Contact Manager: Contacts / Activities Contact Manager: Contacts / Activities
New contacts are entered, and existing contacts and their associated activities are maintained using this program. To access the program, select Contact / Activities from the Contact Manager menu. The following window comes into view:
On the left is the list of contacts. On the right is a box containing more information about the highlighted contact. This information is for display purposes only and cannot be modified from this screen. The ‘Next Scheduled Contact’ field is color coded as follows:
Dates more than seven days in the future are shown in BLACK
Dates in the next seven days are shown in GREEN
Today’s date is shown in RED
Dates which have passed are shown in BLUE
The contact list on the left can be sorted by Company, by Contact Name, by City, or by Phone Number by clicking on the appropriate tab. Depending on which tab is selected, typing a few characters of the desired record will highlight the record. For example, if the ‘by City’ tab is selected, type ‘chi’ and the first ‘Chicago’ contact will be highlighted. Also, by clicking on the lookup button or pressing the F2 key, the user can conduct a more advanced search. The following screen will be displayed:
Enter a few characters in the ‘Search Text’ field and press enter. The list box will be filled with just contacts which have the search text anywhere in the company or contact name. Just highlight the desired record and press Enter. The previous screen will now have the selected record highlighted as well.
Today's Calls Only (check box)
Check this box to display only contacts scheduled for today.
Add or Change a Contact
To add a new contact record or change an existing one, click on the Add or Change button under the contact list. More information about entering and editing contacts is found in the Contact Manager: Contacts help topic.
Activities
At the lower right is a list of activities associated with the highlighted contact. The list box includes the date and time the activity was entered, as well as a short description of the activity and the User ID of the user who was logged in when the activity was entered.
The list of activities can be limited to just those activities entered by the current user, or all activities for this contact. To show only the activities entered by the current user, uncheck the ‘All Users’ box below the list.
Add or Change an Activity
To add a new activity for the highlighted contact or change an existing one, click on the ‘Add’ or ‘Change’ button under the activity list. More information about entering and editing activities is found in the Contact Manager: Updating Activities help topic.
Importing and Exporting Contacts and Activities
This program was designed so that contact records and their associated activities can be shared among remote users.
Exporting
In order to export any contact information, first tag one or more contacts using the tag/untag buttons or by clicking in the tag column of the desired contact(s) in the contact list. Once check mark tags have been placed on the desired contacts, click the Export button. The following screen will come into view:
Enter a filename to be used for storing the exported contacts, then click on the appropriate export button.
Save to File (button)
This will create a file with exported contact and activity records at the location indicated above. It will also open a copy of Notepad and display the resulting file.
Save & Email (button)
This will create the export file and open a send email dialog box with the exported text file as an attachment. In the dialog box, enter the email address of the desired recipient and click the Send button. The email will be placed in the OutBox of the email program, to be sent at a later time.
When an exported contact file has been received from a remote user, that file can now be imported into the current data set. Click on the ‘Import’ button and the following screen will appear:
Click on the ‘Select File’ button and the system will display a dialog box where the contact text file can be located and selected. Once the file has been selected, the records in the file will fill the screen as shown below:
Records which display a ‘C’ in the ‘C/A’ column are contact records. Records which display an ‘A’ are activity records associated with the contact record above. To import these records and merge them with the current data set, click the Import button.