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NehaaNehaa 

Difference between Activities and Tasks

Can anyone help me in undersatnding difference between tasks and activities?

Cory CowgillCory Cowgill
Activities is the term for both Tasks and Events. There is no "Activities" object, there is a "Task" and "Event" object in the API. You can think of Tasks and Events as "Types of Activities". In the UI these records for both objects show up in the "Open Activities" and "Activity History" related lists. Tasks and Events are special standard objects in Salesforce.com. 

So a Task, for example, "I Called John Doe", is a record on the Task object. It will show up in the Activities related list in Salesforce.com. In the setup menu for Customize -> Activities you see the common information across both Tasks and Events, as well as breakouts for each Task and Event customizations.

I hope that helps.
Ryan ThomasRyan Thomas

Ten years after the last response, I thought I'd give a little bit more updated information on this Salesforce oddity.

You can navigate to an Activity "object" via the Object Manager in Salesforce, but if you query the database using a SOQL tool like Workbench, there is no actual Activity object to query. It will return this error message, "INVALID_TYPE_FOR_OPERATION: entity type Activity does not support query"

However, if you want to add new custom fields to a Task, you can only do that through the Activity "object" in Object Manager. There is no option to add new fields in the Task object. But, you can only arrange those new custom Activity fields on Task page layouts.

A third and final point is, if you go into a Profile to edit field access/permissions in Object Settings, it lists all Task and Activity fields under Tasks.

​​​​​​​I'm not sure why Salesforce hasn't abandoned this bifurcated design yet, but I think it's high time they did.