Entering actions for later queries

If you have entered those 100 people into your event record as Invited, you can then always create a query based on this data in the event record. No need for an action at all ...

I would highly recommend keeping the event module, sounds like perhaps they didn't quite understand how it could be utilized?  To me the beauty of the event module is that it keeps everything related to events totally organized -- so you don't have to clutter your system with appeals, actions, notes in order to track your events - it's all bundled right there in the events module.  


Good luck!

To answer your question more directly, this all depends on if you are looking for the actual actions or if you are looking for constituents with a particular action on their record.


If you are querying for the action, you'll need to create an action query, and you should include all information that these actions share. Any time you query for anything, you need to think about what makes the object of your pursuit unique. Usually it's a set of things that make the items unique. In this case, perhaps you should look for the date, action type, and notepad type. Or maybe date, action type, and solicitor. Or maybe you need to include "date added" and "added by." There are a lot of fields, so just figure out what combination you need.


If you are trying to find people who have a particular action on their record, then you need to set up a constituent query. Within the constituent query, you need to go all the way to the bottom of the criteria list and look for "summary infomration" and then look for "summary for actions" and then "total number of actions." This is basically a small action query that lives within a constituent query. In the "total number of actions" dialogue, your Criteria tab should probably have the operator of "greater than" and a value of "0." Then in your filter tab, you'll see all of the usual criteria related to action. So just like in the action query verison, you need to grab the set of parameters that make these actions unique. 


Also, as to the debate about the Events module, I have it, but I could do without it. We use it for some things, but frankly it's just so slow and cumbersome that I wouldn't mind ditching it and creating workarounds for its features. But that's just me.

I think this is also a good example of different ways that we use our systems -- we can be interested in functionality to help us perform certain tasks and evaluate usefulness based primarily on this, but there can also be an aspect of centralizing and retaining of the data so you can find it in the future, report out on it, analyze, predict future behaviour based on it, etc.  


We happen to do a fair amount of analysis on our donors and their event attendance, and also pull those criteria into other queries for other events, mailings, etc.  Having the event module to concisely store and be able to retrieve and query on this data is very useful for us.