1Overview #
The calendar answers the question a list cannot: when. Day, week, month or agenda, it shows the follow-ups of the leads and deals you may see, and the entries you plan yourself - a dealer meet, a training session, a day of quotations.
An entry whose type is a visit, meeting or demo is treated as an appointment: it takes an hour, it is reminded before it starts, and everybody it is for is told.
Follow-ups here are read-only shadows of the lead or deal they belong to - the calendar shows them, the record owns them.
2Who it is for #
- See your week, and your team's, laid out properly.
- Plan entries of your own, for yourself or for several people at once.
- Be reminded before an appointment - and let everybody it is for be reminded too.
- Record what became of an appointment: completed, postponed, not held, handed over or cancelled, each with its reason.
- Save an entry to your own phone or Outlook calendar as a file.
3What it is not for #
- Logging what was said on a call. That is Follow-up (F7) on the lead or deal.
- A to-do list without times. CRM > Follow-ups is the flat work list.
4Step by step #
- Open CRM > Calendar and choose Day, Week, Month or Agenda. - It starts on the current week, 07:00 to 21:00, Monday first.
- Set Show to your own calendar or everyone's you may see, and pick an Executive if you want one person.
- Press New entry (F3), or double-click an empty slot to start one there. - The slot you double-click becomes the start time.
- Give the Subject, the Type, whose calendars it is for, and when it starts. - A visit, meeting or demo makes it an appointment - reminded and announced.
- Set a reminder, and a repeat if it comes round regularly. - Blank reminder = the company's standard; 0 = none for this entry.
- Save (F5). Everybody it is for sees it and is told at once.
- Afterwards, open it and record what became of it - Completed, Postponed, Not held, Transfer or Cancel entry. - Each keeps its reason in the entry's history.
5The fields #
- Filters
- Show - My calendar or Everyone's I may see. Two choices
- Executive - One person's calendar. Appears when showing everyone's. Anyone within your reach
- Show cancelled - Include entries that were cancelled or not held. Switch
- Appointments only - Hide ordinary follow-ups and show only visits, meetings and demos. Switch
- A calendar entry of your own - Opened by New entry (F3) or by double-clicking a slot.
- Subject - What it is - "Dealer meet, Kochi", "Quotations for the week". What the calendar, the reminder and the alert show. Up to 255 characters
- Type - What kind of entry - meeting, visit, task - from the Activity Types master. A visit, meeting or demo makes it an appointment: reminded and announced. Activity reports count it under this type. From CRM > Masters > Activity types
- Whose calendars - Everybody the entry is for - a team meeting, a joint visit. It appears on each person's calendar; each is told at once and reminded before it starts. Yourself, your team's members, or anyone for a sales manager
- Starts - When it begins. The reminder counts back from here. Date and time, in steps of 15 minutes
- Ends - When it is over. Blank shows it as one hour. Not before the start; a month at most
- Place - An address, a hall, "online". Travels with the reminder and the calendar file. Up to 255 characters
- Remind me (minutes before) - Blank = the company's standard; 0 = no reminder for this entry. The alert everybody it is for receives. 0 to 10080 minutes (a week)
- Repeats - Never, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly from the start date. Each occurrence is drawn with a repeat mark and reminded. Five choices
- Every ... - 1 = each one, 2 = every second - a fortnightly meeting is Weekly, every 2. 1 to 99
- Repeat until - The last day it happens, included. Blank = until you change it. A date
- So it happens - The repetition written out - check it reads the way you meant it.
- Notes - What to take, whom to meet, what to settle. Up to 512 characters
- What became of it - One box per action, opened from the entry's details.
- New date and time - For Postpone: when it will happen instead. The entry moves; where it first stood is kept, and the reminder counts from the new time. Not the same as now
- Hand it over to - For Transfer: who takes the entry over. It becomes their entry to change, complete or cancel; they are told at once. Only the owner may transfer. Any user of this company
- Outcome / Reason - What was agreed, or why it moved or did not happen. Everybody it was for reads it in their alert; it stays in the entry's history. Required for Not held and Postpone; up to 480 characters
6Rules and integrity #
- Appointments are different from other follow-ups - A visit, meeting or demo takes an hour on the calendar, is reminded, and is announced to everybody it is for. Anything else takes half an hour and is quiet.
- A follow-up cannot be edited here - It belongs to its lead or deal - the calendar opens the record instead.
- An entry has one owner - When several people are on it, it stays the owner's to change, complete or cancel. Others see it and are reminded.
- Postponing keeps the history - The original time is kept and the entry says how many times it has moved - which is exactly what you want to see.
- A repeating entry is one entry - Cancelling asks whether you mean this one or the whole series; the status actions are not offered for a repeating entry.
7Shortcut keys #
- F3 - New entry.
- F5 - Refresh.
- F5 (in the entry box) - Save it.
- Esc - Close the box; otherwise close the tab.
8If something does not work #
"Only the entry's owner can change its status - or their team lead, or a sales manager."
