How to use Action Completed on

Gloria Bulman

There seems to be a debt at my company as to how this date field should be used in an action.  Today I will globally add an action for a invitation on the date I pull the request not filling in the action completed date on till the event actually takes place.  So, the Action date is the date I performed the global action and the completed on date is blank until the event takes place (such as a dedication).  I then globally add the completion date and time and mark it completed.  My coworker things the action date should be the date the action is taken place.  In there minds the action date and action completed date will be the same.  How does everyone else use this date?

Melissa Graves 2

Gloria Bulman:

There seems to be a debt at my company as to how this date field should be used in an action.  Today I will globally add an action for a invitation on the date I pull the request not filling in the action completed date on till the event actually takes place.  So, the Action date is the date I performed the global action and the completed on date is blank until the event takes place (such as a dedication).  I then globally add the completion date and time and mark it completed.  My coworker things the action date should be the date the action is taken place.  In there minds the action date and action completed date will be the same.  How does everyone else use this date?

Do you not have the event module? This may be a result of trying to use actions instead of using the event module - actions are really not meant to be able to capture all of the multi-faceted data surrounding an event. If you do, you will have to decide internally what you want the action to represent - is the action recording the act of sending the invitation - or is it recording the act of the person attending - it really can not do both.

JoAnn Strommen

Gloria Bulman:

There seems to be a debt at my company as to how this date field should be used in an action.  Today I will globally add an action for a invitation on the date I pull the request not filling in the action completed date on till the event actually takes place.  So, the Action date is the date I performed the global action and the completed on date is blank until the event takes place (such as a dedication).  I then globally add the completion date and time and mark it completed.  My coworker things the action date should be the date the action is taken place.  In there minds the action date and action completed date will be the same.  How does everyone else use this date?

Just looking at the action at face value: send invitation, I would mark it as completed.  The date added could potentially have a variety of date like any time someone added the action to a record of someone they thought should be invited when it comes time to send the invitations.  To me the date completed would indicate as your co-workers think - that date the specific action was done. 

As Melissa posted marking it completed is not related to attendance.  If you were to use actions instead of event module to track that, I think I would do a separate action for attended meeting or something else.

For us it's the date that the specific action required is completed.  

Cindy March

Melissa Graves:

Do you not have the event module? This may be a result of trying to use actions instead of using the event module - actions are really not meant to be able to capture all of the multi-faceted data surrounding an event. If you do, you will have to decide internally what you want the action to represent - is the action recording the act of sending the invitation - or is it recording the act of the person attending - it really can not do both.

For me sending the invitation is one action.

Attending the event is another action.