Misaligned or cluttered data can be detrimental to your organization’s customer insights. In this article, we’ll explore best practices for using activities and notes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer relationship management (CRM) applications. Understanding when to use CRM activities vs. notes can be key for keeping your CRM data clean, actionable, and reportable.
To get started, here are some key points:
- Flexibility and Best Practices: Dynamics 365 offers flexibility in creating activities (like emails, appointments, and phone calls) and notes—but it’s important to understand the differences to enhance business processes.
- Activities and Notes: Activities are searchable and can “roll up” from a contact to an account, allowing CRM users to see the communications at the account level. Notes, however, are not searchable and do not roll up.
- Ease of Use: Both activities and notes are simple to create, feature a timestamp, and allow file attachments.
Activities
Activities track interactions and tasks over time, often with specific statuses such as open, completed, or canceled. These can include emails, phone calls, tasks, appointments, custom activities, and more. By tracking activities, you can plan, organize, and monitor customer interactions effectively. This can help automate tasks and improve collaboration in sales-related decisions. In Dynamics 365, activities are integral to the timeline view, providing a chronological history of customer interactions.
Purpose: To log and manage interactions with customers or internal actions related to a record, e.g., opportunity, contact, account, case, etc.
Key Characteristics: Actionable, trackable, time-bound, structured, easily reportable.
Activities in Dynamics 365 can help you streamline your data management, automate tasks, and improve communication throughout the customer journey.
Notes
Notes capture static information, observations, or attachments related to a record. These are primarily informational (instead of actionable). In Dynamics 365, notes are typically accessed through the notes section or timeline view of a record.
Purpose: To capture supplementary information, observations, summaries, or attach files related to a specific record that doesn’t represent a direct interaction or task.
Key Characteristics: Static, timestamped, less structured, not easily reportable.
Notes in Dynamics 365 are commonly used but may not fit the business need.
Here’s a summary of CRM activities vs. notes.
| Feature | Activities | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Use | Tracking Interactions & Tasks | Recording Static Information or Context |
| Nature | Actionable, Dynamic (Statuses, Due Dates) | Informational, Static |
| Structure | Defined Types (Email, Task, Etc.), Fields | Free-Form Text, Attachments |
| Assignment | Yes (Owner) | No |
| Due Dates | Yes | No |
| Status | Yes (Open, Completed, Canceled) | No |
| Reporting | Strong, Aggregated by Type/Status | Less Direct, Primarily Record-Specific |
| Automation | Common Triggers for Workflows/Flows | Less Common Triggers |
SharePoint Integration for Document Management
In addition to the best practices for using activities and notes in Dynamics 365, another resourceful option to consider is SharePoint integration. This integration allows you to attach documents directly to records instead of using attachments on activities or notes.
By storing documents in associated SharePoint folders instead of CRM attachments, you can help reduce clutter and CRM data storage costs. Integrating SharePoint with Dynamics 365 can improve document management by centralizing files in dedicated folders linked to records. This can streamline storage, simplify retrieval, enhance collaboration through features like version control, provide robust security and access control, and help with compliance efforts.
Benefits of Using CRM Activities
Leveraging activities in your CRM system can help streamline processes. Activities can help track your customer’s sales history. Below are some of the potential benefits of using CRM activities.
Task Management
Organizations can create and assign tasks with activities. Tasks can be used to monitor and remind your team of planned activities. Activities allow CRM users to automate tasks to follow along with the customer journey. Once a customer enters the next stage of the sales cycle, users can be automatically sent the appropriate task associated with the sales strategy. For example, if a prospective customer is reaching the end of the sales cycle, a task can be automated to remind the sales representative to follow up to close the deal. Tasks also can act as a checklist to help keep customer interactions timely and tracked.
Improved Reporting
When customer interactions, such as emails, phone calls, and meetings, are entered as activities in CRM, these data points can help fuel the reporting capabilities in Dynamics 365 to generate detailed reports highlighting key metrics and trends, which can highlight customer needs and preferences. Regular review of this data can aid in forecasting customer behavior and planning future sales and service strategies.
Increased Team Collaboration
Using activities in Dynamics 365 CRM can provide a unified view of customer interactions, helping team members access the same information and align their goals. This can improve communication between departments like sales, marketing, and service, helping to create a seamless customer experience.
Enhanced Customer Experience
By using activities, you can better track customer interactions, which can help support informed decision making and personalized communication. This approach also can help customer service representatives have detailed information at their fingertips to help resolve issues quickly and efficiently. The personalized communication and service can lead to more meaningful and satisfying interactions.
How Forvis Mazars Can Help
To start improving customer engagement by leveraging CRM activities, managing relationships, coordinating meetings, and advancing customer care—all in one place—connect with the CRM team at Forvis Mazars. Our certified Microsoft technology consultants can help you refresh and update your CRM processes and usage. Let’s get started on your next CRM project today.