How to Create Automatic Follow-up Activities in CRM 2011

Posted on September 20, 2012 by JoeCRM

Have you ever had an appointment or a phone call with a client and needed to schedule a follow up activity? With some very simple customizations and a workflow you can help eliminate the additional clicks needed to create another activity. Check this blog on how to use similar functionality to create a spouse contact record.

In this example, we are going to focus on the phone call entity. These steps/customizations can be applied to all activities in MSCRM 2011.

First we are going to customize the phone call entity and add some custom fields.

  1. Create the following fields:
  • Follow Up Activity
    • Create an option set to allow the user to define what activity type they would like to create. The options that are available Appointment, Phone Call and Task.
    • You don’t necessarily have to create this field but this offers the user the flexibility to create whatever activity type they would like.
  • Follow Up Due Date
    • This allow user to specify the exact date and time they want to have the activity created.
  • Follow Up Notes
    • Allows the user to enter any notes that they would like copied to the new activity.
    • Another option is use the OOB description field. This would allow the user to keep a running track of notes associated with the activity.

Creating phone call follow-up activities in CRM 2011

  1. The next step would to build a workflow to create a new activity. To access the workflows, Go to Settings, Processes and click new.

    Now there are different ways you can trigger this workflow. You can have it trigger once the activity is completed, once the follow up due date is entered or you could add a checkbox field to create the follow up activity as well. In this example, we are going to trigger the workflow to start when the activity is completed. For this we are going to change the start on when the “record status changes”.

Options for automatic processes in CRM 2011

  1. Since we want the workflow to start when the activity is completed, the first step of the workflow would be to add a check condition to make sure the activity is completed.

add a check condition

  1. Next we are going to add another check condition to check what type of “Follow Up Activity” type the user selected.

add another check condition for a follow-up activity in CRM 2011

  1. Depending on what type of activity is selected will create the appropriate activity type. In the example above we would choose create record and then select appointment.

  1. Now we can define what fields we want to copy from the Phone Call Record to the Appointment. In the screenshot below we are pulling some of the Out of the Box Fields as well as the custom ones we created in the steps above.

set up the follow-up activity for dynamics CRM

  1. The next step is to create a conditional branch for the next activity type. To create the conditional branch, click next to the word “then” and click add step. From the drop down select Conditional Branch.

  1. You can now specify you conditional branch. In this example will select the next option available which is phone call.

  1. Once again will use the create option and this time we will select phone call.

  1. Now we can set the details of the phone call. Using some of the out of the box fields as well as the custom ones.

  1. We would repeat the same steps for the creation of the task. Create a conditional branch and then create a record with a type of task.

Now to see this in action……

I have my phone call record open and I have added my follow up information. I am now going to mark my phone call complete.

This will now trigger the workflow and create the new phone call.

Now you can you let your sales people sell and not worry about creating future activities! For further reading, check out our other blogs that may help you automate your business process with our post on workflows and dialogs in CRM 2011.

Happy CRM’ing!

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JoeCRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Expert at PowerObjects
Joe CRM is a CRM superhero who runs on pure Microsoft Dynamics CRM adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe CRM’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics CRM and bring the application to more business and organizations around the world.
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  • http://blog.meteorit.co.uk AdamV

    A useful technique and one I have used in the past with a few variations, thanks for sharing!

    Instead of or as well as a picklist for the activity type, I have sometimes used a “follow up with…” picklist with choices such as “Phone tomorrow”, “Phone 3 days”, “Task next week”. This can be quicker to use than putting an explicit due date, and just uses logic in the workflow to figure out the right combination. It is great for rapid turnaround in environments such as outbound sales calls – person is out? follow up with a call tomorrow or three days time, say, and close this one (rather than change due date, as I may be measured on my call volumes). A combination of this plus a due date can give full flexibility (eg you agree to call tomorrow at an explicit time rather than just now+24 hours).

    Follow up notes field is a good idea, and I would strongly caution against the alternative: “Another option is use the OOB description field. This would allow the
    user to keep a running track of notes associated with the activity.”
    Users can quickly end up with huge long narratives that show every part of every conversation ever. “in the beginning there was a call…”
    This is not only unwieldy, but can hit the field length limit and end up truncated.

    In fact, I normally do it the opposite way round – I have a field called “previous notes” which is a copy of the description of the preceding activity, and is shown read-only on the following activity (I would also hide it if empty using a script on the form). User does not have to explicitly choose to type in description and / or follow up (or copy and paste). Every activity then shows the details of the last interaction and the user adds details of the current one in description.

    As a bonus, create relationships between the relevant activities so you can actually have a link back to the previous record shown to enable the user to backtrack through the conversation if they do need to get at older notes.

  • Oli B

    Joe,

    This has really made a difference to our sales guys so a big thank you. Also, Adam who commented below, had some really good suggestions which we have employed. The only issue I have is that the follow up activities show as being created by me rather than the User creating them. Have I missed something in the workflow?

    Regards,

    Oli

  • Alex

    I really like this one. Thanks for sharing.

    Regards,

    Alex