05. Contact Management [11:15]
Description: This video provides an overview of the Contacts tab in the Core3 CRM.
Transcript:
Let’s take a look at the Contacts tab and Contact Management in the Core3.
0:12 When you first open the Core and navigate to the Contacts tab, you will be looking at a screen something like this. First of all the Core was designed with the idea to handle individual and company records. In some industries you are more concerned with individuals than you are with companies or vise versa; and the Core is equipped to handle both of these scenarios. In this case I am looking at a company record for Productive Computing. I know that this is a company record because the company check box here has been checked and the picture of the company with the word Company appears here.
0:50 Let’s begin by discussing the status tool bar in FileMaker. The status tool bar is located here at the top of your screen. We have an in depth video on how to set up and properly use the status tool bar; so we’ll just start here with this sort of rolodex icon in the status tool bar, that allows me to move through records simply by selecting the arrows here. So by clicking to the right I have moved records and I am now on Marc Larochelle’s record who is an individual as indicated by his icon and label here. Notice that when you are on an individual record, the company name that Marc works for is slightly grayed out. Let’s go back to the company record for Productive Computing, and here you can see it is again bold indicating that I am also now on this company record. Navigating back to Marc Larochelle’s record, we give you the option to upload a unique picture for this individual record. Simply select the picture icon here, insert your picture and you now have a unique picture for each individual. The Core also assigns a unique ID for every contact record created as shown here. To create new contact records in the Core, simply navigate to your status toolbar and select the new record icon here. This will allow me to enter a new company or individual record. Let’s navigate back to Marc Larochelle’s record. In order to find Marc’s record, instead of navigating through all the records, I can simply put the Core in find mode by either navigating to view – find mode and enter Marc in the first name field and it will find every record that begins with Marc. Currently I have one record in my found set. This area also indicated how many records I have in my found set. This will become significant later when we learn how to do finds in FileMaker and how to operate the status toolbar. So here we have the contact information; as we already know Marc is an individual record, so the company check box will not be checked. Marc is also what we call a Core User. Core Users indicate that he is an actual user of the Core; this will be discussed later in the Preferences video. Individual records not only give you the option to specify a name here, but you will also have the ability to put in a title and a nickname.
3:33 Below is all the phone contact information for the record. In order to add a new phone, you simply click the new add plus button here, enter your phone label and type in your phone number. Phone labels allow you to determine what type of phone you’re dealing with. And notice how it formats the numbers for you by putting in the appropriate parenthesis, dashes and even extensions if applicable. Once we’ve entered a proper phone number, then we have the options here to automatically dial the phone number, a feature currently available for windows users, or you can also send this phone a SMS using a Click-a-Tel account which is discussed in detail in the preferences video. You can have an unlimited number of phone numbers for each contact and access each number by simply scrolling through them here. By selecting this blue icon here, this allows you to promote a phone number to the primary phone number as indicated here by the star. In order to delete a phone, simple select this red X icon here and that will delete our fax phone. These icons to add an entry, delete an entry, promote an entry and mark an entry as primary are used throughout the Core; as we can also see below here, with all of our internet related data.
5:03 Internet related data allows us to enter an email address, a website or any other additional internet related activity; such as your Skype account, FaceBook, and Twitter. This is an editable drop down list that actually allows you to edit the value in here. Once you have an email address entered, simply select this icon here to generate a new email; or to conveniently navigate to the website, simply select this blue arrow here and that will open a web browser and navigate to the appropriate website. A handy feature saving you time from having to manually type out a website URL. Again, you can also have an unlimited number of internet related activities and can easily access them from the scrolling area here on the right.
5:49 To the right, I have physical addresses; again you can have an unlimited amount of physical address and we have our familiar icons here; to add a new address, delete an address and to indicate that this address is the primary. Or maybe I want to promote the primary address. You’ll notice with physical addresses, we also have two more icons; this button here copies your contact information to a clipboard and allows you to now conveniently paste that information into a different application. Here is all of the contact information such as name, title, numbers, emails and addresses can now be easily used and accessed in other programs. If I navigate back to the Core, I also have a globe icon here; this globe icon allows you to map driving directions via Google. If I select this icon here; let’s first open up a map only, this will open up my web browser and will locate the physical address in Google Maps as shown here. Let’s take this one step further and actually get driving directions to and from different destinations. Simply select the globe and I will get directions to this location, then we have to find the address we are driving from and select map again. Let’s do a find for Melinda’s contact record; and we will go ahead and navigate from Melinda’s address. Here I can see I have Google Maps with an address from and to various locations.
7:30 Let’s do a find and navigate back to Marc’s record. Also on this screen we’ve put three fields here to get you started; Type, Status and Source. These fields are all editable drop down lists allowing you to enter your own custom values or choose from a list that we’ve pre-populated for you. You can also add your own fields and customizations which we’ll talk about in future chapters. The More Info tab here keeps track of additional miscellaneous information relevant to the client. Here in my other details I can assign a contact to a Department; again an editable drop down list giving you full control over the values that appear here. Industry; here we can indicate if the contact is a sales rep or not by simply selecting the Sales Rep check box. QB Initials is used if integrating with QuickBooks. A Referred By field allowing you to put in a referral associated with the contact. The Birthdate which does a count down of the number of days to the contacts birthday. Spouse, Children; and the Groups area keeps track of groups, campaigns and mailing lists; which we have a whole video dedicated to this. To further explain how to do mail merges and mail campaigns. Up here on the right we have the QB List ID, which is used only when integrating with QuickBooks. The Created and Modified By date timestamps; that allows you to keep track of who modified and created the record and when. An open notes field as well as key words that allow you to keep track of different aspects of the record that you are looking at; you can identify records with these keywords and notes. This becomes significant when we so our finds which we will talk about finding in FileMaker in a later video.
9:23 On the left sidebar here, we have all of our action items. By simply selecting one of these items, we can create new activities associated to the contact; such as notes, events, tasks, email, faxes, letters and timers. We have a whole video dedicated to creating activities and how to use activities in the Core.
9:45 Lastly, let’s look at the related tabs below. The tabs here indicate that these records are associated to this specific contact. For example; I’ve made an association to Productive Computing and now can easily navigate to and from the associated record by simply selecting this icon here. On Productive Computing record I can see that I have 3 linked contacts. I can easily navigate between these contacts by selecting this blue arrow here. Each tab and area such as Opportunities, Estimates, Orders and so forth will be discussed in later chapters.
This concludes the main over view video for the Contacts tab. Please continue through our video training series as we walk you through the full Core3 functionality and show you how intuitive and efficient using the Core3 can be in your business. This is just a brief overview of the many features and possibilities of the Core3. For more information on what the Core can do for you, please explore this website, review the videos and documentation and download a demo. Please contact us via email, phone or browse our forum if you have additional questions. We look forward to hearing from you and automating your business to operate more efficiently.