For any sales person, a typical day at work is loaded with tasks. It could be the field work to visit a prospect for a demo, or the task to call up a prospect to discuss a deal, or to follow-up with customers after their visits to your website. There are a variety of such tasks that the sales team has on a daily basis. They may often find themselves occupied with trivial tasks that leave them with little or no time for the more important ones.

The list of To-dos can either be on a notepad or on a data management system that is loaded with all the customers' details. In all this, the challenge that the sales representatives face is in keeping the list of tasks organized and avoid missing out on any of them. A clear view of the type of tasks and the priority would give sales individuals a helping hand in managing time and concentrating on what is most important. That is where the CRM View for Activities is of great help.

The CRM View for Activities is available for the Tasks, Meetings and Calls modules. Apart from the list view, this CRM view would give you a fair idea on how to plan your day based on the activities.

The view is divided into four categories.

Customers - Lists the tasks/meetings/calls associated to the customers (deals that are won and closed).

OpenDeals - Lists the tasks/meetings/calls associated to the deals in pipeline.

Leads/Contacts - Lists the tasks/meetings/calls associated to the Leads/Contacts.

Others - Lists the tasks/meetings/calls associated to the records other than won deals, deals in pipeline, leads and contacts. This list includes activities that are created for the custom module's records too.

View Record Details from CRM View

From the CRM View you can have a quick glance at the tasks/meetings/calls and the related lead/contact/deal. It gives you a clear picture of all the necessary details that you need to know before you start the task/event/call and also to complete them.

To view the task details from the CRM view

1. In the Calls/Meetings/Tasks tab, select the required list view from the drop-down.
   
   
2. Click the CRM View icon.
   
   The tasks/events/calls will be listed in CRM view under the four categories. The records will be organized based on the time it was created, i.e the latest ones will be the first in the list.
   
   
3. Click on a task/event/call to view details of the record and refer additional information such as notes, history of the record, attachments, upcoming actions, email conversations, etc.
   
   

Details in the CRM View

In Zoho CRM, you could create a task to send brochures to the leads gathered from a trade show, or have a lunch meeting with a potential customer to negotiate a deal. You could also organize an event for your partners to introduce them to the newly launched product. These types of tasks/events/calls are usually associated to a lead, contact, account, deal, campaign, vendor, invoice, etc.

As a sales rep, if you get a task, you would want to know a lot more before you take it up. Information on the lead or contact the activity is for, upcoming activities, any email conversations relevant to the activity, and important notes may greatly help in completing the assigned work. For this reason, the CRM view expands further to give you a glimpse at these important details related to tasks/calls/meetings.

Clicking on a task/call/meeting, gives you the following details:

Basic Details - Some of the basic fields' values will be available such as date and time, venue, and owner of the activity. You can always expand the records to find out more details.

Notes - Notes added to the task/event/call.

Attachments - Documents attached to the task/event/call.

Links - Custom links configured for the particular record.

UpcomingActions - Any upcoming actions related to the activity.

CRM Right panel

Info - Basic Information of any contacts/deals associated with the activity, Deal Summary, if any and Open Activities are displayed. 

Timeline - A history of all activities on the record (in the last six months) are displayed.