Appointments/Calendar/Tasks is an optional component that ships when you purchase Messaging.

The Appointments/Calendar/Tasks module is a very powerful and intuitive way to record and organise all your appointments and tasks, recording every detail and linking them to the central contact records of each of the participants. Over time a complete record of all your interactions with contact is built up and can be displayed at the click of a button. This includes details of meeting, telephone calls, conferences etc and observations you made at the time.

Categories: Each entry should be classified by selecting from the Category drop down list. Categories are defined by you as they are needed. You should take care to set up only the categories you wish to use to classify entries. Examples of categories are Telephone Call, Visit to house, Visit to site, Meeting, etc. The categories will be determined by the type of business you run and types of interactions you have with your clients. Some time in the future you may want to view or print a list of all entries for a specific period that were telephone calls, etc.

Tasks: record details of any tasks to be carried out, such a bill payment, mail collection, conference registration or any other task that you do not wish to miss. Optionally link the entry to any contact records that are involved in the task or are to carry out the task. When they check their appointments for the day the task will be displayed along with any other entries. Optionally print a list of tasks for any contact for any period.

Appointments: record appointments as they come in. Link each to the member of staff involved in the appointment and to the external participants (also stored as contact in your tables).

Calendar: Generate entries to record leave for team members, or other periods when they will be occupied. Use the category to specify the nature of the event.

Appointments/Tasks can be recorded and linked to the participants (internal or external to the enterprise) that will carry them out or are involved in them. This is an ideal way to communicate the details of tasks to be carried out with your team members. The task entries can be annotated with special instructions, even using the associations to point the participants to documents containing details about the tasks to be carried out (see below). This is ideal for tasks that are carried out irregularly or to show a new member of staff the required procedure for a task to be carried out by them for the first time.

All appointments can be recorded as they come in showing the participants from each organisation, the start and end dates and times, any special requirements etc.

Copious notes can be stored along with any entry to record proceedings and outcomes etc.

Finding Entries

Entries can be retrieved subsequently using almost any bit of information. Simply invoke the familiar View/Find command (Alt V) and you are presented with an intuitive form that can be filled in with criteria of the entries you wish to display.

For example you can display all entries where a specific contact is a participant, or all entries for a specified period, or all of a specified category or subject, or entries where the Comments or Outcome fields contain specific text. You can also display an overview of all appointments by month and drill down to display an overview for a specific day. The day overview shows you all entries for a specific day and can be drilled to display the details for any period within a period. New entries can be added by clicking on a specific time slot. If any of the participants are already busy for the time slot you will be warned and can optionally view the clashing entries so that an informed decision can be made about handling the appointment.

Printing Appointment/Tasks

Once a list of appointments are displayed in summary view you can print them out for convenience to be used when you leave the office. To print all entries relating to a specific employee just do a View/Find on entries for the contact. Limit the display to a day, week or month as required. Invoke the print command (Alt P) when the required entries are displayed.

Examples of uses for Associations with Tasks/Appointments.

Office Procedures Manual - set up a record in Stock. In the title field enter Office Procedures Manual – General staff. From now on every time you want to write a document relating to the Office Procedures Manual go to this record, call up associations and press the Word command. You will be prompted for a document template and a new document will be created. Compose or edit existing documents. You can also associate images and spreadsheets to the record. In fact you can store any type of file along with a record. The Office procedures manual is accessible to all staff.

Include a reference to this record in any task that involves details that participants should be aware of when carrying out the task.