Hi folks,
Posting this here as well as in the IT section - apologies for the repeat!
When a Plan is created (mainly in the Sponsorship arena) against a company/organisation, the user's first task is to add a Step (the Step Type is called Plan Contact) so that we can track who, at the organisation, we're talking to.
Rightly or wrongly, this Step Type does no have the Due Date and Completed fields available (they're not actually relevant) and so because the Completed Date has no value entered, the step appears in the Next Step/Next Step Date columns in the Portfolio screen.
Is there an elegant (i.e. front end) way of ensuring that Steps where the type does not use the Completed Date do not appear in this field in the Portfolio screen?
Of course, I can always use SQL to update the Steps of this type so that the Completed Date has the same value as the Step Date but this isn't ideal!
Or maybe it's an enhancement request?
Any thoughts?
Martin
Hi Martin,I can't speak to the portfolio portion of this question, but we find it more useful to use relationships for this purpose. For companies that have a lot of different connections and not one "catch all" contact, its easier to distinguish that by connecting a contact account (business specific) to the company and in the notes writing "Benefits contact" (or membership/gala/accounting/assistant contact) that best describes that person's interaction with you and company.All the best,
Hi Kate,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. We also use Affiliations between the organisation and employees but the fly in the ointment (we always seem to find one!) is that we often have more than one Plan in place with an organisation (when seeking sponsorship/partnership) but we're communicating with different people for these plans so we need to track which person we're dealing with.
Hi Martin,
Could you use the Associate ID and Associate Name field on the steps to track who you are supposed to be contacting? Or use one of the custom fields on the plan?
Best,
Anne Mullane-Stevens
Manager, Institutional Advancement Data and Operations
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum