[Vtigercrm-developers] activities vs calendar

[Andrew Rodes]

So would calendar events replace them? There is allot of potential in the
activity concept when it comes to automated marketing programs, activity
plans ( templates of sets of activities an organization can create to handle
certain regular situations like an initial sales visit follow-up plan for
example).

With regards to marketing, activity plans can be associated with a marketing
campaign listing steps needed to get the marketing campaign launched. A good
example is a tradeshow event where there is a lot of prep work involved.

Also, activities can be used as work events ... anything that happened, or
needs to happen for a given major entity to reach a next state. For example,
activities can be associated to Trouble Tickets to record the work items
that reps took to work a ticket (for internal review and historical
purposes). Also, Activities can be associated to Orders to track the work
items that took place to fulfill an order. They are much more then just
calendar events imho.

Granted, I worked for Siebel for 4 years, so I'm basing allot on how their
activities work, but in Siebel they are very popular, and one of the
simplest concepts that users could get their heads around. I think
"generisizing" them into calendar events sounds great from a developers
perspective but perhaps users will miss the activity concept, and it will
limit future use of the module in associating activities with other
entities.

Just a few thoughts ..I'm not s major contributor to the community so I will
defer to the others, of course, but I think a distinct activity module is a
basic component of any CRM software.

Andy Rodes
www.onweald.com

-----Original Message-----
From: vtigercrm-developers-bounces at lists.vtigercrm.com
[mailto:vtigercrm-developers-bounces at lists.vtigercrm.com] On Behalf Of Allan
Bush
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 9:06 AM
To: vtigercrm-developers at lists.vtigercrm.com
Subject: Re: [Vtigercrm-developers] activities vs calendar

I like the idea of eliminating the activities module as long as we
make finding activities as easy within the Calendar.

Things as that would be required to be added to the Calendar are:
- custom views
- activity search
- better sharing of events between users

Actually when I come to think of it I never really see users using the
Activities module directly.  They use their Calendar for scheduling
and the related activities lists to track user history so as long as
we keep those I'm guessing most users won't notice the change.

On 6/14/06, Abos <webmaster at vtigercrmfrance.org> wrote:
> I totally agree with that, in france Activities and calendar cause
> confusions. Same thing with events and activites.
> We know task or to do, and we make the difference with activities, but
> between events and activities is not clear.
> Aïssa
>
> Richie a écrit :
> > There has been a post suggesting that having Activities and Calendar is
causing some confusion.
> > We plan to address that issue.
> >
> > If we could get your views on the same, then we can start with it.
> >
> > We plan to do away with the Activity create view the way it is and have
a better UI.
> > All the Activities will be represented in the Calendar alone.
> >
> > We are not yet sure of how to handle Tasks but will figure out soon.
> >
> > The above are what we have discussed till now and we are yet to do any
coding/ UI changes.
> >
> > Kindly post your views so that we can finalize on the approach to the
same.
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Richie
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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