[Vtigercrm-developers] vtigercrm-developers Digest, Vol 6, Issue 16

[Frank Piepiorra]

An activity list is an essential part of all CRMs I know. Some of the
reasons are already mentioned before. At v4.2 we customized the activity
list to fit our needs and this is list is more in use than the calendar. The
needs differ from company to company but a activity list is a simple tool
users turn to if they are not happy with the calendar functionality.
May be vtiger can target a compromise: Extending the calendar
functionalities as proposed by Richie but maintaning the existing  activity
list until the new calender functions a validate. Let the users decide what
they want to use.
Regards,
Frank

> Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:27:45 -0500
> From: "Andrew Rodes" <arodes at onweald.com>
> Subject: Re: [Vtigercrm-developers] activities vs calendar
> To: <vtigercrm-developers at lists.vtigercrm.com>
> Message-ID: <200606141428.k5EESCKe012395 at vtigerforge.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> 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.
>