Sage ACT! 2013 Smart Task Planning Guide

This post follows up on our last, very popular post, here, about automating checklists with Sage ACT! 2013 Smart Tasks.  Here, Sage ACT! Fast Tip Friday wrote up a post showing you how to plan your own Smart Task automation.  We stole it and post it here for your convenience:

As you learned last week, Smart Tasks have several new features that make it even more useful as you automate your routine processes. This week, we are taking a step back and a closer look at planning a Smart Task template. You’ll use the process introduced last week, map it out and learn more about the details to consider as you plan your Smart Task template.

Planning the Template

As mentioned last week, I’m going to use the following as a business case/example of how you might apply Smart Tasks to your business:

When a prospect purchases a product/service, you do the following:

• Create a new contact (if one does not exist)
• Update the Contact ID/Status field from “Prospect” to “Customer”
• Create an Opportunity with associated Products/Services
• 1 day later, you E-mail the customer a Thank you/Welcome kit
• Schedule a follow-up call for one week following the creation of the Opportunity

Before creating the task in Sage ACT!, you may want to map it out using Microsoft Word, Excel, Visio, or other process mapping tool such as gliffy (http://www.gliffy.com), or xmind (http://www.xmind.net/). Mapping the process will help you visualize, standardize, and communicate the process. It also serves as a useful tool for identifying how you will create the process in Sage ACT!. For example, the previously mentioned process might look like this when fully mapped out:

After mapping out your process, you may begin planning the Smart Task template that will put this process into action. Consider the following:

• Will the template be accessible to all users in the database (Public), or only you (Private)?
• In the above example, yes. It should be available to all Sage ACT! users.

• Will it be based on a Contact or Opportunity? This is important because it impacts automatic run criteria, and fields available for update.
• This is a critical decision point. If you choose to trigger the task based on field criteria, the fields available for your criteria will depend on this choice. Similarly, if you are going to use a “Field Update” step, the choice of fields you may update depends on this choice. For example, if you create this task for Contacts, your trigger criteria is limited to Contact fields, and any “Update Field” steps will only be able to update Contact fields. 
  
  For the above example, you may want to run the task against Opportunities that are “Closed-Won”, so selecting Opportunity is appropriate.

• How will it be triggered?
• Manually - users will have to look up Contacts or Opportunities, and then manually run the task. If the process is routine, but not something that you foresee running with high frequency, this may be appropriate. This enables you to standardize process without having to recall specific steps when the need arises.
• Triggered Automatically based on Schedule - the task will execute daily, weekly, monthly or other scheduled basis if certain field criteria is met. For example, you may want Sage ACT! to run a query weekly, checking for any Opportunities that have been Opened within the past 7 days and kick off a series of steps. User intervention is not required, and it is possible for activities to show up on a user’s calendar if he/she has opened an opportunity within the past 7 days.
• Triggered Automatically based on Field Data – the task will execute immediately if certain field criteria is met. For example, you may want Sage ACT! to kick off a series of steps immediately if a new opportunity is opened. User intervention is not required, and it is possible for activities to show up on a user’s calendar if he/she has just created an open opportunity. This type of trigger is not retro-active when it is run automatically. Only new opportunities with a status of “Open” would trigger the task steps. However, if a user ran the task Manually against all records, then past opportunities with a status of “Open” would trigger the task.
  
  For the above example, you may want to trigger the template based on the Opportunity being Closed-Won within the last day.
• Run only once for any record
• The "Run Only Once" option prevents a Smart Task from being run against the same record multiple times by the same user. Other users can still run the Smart Task against the same record unless the Smart Task access is set to Private.
  
  For the above example, selecting this option is a good idea.

After you have determined the Task Template properties, you can begin to consider the types of steps to automate. In Sage ACT!, you can create steps that schedule activities, send email via Microsoft Outlook, or Sage E-marketing for ACT! (if you are a subscriber), or update a field. Reviewing the process above, you are likely to manually create the Contact record if it does not exist, and also update the ID/Status field. However, after the Opportunity is created, you can have the remaining steps triggered by your Smart Task Template and automate the sending of the Welcome Kit email, and creation of the Phone Call activity, placing it on the user’s calendar 7 days from the date of closing the Opportunity.

As you can see, creating Smart Tasks can be easier if you take time to define, and map out your process. Not only does it help you document your best practices, but it enables you to communicate them with other team members, outside consultants, or others that may assist you in your business. Next week, I’ll show you exactly how to create the template in Sage ACT!. In the meantime, pick one or two of your routine processes and start mapping them out!

Building Automated Checklists with ACT! Smart Tasks

Do you use checklists?  Would you like to make your checklists smarter?  Today we will look at how to incorporate your checklists into your ACT! database and have them fill themselves out automatically based on the work you already do in ACT!

We are actually a little breathless about the possibilities of this particular capability and can’t wait to show you how it works.

Using an example based on a realtor’s model we will look at a checklist of actions that need to be completed on behalf of a new listing client.  As you may know every item on a realtor’s list must be completed in order to get to a closing successfully, and when there are several properties to track it could quickly become unmanageable if the lists are on a spreadsheet, on paper in a file, or in our head...

In our example we are using a database with some customized opportunity fields, each representing a necessary step in the process of getting to a Closing.  Here, when a property is listed, there are nine checklist items that need to be completed within ten days of the home being listed.  We need to know, at a glance, which ones are Pending and which ones are Done.  We also need to be certain an activity has been scheduled on behalf of each required item without overpopulating our calendar.  And we need to mark the item as complete as soon as the activity is complete without manually updating the field.

