advisory and h old notes are regulatory notes that are used to document the investment advice you provide to clients. These are required to confirm suitability of recommendations made to a client.

Advisory notes can be used to record the offering of advice such as broad economic and market outlooks, or information focusing on a particular sector of the stock, bond, or commodity markets, to a client. You will need to select who the advisory note is for, as well as a category. Other fields in the form are optional.

Use hold notes to record advising a client to neither buy nor sell a security, on the belief that it will perform at the same level as comparable companies. You will need to select who the hold note is for. Other fields in the form are optional.

When you have completed a form to your satisfaction, click Submit. Once submitted, you can find the note in the contact's activities data table where you can edit the note, mark it as complete, or select from other options such as Add Call Record, Email, or Delete.

Sending emails related to activities

Send an email to discuss the related activity with the people involved. The system addresses the email to everyone from the related activity's For and Assign To fields. For example, to discuss an upcoming meeting with its attendees, send an email based on the meeting's schedule item.

To send an email related to an activity, navigate to the Activities card for the selected entity, or select the activity record in the Activities tab, click the More Actions button, and select Email. In the Email Properties dialog, complete the following fields:

To modify your email signature, click Manage Email Signature.

To preview the email before sending it to email recipients, click Send a Draft Email to send the email to your email address.

If there are merge fields in the email body and attachments, they are personalized using the information from one of the email recipients. After you click Send a Draft Email, a message displays stating that you have sent an email to your email address. Click OK to continue.

To send the email, click Send Email. The email is sent to the email addresses in the To and CC fields. The activity's attachments are included in the email.

Rolling up activities in the Activities tab

You can roll up activities across an entity, allowing you to see all of the activities for all contacts for a specific entity in one place. This consolidates the activities information so you can avoid viewing the activities for each contact separately.

To roll up activities for a selected entity in the Activities tab, click the Rollup Options button , and select Show Activities from Children. The data table then displays the activities for all of the contacts belonging to an entity. Select Show Activities from Children again to deselect the menu item and return to the activities of the earlier individual entity.

Working with call records

A call record is an internal record documenting an interaction with a contact. It can summarize a face-to-face conversation, a telephone call, or a meeting.

For example, a scheduled meeting might have some information associated with it, such as invitees, meeting time, and the agenda. You can use a call record to keep a summary of the meeting notes after the meeting, such as which invitees attended the meeting, which agenda items were actually discussed, and any outcomes. You can also create a call record without scheduling a meeting beforehand, for example to keep notes for a spontaneous conversation.

A call record is always associated with an entity. In addition, you can relate it to another activity, such as a schedule item, a task, or a document.

You can see call records associated with a specific:

• Entity in the Activities tab for a selected entity
• Task on the Tasks workspace
• Opportunity in the Activities tab for a selected opportunity
• Service request in the Activities tab for a selected service request

In the Activities tab, you can select only the Call Records filter as a favorite to display only the call records and no other activities in the data table. For more information about searching for and filtering records, see Searching and filtering in NexJ CRM.

Creating call records associated with other activities

You can associate a call record with another activity. For example, you can add a call record to a meeting, to record the outcome of the meeting and the people involved in the discussion.

• To create a call record associated with another activity, find and select the activity you want to associate with the call record, and select Add Call Record.
• To create call records associated with an entity, opportunity, or service request, select their Activities tab, click the  More Actions button, select Add Call Record, and select the required call record template.
• To create a call record for a schedule item, navigate to the Schedule workspace, right-click the schedule item name, select Add Call Record, and select the required call record template.
• For create a call record for a task, navigate to the Tasks workspace, click the More Actions button for the task, select Add Call Record, and select the required call record template.

After you select the template, complete the following Edit dialog tabs as required:

When the call record is created, it appears in the Activities tab for the entity, opportunity, or service request associated with the call record or in the Tasks workspace, when the call record is associated with a task. The activity associated with the call record displays the call record icon   in the Call Record column in the activities or tasks data table.

To edit an existing call record, click the Edit button  to open the Edit dialog for the call record.

Creating standalone call records

You can create a call record and associate it directly with an entity or opportunity without associating it with an activity.To create a standalone call record:

1. Find and select the required entity, opportunity, or service request on the relevant workspace you want to associate the call record with.
2. Select the Activities tab and click the Add button .
3. Select Call Record and select the call record template.
4. Complete the New Call Record dialog. For more information about completing the tabs in the New Call Record dialog, see Creating call records associated with other activities.

After the call record has been created, it displays in the Activities tab for the contact or opportunity associated with the call record.

Viewing audit trail for activity record actions

NexJ CRM retains a history of actions that users have performed on records in the system. When you complete an action, such as viewing or modifying an activity record, the action is logged in the record's audit trail. Users with the appropriate privileges can view the history and details of these actions in a record's Audit Trail tab.

When modifying an activity, you can filter the data table on the Audit Trail tab to display specific event records.

NexJ provides the following filter chips that you can use to filter the audit trail:

• Action
  Select an operator and an audit action; for example, Read (view a record) or Create (create a new object).
• Date
  Select an operator and a date.
• User
  Select an operator and the required user or users.

To add additional filter chips, click the Filter options button and select Add filter fields. For more information, see Filter chips and Using operators.

In the data table, select the action whose details you want to view. Depending on the type of action, additional details might be available. The details for the selected action display in the data table at the bottom of the tab. Each row represents a field that was updated as part of the action. The field's name, old value, and new value are displayed. If a field did not have a value originally, the value in the Old Value column will be blank.

To change which columns display in the data tables, click the Select columns button .

Related links

• Adding schedule items - Add schedule items, including meetings, appointments, calls, and so on, on the Schedule workspace.
• Adding tasks - Add tasks, including reminders, follow ups, calls, and so on, on the Tasks workspace.
• Adding and modifying documents - Add documents on the Document Manager workspace so that you and/or other users can access them later.