Introduction to Activities and Activity Types

Activities are a feature in the Opportunities Interface that lets you track the steps taken or planned towards an Opportunity as well as other day-to-day tasks. In this article, we’ll introduce you to Activities and Activity Types.

This article will cover:

• What is an Activity?
• What is an Activity Type?
• Creating and Editing Activity Types
• Viewing Activities

What is an Activity?

Activities in Spektrix represent tasks that a fundraising team may do when cultivating Donors. You can use Activities to plan tasks, helping you effectively manage your workflow.

Activities are a customizable way to plan, record and monitor your ongoing daily fundraising work across your team.

These could be day-to-day tasks, meetings, milestones or other notable steps in your Donors’ journeys. When used effectively, Activities are especially useful for closely managing multiple prospects with varying degrees of priority across various members of your development team.

What are Activities for?

You can use Activities in all sorts of ways, but here are a few common examples:

• Overall management of your own or your team’s workflow
• Documenting an important moment in a funding relationship (e.g. grant awarded, funding report submitted, or expression of wishes provided for a legacy)
• Managing your moves/enacting your cultivation plan in advance
• Keeping yourself and your team accountable for prospects
• Reminders about stewarding existing donors
• Tracking time and money spent on cultivating gifts to inform and drive efficiency and help reach targets more quickly

Activities are really useful when it comes to examining a donor’s past history with your organization. You can add as much detail as you’d like to Activities in Spektrix, providing an accurate picture of that donor’s interactions with your organization when it comes time to solicit them for a new gift.

How do Activities work?

You can use Activities to track your work by actively editing and marking them when completed.

For example, when using Activities to track phone calls made as part of an ongoing relationship with a Donor, you might:

• Create a new Activity to flag that you’re going to make a phone call
• Edit the Activity to log that the call has been made and add notes regarding what was discussed
• Mark the Activity as completed to demonstrate that it’s done
• Schedule a follow-up call as a new Activity and repeat

Using Activities this way helps with filtering and monitoring your day-to-day tasks. It also lets you see a timeline of what you and your team are working on regarding your prospects.

Additionally, you can create Activities to document interactions which have already happened. This can include unplanned conversations which you want to record but don’t want to appear like outstanding to-dos. You can add these Activities and then immediately mark them as completed.

Each Activity is required to have a:

• Subject: The name or brief description of Activity.
• Date: The date of the Activity. For Activities that have passed, this can be the date it took place. For Activities in the future, this can be a due date.
• Type: The type of Activity, which is defined in the Opportunities Interface settings.
• Priority Status: The priority status for the Activity. Status are high, medium or low.
• Assignee: The User assigned to the Activity.

Activities can also include notable information such as:

• Time and Money Spent
• Notes
• Attachments

They can also be linked to a Customer and/or an Opportunity.

VIDEO: Jump ahead to our Spektrix Training: On-Demand video - Activities for a guided walkthrough of this process.

What is an Activity Type?

Each Activity needs to have an Activity Type, which demonstrates the kind of task they represent, for example an Email or Meeting.

Assigning appropriate Activity Types allows you to broadly track your most common and effective ways of working.

There are four Activity Types in your system by default:

• Phone call
• Email
• Letter
• Meeting

You can edit and delete these pre-existing Activity Types, as well as add other Activity Types as required. Some further examples you may want to create could be:

• Application submission
• Report to funder
• Steward
• Spot research
• Thank/close
• Recirculate back into the pipeline
• Write proposal

Things to consider before creating an Activity Type

You can have as many Activity Types as you like. We recommend keeping your list of Activity Types streamlined and standardized.

Some key considerations to factor when planning Activity Types include:

• What types of activities do you and your team use to fundraise?
• Which do you do most frequently?
• How specific and granular is it useful to be?

You may want to consider having specific Activity Types such as Email or Phone Call while also having broader Activity Types such as Food and Drinks, which can cover a lunch or coffee meetup.

Creating and Editing Activity Types

To create and edit Activity Type, navigate to the Admin Settings Dashboard.

TIP: Setting up and editing Activity Types takes place in the Settings tab of the Opportunities Interface. User Accounts will need the Opportunities User and Opportunities Administrator roles. If you don’t have these user roles, contact a Settings Administrator in your organization to edit your User Account and add the Opportunities User and Administrator roles.

Creating an Activity Type

• 1. Click the New activity type button at the bottom-left of the screen.
     
  2. A new field will open up in the main part of the screen, displaying New activity type.
     
  3. Fill in the name of your new Activity Type.
  4. Click the Save button to create it. Click the Cancel button to cancel any unsaved changes.

Editing an Activity Type

• TIP: When an Activity Type’s name is edited, it will only affect new Activities. Any Activities that currently have the Activity Type will retain its previous name.

  1. Click on the name of the Activity Type in the left column and you’ll see it displayed in the main part of the screen.
  2. Hover the cursor over the Activity Type and you’ll see a blue border appear with a small pencil icon.
     