This calls for automation.  This automation removes any uncertainty you may currently experience with paper files, spreadsheets, or a reluctant memory.

To automate our checklist we will use the Smart Task feature released with ACT! 2013 that allows us to query the database every few minutes in the background looking for records that match our criteria and update records and activities accordingly. 

Here is the list of fields used to track the progress of the new property listing after they have been added to the database in the opportunity entity and revealed on the layout: (Apply these steps to your own checklist in ACT!)

We will set up this checklist by querying on three opportunity fields (for your list you may query on contact fields, as well), the Stage field, the Status control, and the Open Date field.

To begin the process of automating the process we will go to the Schedule menu and select Manage Smart Tasks…

From the Manage Smart Tasks box we will click on the button, New Smart Task and fill in the appropriate information to describe our Smart Task.  We will want to be pretty specific as our Smart Task Name will be used on the list of all Smart Tasks and we will want to be able to find it easily on the list. 

Here we will call this Smart Task “New Listing Setup” and give it a pretty definitive description.  Here we will also keep the default setting for Access, leaving the radio button set to Public so all users can use this feature, and since we are updating a checklist contained on the Opportunity record we will select Opportunity from the record type.

There are three available Triggers, and ours will be “Run when conditions are met”, referring to the aforementioned opportunity fields.

Below, after clicking on the Edit Conditions… button we put in our conditions so the Smart Task knows the records to which it must take action.  For the opportunity Process, Property Sale the first stage is “Property Listed”, and we include this in the query by adding the condition:

Opportunity field “Stage” equals the value “Property Listed”.

The status of any opportunity is either Open (active) and has at this status a value of zero (0).  FYI, the remaining status values are one (1) for Closed Won, two (2) for Closed Lost, and three (3) for Inactive.  Here, we use the value”0”.

Finally, we optionally want our checklist automation to run against the system date field, Open Date, with the query capturing only the records on or before today.

Finally, we make sure to ask the Smart Task to run only one time against any record it finds matching the criteria by clicking on the Run Only Once for any Record checkbox since we do not need it to run multiple times.

As you see below, we can click on the hyperlink to learn more about the option to Run Only Once.

Now we can see below our New Listing Setup criteria and description are embedded as a Smart Task template, with a green box containing the information we just entered.  Since we are initiating the checklist for this Property Sale we want to tell ACT! our Setup checklist is activated by showing all the tasks are marked as “Pending”.  To accomplish the field updates down the list we need to add a step for each field on the Setup checklist by asking the Smart Task to Update those fields.

Click the “Click here to add a step” button, and select Update Field from the resulting list.

As you see here, all we need to do is give the step a reasonably precise name, tell it which field to update, and offer a value.  In this database we gave the checklist fields a prefix of CL so they would all be grouped together in the field list in the dropdown selection.  Our first field is called “CL File Front Office”, meaning that a file has been created to hold all the important documents generated during the sales process.  We mark the field value as “Pending” and ensure the action happens automatically by checking the appropriate checkbox.

…and we continue to add a step for each of the fields on our checklist so the end result looks like the diagram below.  To automate the Smart Task we then click on the Enable Auto-Run button before closing the Smart Task box.

Smart Tasks in ACT! are set up to run every two minutes.  After the Smart Task runs a refreshed records will show our updates with “Pending” in each of the Setup fields.  We are halfway to automating our entire New Listing process.

Activity Series

Next we will want a nearly identical process that will schedule activities on behalf of the New Listing.  Once a task is completed we will want to mark the task “Done” and then schedule the next task.  We should be able to look at the list and always know where we stand.  We will also have the added benefit of looking at our History and seeing that the activity has been completed.  Our Smart Task will set up the entire process and only be finished when either the final task is complete OR when the record no longer matches the conditions we established in the beginning.

To save a lot of work we can elect to copy our existing Smart Task template and then modify elements of the template to meet our new requirement.  Below, from the Manage Smart Task box on the Templates tab we simply select “Duplicate”.

…and then we modify the Smart Task Name to reflect our new purpose.  In this case we want to set up activities that, once completed, mark the appropriate checklist fields as “Done”.

Below, our first step is to schedule a To-Do.  The activity will be scheduled on behalf of the Smart Task user (that’s us) to create the file for the front office one day after the listing has been opened.  Close inspection of the Smart Task’s version of what an activity looks like will show you the Schedule Activity dialog box is subtley different that one of ACT!’s standard Schedule Activity dialogs.

Here we have an option to delay the start of the activity, so we will initiate a Start Date on 1 day after the step is triggered.  Subsequent activities may go out further.

Since we duplicated the first Smart Task we created we will have inserted this new step right after the New Listing Checklist Setup Activities initial step:

…then we modify the Update Field step to automatically mark the checklist field that the activity has been complete by changing the field from “Pending” to “Done”.

…and so on, down the list, until each of the steps has a corresponding activity associated with the required task.

Ensure that the Smart Task is enabled to Auto-Run.

The behavior we can now anticipate is that an activity will be scheduled.  Checking our Pending Smart Task Steps (from the Schedule menu) might show us something like this:

…and when we check the Activities tab on the record we will be rewarded with something like this:

…and when we clear the activity we might be rewarded with this:

Never again will we drop this particular ball.  No matter how many listings meet the conditions all the tasks associate with every one of them will now be managed automatically because we (and ACT!) are now Smart Task proficient.

Do you have a scenario you think would be well-served with Smart Tasks?  If you would like some help getting your own processes automated in ACT! feel free to contact Bevan Wistar at Zip City, bwistar@zip-city.com  or 503-381-5654.  It’s what we do all day, every day.