Actions VS Notes

I'm right there with you, Barbara! We also are working on moving toward using Actions more and Notes less.



Notes is very free form, which makes it hard to recapture that information in any useful way. A couple of RE trainers refered to Notes as "the place where good information goes to die." :-)



Actions, on the other hand, give you more searchable fields for reporting on activities. I also find it useful to plan an action in advance of when it needs to be done, and get a reminder on my desktop (and others, if needed) when it comes due. It's also easy to assign a followup action.



Our general guideline is, anything WE initiate needs to be an Action. Random info that comes to us, but doesn't need followup can still be a Note. But as I said, we are just starting to "enforce" Action use, so that may change as we go along.



i asked my pro-Action colleagues, and they said the advantages of using Actions are: Trackability, Reportability, Accountability.

Actions are absolutely the way to go. You can track actions by category, by type, by attribute, by completion status, etc. And of course you can add notes to an action, so you still have that feature there. Actions allow for analytics. Do you want to know how many touches it takes, on average, for a major gift prospect to actually give a major gift? Then you'll need to use actions. Do you want to see if a particlar category of action (phone call vs email, for instance) leads to a tipping point for donors in general, or one donor in particular? You'll need to have actions to do that.



Do you want to give yourself reminders for things you need to do X numberr of days in the future? You need an action for that.



I would strongly suggest you creat several action default templates for typical action types for each person who will be using them. This makes the the process a lot easier for your users, and it keeps your data more consistent. So ideally, all a person would have to do is load up the default that correlates to their action type, then go about typing in their notes. As they grow more comfortable with actions, they can add attributes, or change solicitors, or do whatever makes sense for your business practices. 



I'm super thankful that my staff are all about actions. 

Barbara, Give them the best of both worlds. Switch to Actions, and create an ACTION NOTEPAD TYPE called "Action Details". This gives them all the functionality of actions and the freedom of Notes. We use the Action Notepad Type - Action Details to give meaning to what would otherwise be unknowable info (what good is it to know a call was made without context?). We also have a standard for using the Action Details Notepad Description as a brief, summary (example: "Getty lunch with Smith Family to determine likelihood to support campaign at $50,000 leadership level.") then the actual notes can be as detailed as you like - where the meeting took place, input from various folks, etc. The Notepad Description is easy to export / query / report on as it is brief and the actual notes can always be added for longer call reports, etc.

Graham Getty:

Barbara, Give them the best of both worlds. Switch to Actions, and create an ACTION NOTEPAD TYPE called "Action Details". This gives them all the functionality of actions and the freedom of Notes. We use the Action Notepad Type - Action Details to give meaning to what would otherwise be unknowable info (what good is it to know a call was made without context?). We also have a standard for using the Action Details Notepad Description as a brief, summary (example: "Getty lunch with Smith Family to determine likelihood to support campaign at $50,000 leadership level.") then the actual notes can be as detailed as you like - where the meeting took place, input from various folks, etc. The Notepad Description is easy to export / query / report on as it is brief and the actual notes can always be added for longer call reports, etc.

It's easier to query on Actions,with Notes being a free form field, it's a little bit harder to query.

THe reason we have changed from notes to actions is that actions can be queried.

We are currentl working on outlook integration with actions--but still hae a way to go. We are in the process of setting up actions as a dashboard reminder on the RE homepage.

Hope this helps. And let us know if you get the Outlook thing masterred!

Karen



 

We also use actions vs notes for our Development Team.  The actions allow the Development Officers to record information from their interactions with donors/prospects.  They are restricted to specific action types that they can enter so that we can easily query the system to count metrics.  They are also not allowed to add new action types. Notes are more for items that need to be tracked as changes on the account, such as change of address, solicit codes, etc. which are mostly utilized by our processing staff. Our prospect researcher also uses notes to track profile information.

Here are a couple of helpful components we incorporated into our actions and constituent notepads...



If you're using actions to track prospect development, (in conjunction with your stakeholders), establish identifiable action "types." We used types such as "Prospect," "Cultivation," "Stewardship," "Ask," etc. You'll want to identify and match the action types with the "touches" that are typical (or desired to be so) in your organization's Moves Management.

To simplify your constituent "notes," I have found that limiting them and aligning them with particular database components is useful. We primarily use notes to expand on dat components; for example "Solicit Code Notes" would include the "what," "when," and "why" a solicit code was added. Other note types include "Address," "Addresee/Name Updates," Obituary/Deceased," etc. 

This can be helpful in facilitating querying and reporting!

its always a challenge to implement any "change," but this one is well worth it. Good luck!

I always stress that notes should be specific details about the donor or record, and actions should be details about our interactions with that donor. Notes are for biographical information and other quick references, but the complete story of our relationship with that constituent should be in actions.

Hi Barbara,



I think most people have pointed out most of the benefits of actions, (better querying, reminders, they contain their own notes, linking to Outlook) but I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned Action Tracks yet?



Action tracks can be setup, so that once "Action A" has been marked as completed on a constituent record, action "Action B" is automatically added to the record.



By setting up queries or reports to find uncompleted Action B's you can build a workflow so that as actions A, B, C & D etc always follow on from each other.



Can be very handy. Here is the knowledgebase article 

http://bbmarketplace.force.com/bbknowledge/articles/Article/37638



  





 

Becky Vodrey:

Here are a couple of helpful components we incorporated into our actions and constituent notepads...



If you're using actions to track prospect development, (in conjunction with your stakeholders), establish identifiable action "types." We used types such as "Prospect," "Cultivation," "Stewardship," "Ask," etc. You'll want to identify and match the action types with the "touches" that are typical (or desired to be so) in your organization's Moves Management.

To simplify your constituent "notes," I have found that limiting them and aligning them with particular database components is useful. We primarily use notes to expand on dat components; for example "Solicit Code Notes" would include the "what," "when," and "why" a solicit code was added. Other note types include "Address," "Addresee/Name Updates," Obituary/Deceased," etc. 

This can be helpful in facilitating querying and reporting!

its always a challenge to implement any "change," but this one is well worth it. Good luck!

Kim Berry:

Becky Vodrey:

Here are a couple of helpful components we incorporated into our actions and constituent notepads...



If you're using actions to track prospect development, (in conjunction with your stakeholders), establish identifiable action "types." We used types such as "Prospect," "Cultivation," "Stewardship," "Ask," etc. You'll want to identify and match the action types with the "touches" that are typical (or desired to be so) in your organization's Moves Management.

To simplify your constituent "notes," I have found that limiting them and aligning them with particular database components is useful. We primarily use notes to expand on dat components; for example "Solicit Code Notes" would include the "what," "when," and "why" a solicit code was added. Other note types include "Address," "Addresee/Name Updates," Obituary/Deceased," etc. 

This can be helpful in facilitating querying and reporting!

its always a challenge to implement any "change," but this one is well worth it. Good luck!

We are still in first year of implementation and would love to see detailed list of notepad and action types that other users have created.  Anyone willing to share comprehensive lists of the action and notepad types?