Activity Archiving

Salesforce Activities automatically archive after 365 days.

Work with Archived Activities

• You can’t access attached files for archived activities in Lightning Experience. To access the attached files, you can change the activity so that it no longer meets the archival criteria, or open the activity in Salesforce Classic.

Tasks vs Events vs Log a Call

Activity is the general Salesforce term for a record that is a Task or an Event:

1. Tasks - this is for a user’s “to do list” or “have done” list which can include due dates and comments.

2. Events - these track meetings; these are usually face-to-face or digital and can be synced from a user’s Outlook calendar.

Think of them as a “to do” list of tasks and a diary/calendar of events – jobs to complete versus meetings to attend (including past interactions).

Tasks can be further broken down into:

1. Log a Call - most commonly used by sales people. It represents any interaction with a prospect of alumni that has already happened. Log a Call is helpful as it can use different page layouts to a standard New Task and can be optimised for recording interactions quickly.

2. New Task - something that you, or someone else you designate, is going to do in the future. This can be a task to call a prospect to follow up, send a proposal, or send a Thank You.

3. Email - this is used for email exchanges and can be synced directly with Salesforce directly using integration capabilities like Einstein Activity Capture.

Both Tasks and Events can be linked to people (Contacts or Leads but NOT an Account as it will roll up) via the Name field or to an object (Opportunity or Account etc) via the Related To field.

Task Subject Line Customisation

The Subject line on Tasks is unique in that it’s a picklist field that can also accept free text. This means users have the ability to either select from the existing picklist values that can be customised for the organisation (eg “left Voicemail” or “Talked to Contact”) or they can write their own text like “Talked to Liz and arranged a meeting”.

Allowing for free text can make Activities easier to review for users but can make reporting more challenging due to lack of standardised data. Validation rules can be used to restrict the picklist values for all users if needed.

Task Types and Reporting

Rather than using the Subject Line as a reporting source of truth, we can focus our reporting on the “Type” field. This type can be the field that characterises the activity.

The Type field can only be used in standard report types eg “Tasks and Events” or “Activities with…”. Type cannot be added to custom report types.

Salesforce Shared Activities

There is a setting called Shared Activities that allows Events and Tasks to be related to up to 50 contacts. This would be helpful for meetings or emails that have been attended by multiple prospects as opposed to creating multiple Events or Tasks that are only linked to a single contact.

When enabled Shared Activities will link an activity to each contact’s primary account.

If you enable Shared Activities, the last activity date on account records is based on the activities that roll up to the account via the Related To field. However, if the Related To field is blank, the activities are based on the primary contact’s account. The last activity date for contacts and leads is based on only the activities where the contact or lead is the primary contact on the activity.

If you enable Shared Activities, users must designate one contact as the primary contact on the activity. If you delete the primary contact, the next contact on the activity’s related list becomes the new primary contact. Or you can manually edit the activity to select a primary contact. Lists and reports display primary and secondary contacts differently.

If you don’t enable Shared Activities and a sales rep sends an email to multiple contacts, Salesforce creates a closed task for each contact. As a result, Salesforce creates duplicate records instead of just one task corresponding to the email.

You cannot relate multiple contacts to a recurring task series.

Task Queues and Activities

Some teams may benefit from creating and assigning Activities to their team Queue. If a Task can be accomplished by any member in the team then they can review their team queue and assign the Task to themselves as the record owner to complete the work.

If you add the Assigned To field to your custom activities report, you can’t see tasks assigned to queues. To see tasks in queues, remove the Assigned To field.

Field History Tracking for Activities

As of the Spring '23 Salesforce release we can turn on tracking for up to six fields in Activities. This is tracked in the Activity History related list.

Task Assignment

• Tasks can only have one owner at a time. If you reassign the task to someone else, it no longer appears in your task list.

• By default, a task is assigned to the person who creates it. You can assign independent copies of a new task to multiple people, when you create the task.

• When a user is assigned a task, they get a notification in the notification bell. When members of a group are assigned, each group member will receive that notification.

Create a Follow-Up Task

There’s a button on tasks called “Create Follow-Up Tasks” which carries over some core information like Assigned To, Name, and Related To. This button does not create any relationship link between the new task and the old task.

Recurring Tasks

Recurring tasks can be helpful for repetitive activities eg making weekly updates to all opportunities for accurate pipeline forecasting.

There is a limit for how many recurring tasks can be created in a series, this limit is based on the task frequency. There is a button under the frequency selection that lets users calculate the latest date for tasks in the series. This will require training for users as it’s not very intuitive.

You can’t relate multiple contacts to a recurring task series.

You can’t create recurring tasks in bulk.

Repeat a Task

Salesforce has an alternative to Recurring Tasks called Repeat a Task. A recurring task requires users to create a series with specific due dates that are created all at once. Repeat a Task only creates the next task in the series when the current task is due or marked as completed.

Task Bulk Creation

Tasks can be created in bulk but can only be assigned to 200 users at a time. This can be helpful to create a task for all DOs asking them to update their pipeline. To support this activity we should consider creating Groups for the different teams to quickly assign tasks.

Salesforce Features we can use with Activities

• The Assistant component can be added to the Home Page and will surface ten records that the user should be working on that has incomplete activities or no activities associated with them like Opportunities. It also highlights overdue Opportunities that should be updated.

  

• The To Do list can be added to the utility bar for a lightning app. This component lets users sort, filter, and group tasks. It also supports custom labels. This tool would be helpful for DOs when prioritising their outreach. To implement this TAP would need to move from the Affinaquest lightning app to a non-managed lightning app. The Sales lightning app would be ideal as Salesforce is building new functionality that could continue to benefit users like the new lightning sales home page in the Spring '24 release. To Do List is specific to the user. It cannot be shared or reported on.