  3. Click anywhere in this main section to edit the Activity Type.
  4. Change the name of the Activity Type.
  5. Click the Save button.

  Click the Cancel button to cancel any unsaved changes. Click the Delete button to delete the Activity Type.

  WARNING: When an Activity Type is deleted, it will no longer be available to use. However, any existing Activities with this Activity Type will still retain that type. A deleted Activity Type cannot be added to an Activity.

Viewing Activities

You can view Activities in several places in the Opportunities interface:

• Pinboard
• Activities Dashboard
• Opportunities Dashboard
• People Dashboard
• Timeline in the Customer Record
• Donor Profile Report

Pinboard

Activities can be viewed in the Pinboard of the Opportunities Interface. Activities are located under the Activities tab with the checkbox icon.

TIP: Only Activities that are assigned to you will display.

Here you’ll see Activities sorted by:

• Unsaved Activities: Activities that are still in draft mode or have changes which haven’t been saved since last edited
  

  REMINDER: If a newly created Activity hasn’t been saved, it will not appear in any Activities Reports. If an existing Activity has any unsaved changes, those changes will not appear in Activities Reports.

• My upcoming incomplete activities: Any incomplete Activities sorted by Priority, starting with low (green down arrow), medium (yellow diamond) and high (red up arrow)
  

  REMINDER: Any incomplete Activities whose Activity Date has passed will appear with the date in red.

• My recently completed activities: Complete Activities with a checkbox to mark completion, sorted by Priority, starting with low (green down arrow), medium (yellow diamond) and high (red up arrow)
• Recently Viewed Activities: Recently viewed Activities, including incomplete or complete, sorted by the most recently viewed Activity
  

  REMINDER: Unsaved Activities will not appear in the Recently Viewed list.

Activities Dashboard

All saved Activities will appear in the Activities Dashboard.

By default, all Activities are displayed. Each line displays a summary of an Activity:

1. Completion Status: A checkbox will appear if the Activity is completed
2. Priority: Priority symbol for High (red up arrow), Medium (yellow diamond) or Low (green down arrow) priorities
3. Subject: Subject of the Activity
4. Linked: The Opportunity it is linked to, with the Campaign of the Opportunity
5. Type: Activity type
6. Date: The Date of the Activity

For instructions on how to search and filter Activities, read Searching Activities in Introduction to the Opportunities Interface.

Opportunities Dashboard

In the Opportunities Dashboard, you can view the next incomplete Activity linked to an Opportunity.

If an Opportunity has an incomplete Activity linked, it’ll display:

1. Priority: Priority symbol for High (red up arrow), Medium (yellow diamond) or Low (green down arrow) priorities
2. Date: The Date of the Activity
3. Type: Activity type
4. Subject: Subject of Activity

People Dashboard

In the People Dashboard, you can view the next incomplete Activity linked to a Customer.

If a Customer has an incomplete Activity linked, it’ll display:

1. Priority: Priority symbol for High (red up arrow), Medium (yellow diamond) or Low (green down arrow) priorities
2. Date: The Date of the Activity
3. Type: Activity type
4. Subject: Subject of Activity

Timeline in the Customer Record

You can also view all of a Customer’s linked Activities, complete and incomplete, on their Timeline in the Customer Record.

If a Customer has any Activities linked, they’ll display:

1. Completion Status: A checkbox will appear if the Activity is completed
2. Priority: Priority symbol for High (red up arrow), Medium (yellow diamond) or Low (green down arrow) priorities
3. Subject: Subject of Activity
4. Type: Activity type
5. Assignee: The User the Activity is assigned to
6. Date: The Date of the Activity
7. Opportunity: If linked to an Opportunity, it will display its Campaign, Stage and Description

Donor Profile Report

You can also view all of a Customer’s linked Activities, complete and incomplete, on their Donor Profile Report.

TIP: You can only run the Donor Profile Report on an Individual.

If a Customer has any Activities linked, they’ll display:

1. Date: The Date of the Activity
2. Activity Type: The Activity Type
3. Complete?: “Yes” will appear if the Activity is completed or “No” will appear if the Activity is not completed
4. Subject: Subject of Activity
5. Priority: Priority status High, Medium or Low
6. User: The User the Activity is assigned to
7. Description: Quick details found in the body of the Activity

On-Demand Training Video - Activities

In this section of our Spektrix Training: On-Demand video on Fundraising and Opportunities, we cover Activities.

This chapter is a guided walkthrough of:

• What is an Activity
• Activity Types
• Creating an Activity
• Managing Activities
• BCC Email Activity

VIDEO TIP: With our Spektrix Training: On Demand videos- you can stop, restart or move to specific chapters. Click the CC option to turn on captions. Click in the Settings menu cog icon to control speed, captions and quality.

Further Reading

You now have the information you need to understand Activities and Activity Types. Continue learning with Creating and Managing Activities. You can also read more articles in the Donor Pipeline and Stewardship section of the Support Centre.