Hi Jeffrey

Please let us know what version of CRM you are running

Communications - You can use the calendar under MyCRM to create appointments, but as you are not within the 'context' of a company it doesn't know which client to link to. When looking at the Calendar, if you...

- Click on the New menu and do 'New Appointment' the main Communication screen appears and from here you can see the 'Company' field which will be empty but you can use it to search for the correct company



- Otherwise, if you have clicked within the Calendar and triggered a 'Quick Appointment' you're not given the chance to select a company, so you would need to create the appointment first, then go back to edit it, at which point you get to see the full Communication screen and thus edit the appointment to link with the correct company 



Otherwise you go the Client first (or any record linked to it like an Opportunity or Case etc) and then create your appointment, you are now within the 'context' of the company (i.e. it knows who you're looking at) and thus automatically populates the company information 



Due to this, I normally advise people to go to the company first before creating a communication as it auto populates the fields you want it to. 

As for your second question - 'Issues' - This is the purpose of Cases, to record if the client has a problem / complaint whatever it is. A place to record what the problem is, assign it to someone to investigate and then go back with a resolution. 

Cases are records in their own right, but like communications, If you ignore companies and just do My CRM | Cases | New Case then it will allow you to create a record but you will have to search for the company to link it to, else if you go to the Client first and click on their Cases tab and then click on New Case it will auto link to the company you are looking at 

Lastly - Credit Notes - You could just use Communications / Documents at company level for these, or if they relate to particular sales and you are using Opportunities for the Sales side of things then they could be recorded there (which roll up to Company).

Best idea though is speak with your Business Partner as they should help advise best usage of the system and where necessary help you configure elements of it as well (e.g. if you're going to be using Cases and you haven't use them before there might be custom fields, or Workflow that need looking at as well) 

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for taking time to help out. We are using CRM 2024 R1.

*On appointments:*

The feedback from the users is that it requires too many repeated entries (meaning entry in the calendar and entry in the company screen) - and we have not even discussed integration with Outlook calendar yet.

Seeking clarification - if the salesperson were to enter the appointment in the "Company" screen would that appointment also appear in the "Team CRM" or "My CRM" calendar?

We are trying to work out how to make this seamless.

That aside, we are also trying to work out what kind of reports or statistics can be generated from these entries i.e Huey, Dewey and Louie all report to Donald, whom is the team manager.

Donald should be able to see what Huey, Dewey and Louie are doing from the report ( site visits, collection etc) without going into their individual calendars without drilling into the details.

*On Case Management*

That is what we are doing, but I thought I would just put it out here to see if someone has a better way of managing this. It also boils down to the same thing  - what kind of reports can I generate and how will these reports look.

Am loathe to customise as there is no assurance that whatever that is customise will also be translated smoothly when an upgrade takes place.

Many thanks for your patience in taking time to read this rather long post.

Kind regards,

Jeffrey

Hi Jeffrey

Appointments - correct, you should only need to create it 'once' for it to appear under Communications on the company and also on the Calendar in My/Team CRM. 

It all comes down to making sure the 'Company' field is populated on the appointment (and make sure it is an appointment and not task). This way it is then visible everywhere you need to see it

Reporting - You can build reports (would be a list not calendar style) which show communications, and if the User field is the search criteria then you could report on 



Cases - What reports do you want? So long the data is there you can report on it, though you might just not have the right report created. 

Upgrading - Customisations (tweaks done within the product like custom fields, reports and views) are generally 'not' an issue during upgrades, so I would put that concern to one side. It's only when something is developed outside of CRM is where most of the issues are. 

Thanks for your insight and guidance Matthew. Will give it a go ,and post if I face any issues.

Kind regards,

Jeffrey