- Why
- Marking an entry done or cancelled is for the person it belongs to and those above them.
- What to do
- Ask its owner, or have it reassigned to you.
"CRM is not licensed for this company ... Contact your software vendor."
- Why
- The company's licence has no CRM module.
- What to do
- Ask your vendor to add CRM, then sign out and in.
"Subject: say what the entry is." / "Type: pick what kind of entry it is - a meeting, a visit, a task."
- Why
- An entry needs a subject and a type.
- What to do
- Fill both; types come from CRM > Masters.
"Whose calendars: pick at least one person."
- Why
- The type chosen is one that involves people, and nobody was named.
- What to do
- Pick at least one - each of them gets the entry on their own calendar.
"Starts: give the date and time." / "Ends: it cannot be before it starts."
- Why
- The times are missing or the wrong way round.
- What to do
- Give a start, and an end no earlier than it.
"Ends: an entry runs a month at most." / "Ends: an entry that repeats lasts a day at most."
- Why
- A single entry is capped at 31 days, and one occurrence of a repeating entry at 24 hours.
- What to do
- Split a longer stretch into entries, or make it repeat.
"Remind me: between 0 (no reminder) and 10080 minutes (a week)."
- Why
- The reminder is outside the range - 0 means no reminder.
- What to do
- Give minutes within a week of the start.
"Repeats: pick Never, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly." / "Every: between 1 and 99." / "Repeat until: it cannot be before the entry starts."
- Why
- The repeat is half-set.
- What to do
- Pick a pattern, an interval of 1 to 99, and an end date that is not before the start.
"You can put an entry only on your own calendar, or on those of a team you lead."
- Why
- You named somebody outside your reach.
- What to do
- Ask a sales manager, who may put an entry on anybody's calendar.
"This is a follow-up of a lead or a deal - change it with Follow-up (F7) on that record, not on the calendar."
- Why
- Entries that come from a follow-up belong to their record, so the record is where they change.
- What to do
- Open the lead or the deal and press F7.
"This entry is already ... - it can no longer be changed." / "This entry is already closed (...) - its status can no longer change."
- Why
- Completed, not-held and cancelled entries are closed for good.
- What to do
- Make a new entry if it is happening after all.
"This entry belongs to someone else." / "Only the entry's owner can cancel it - or their team lead, or a sales manager."
- Why
- Somebody else's entry is theirs to change.
- What to do
- Ask them, or their team lead.
"Postpone: give the new date and time." / "Postpone: that is when it already is." / "Postpone: the new end cannot be before the new start."
- Why
- The postpone dialog was left incomplete, or moved to the same time.
- What to do
- Give a genuinely new time, with an end after it.
"Postpone: say why - the people it is for are told." / "Not held: say why it did not happen."
- Why
- Both actions need a reason, because everybody it was for is told.
- What to do
- Write a line of explanation.
"Transfer: pick who takes it over." / "Transfer: it is already theirs." / "Transfer: that user is not available."
- Why
- The hand-over names nobody, the present owner, or somebody who can no longer sign in.
- What to do
- Pick a live colleague.
"Only the entry's owner can transfer it."
- Why
- Hand-over is the owner's to make.
- What to do
- Ask them, or a sales manager.
"This entry repeats - a series is changed (its start, or Repeat until) or cancelled as a whole, not postponed."
- Why
- A repeating entry is one thing, not a row of separate ones.
- What to do
- Change or cancel the series; to move one day only, cancel the series and make single entries.
"That entry is no longer there."
- Why
- Somebody removed it while the calendar was open.
- What to do
- Press F5 to redraw.
"The calendar file could not be written: ..."
- Why
- Writing the .ics file failed in the browser or on the server - the reason follows the colon.
- What to do
- Try again; if it persists, take the entry's details by hand into your own calendar.
The exported file does not open in Outlook or Google Calendar
- Why
- The file is a standard .ics - a browser may have saved it without its extension.
- What to do
- Save it with the name it is given and open it from the file itself, not from the browser's download bar.
A reminder never appeared
- Why
- The reminder belongs to the calendar the entry was added to - the ERP does not sound it.
- What to do
- Export the entry and add it to Outlook, Google Calendar or a phone, which do the reminding.
Somebody else's entry is not on the calendar I am looking at
- Why
- The calendar shows your own entries unless you are a team lead or a sales manager.
- What to do
- Switch whose calendar is shown, where your tier allows it.
9For an administrator #
- Activity types decide what is an appointment - In CRM > Masters > Activity types, the Kind (Call, Visit, Meeting, Demo, Mail, Task) is what makes an entry an appointment - not its name.
- The standard reminder - One setting decides how long before an appointment everybody is reminded; an entry may override it.
10Settings it uses #
- CRM: remind me N minutes before an appointment - the company's standard, shown in the meta card and used when an entry's own reminder is blank.
This is the help InvoiceNET® ERP shows beside the Calendar screen. Whether you have the screen depends on the modules of your licence and the rights your administrator has given you.
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