Salesforce.com For Dummies®

Chapter 7. Managing Activities

In This Chapter

• Creating activities

• Managing activities

• Updating activities

• Synchronizing with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes

Activities in Salesforce are scheduled calendar events and tasks. In many ways, Salesforce's events and tasks are just like the activities you use in Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. You can schedule events on your calendar, invite people to meetings, book a conference room, and add tasks to your to‐do lists so that you don't forget to get things done. (You can even synchronize Salesforce with Outlook or Lotus Notes, so that you don't have to input activities twice; see the final section of this chapter.)

However, Salesforce takes activities further: Events and tasks can easily be linked to other related records such as accounts, contacts, and so on. So you can view activities both in the context of a relevant item (for example, all activities that relate to an account) or as a standalone from your calendar and task lists in the comfort and convenience of your home page. And if you're a manager, Salesforce allows you to stay up to speed on your users and how they're spending their time.

By managing activities in Salesforce, you'll find you can better coordinate with your team, quickly assess what's going on in your accounts, and focus on the next steps to close deals or solve issues.

In this chapter, we first show you how to schedule events and create tasks. We cover how to find and view activities, both from your home page and ...