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Activities

Activities in Enrollment Manager record touchpoints between the institution and the constituent. These touchpoints are often communication with the constituent, but they can also give details on an action taken on the constituent's record. Most often the constituent will be a prospective student, but activities can also be associated with school personnel, alumni, volunteers and employers. Aside from tracking actions and communication, activities are an essential piece of workflow rules, which are automated processes that govern what happens next with a record.
 
Generally an Activity includes:
  • The Activity Category and Value, which classify the Activity and describe the touchpoint
  • A description box which can contain more detail on the Activity
  • The date the Activity was created
  • The date the Activity was completed
  • The record associated with the Activity
  • The staff assigned to the Activity
Activities are either Open or Closed and are typically grouped accordingly, particularly when viewing them as related to the constituent record. Open activities have been created but not yet completed. Once an action is taken, an Activity can be closed and completed.  Activities are said to be posted to a record when they are associated to the record.
 
In general, the majority of the Activities for prospective students will be posted to the Opportunity record. These are known as Opportunity Activities. The Opportunity record is where a user will go if they are looking to manually enter or view activities related to the student.
 
Examples of Opportunity Activities include those that indicate the prospective student:
  • submitted an inquiry form, application or application-related document (essay, recommendation)
  • received an email, letter, phone call or other type of communication
  • registered for a campus event
  • sent an email to the institution
  • responded to a direct marketing campaign
  • visited campus
  • attended a college fair or program
Activities that are posted to the prospectives student's Person record are rare, and are usually done through a system action. These Person Activities are restricted to activities that indicate an official test score or transcript was received.
 
For Person records that are not students, such as alumni, volunteers, school personnel or employers, activities should be posted to the Person record.  For example a phone call to a high school counselor regarding a campus visit should be posted to Person record for the high school counselor. 

Creating a New Activity
It is best to begin creating a new activity by opening either the Opportunity record for the prospective student or the Person record for school personnel, alumni and volunteers.
 
With the Opportunity or Person record open you can add an Activity as follows:

1. From the Activities area: 
Click on Add New Activity. Select from the types of Activities in the list.  Activity Types include:
  • Task
  • Fax
  • Phone Call
  • E-mail (upon creation/save, an email is sent via Enrollment Manager to the recipient)
  • Letter
  • Appointment
  • Event
  • Campaign Response
Most of the time Users should select the Task or the Phone Call activity type.
 
When the Activity record appears, complete the following fields as needed:
  •  Subject:  This field will be populated automatically when the Activity Category and Activity Value are selected. The Subject can be updated after it has been automatically populated. It is recommended that for common activities, a conventional naming system is established if users erase the Subject field.
  • Activity Category and Activity Value
  • Regarding: Links the Activity to the Person or Opportunity record. This is automatically populated when creating the activity from the record.
  • Staff Assigned: Defaults to the User creating the activity, however users can change the field and assign the activity to another user.
  • Description: Can add detail that applies to the activity.  
2. From the Most Recent activities area for the Person or Opportunity (coming soon):
  • Click on Add Phone Call, Add Task. (Click or the ellipses ". . . " for more Activity types). 
  • Complete the fields as listed above. 

Saving, Closing and Completing Activities (Posting an Activity)
 
When you are ready to save the Activity, take note of the following options and their behavior:
  •  Save - This option will save the Activity as Open. Use this if the Activity will be completed in the future. After selecting this option, the Activity form will remain open in front of you.
  • Save and Close - This works the same as 'Save', however it will close the Activity form (but not complete) from the immediate view.
  • Save as Completed - This completes the Activity. Once an Activity is closed as completed, no further edits can be made to the Activity (with exception to the NOTES tab).

Viewing Activities

Users can view Activities within the Activity Menu or as related to the specific entity record.

Viewing Activities from the Activity Menu
By default, the opening screen of the Activity area (Workplace --> Activities) displays information on all open Activities assigned to the user. These are activities that have been created and/or assigned to the user by himself, by another staff member, or by a system process.
Users can change the view of their activities by using the dropdown at the top of the Activities menu to select a view such as 'My Activities' (all Activities assigned to the User) . Users can use an Advanced Find, or the query tool, to create custom views of Activities for this area.
 
Viewing Activities from a specific entity record.
Activities are either Open or Closed and are grouped accordingly as related to the specific entity record. To see the Activities posted to a Person, Organization or Opportunity:
  1. Find and open the Opportunity, Person, or Organization.
  2. Click on Activities (left menu) to view all the open Activities related to that record. You can filter the view of the Activities by using the dropdown.
  3. Click on Closed Activities to view all the closed Activities related to that record. You can filter the view of the Activities by using the dropdown.
  4. Note: The view of the Activities from the Person record will show you Person and any related Opportunity Activities.