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abates Finding and reporting on non-activity
Following up on leads and accounts is an important activity for our sales team. I'm trying to find a way to find and report on leads and accounts that have a specific status (e.g. active) but have no scheduled activity? Is there any way to create this report? Is this a workaround? Salesforce has told us that the capability does not exist. Please help.
Here’s clarification- What we’re looking for is a way to report on leads and accounts which do not contain open activities.
Reason is, we forget to schedule new tasks, so leads/accounts become lost/invisible because reports will only see open activities which contain a value.
With regard to your proposed Account Page Layout Field called Last Activity Date – I looked at the Account Page Layout, and don’t see where I can add a field to show Last Activity Date – assuming if there is such a field, it would show me last activity date for all tasks/events related to this account (perhaps there would be the same result for Leads?).
As mentioned before- We’ve had several dead end talks with SF regarding reporting a null value in the open activity field. Can’t understand why this limitation.
Thanks for your recommendations. Cheers!
I did the following as you suggested- However I clicked Insert Field, which inserts the field LastActivityDate into the Simple Formula dialogue box, and I save and activate this on the Account Page Layout.
What I see as the date result of the last activity history, e.g if an account was last called 8/15/2008, this is what appears in this field. Conversely, if there is an open activity scheduled, this field still only reports on the last completed activity.
Am I missing a formula? How are you reporting on accounts/leads which have no open activities?
Thanks for your help.
Cheers!
I would try that one.
Good Morning...
You mentioned on 9/17 that by inserting a LastActivityDate field onto Accounts or Leads you're able to report date and blank values in this field. You mentioned that you 'currently report on all My Accounts/Leads with No Activities using this method, you can also do reports on No Activity Current Month, etc.'
When I create this field and display in page layout on accounts, what appears is the last date of the most recent activity history. It does not report a 'blank' value related to no activity history scheduled, it only reports on the most recent history activity.
I'd like to bottom out regarding your use of this field, and how you're getting it to report 'blank' data?
Thank you!
Well our business need maybe a little "different" then yours and this is maybe why this field works for our business. We want to understand any touches during the current month or if there are no touches at all. For this report we do not care if they have 'scheduled" touches (that I get from an Open Activity Report) we only want to understand what they have done and completed so that is why getting the data from the activity history section works perfect for this exercise.
When I report I will then report on THIS WEEK, LAST WEEK on this Last Activity Date (Criteria: Last Activity Date = THIS WEEK) and let's say I want all accounts with the Last Activity not equal to CURRENT MONTH it will pull all my Accounts that the date does not fall in CURRENT MONTH, etc. So with my field I run the following reports;
LastActivity Date = Blank : This will return All Accounts with No Completed Activities, this will only be blank if there is nothing in the history
LastActivity Date = THIS WEEK: Returns All Accounts touched this week
LastActivity Date = LAST WEEK: Returns All Accounts touched last week
LastActivity Date Less than CURRENT MONTH: Returns All Accounts with No Activity this Month
Our philosophy is anything in the "open" section does not exist until it actually happens, what I am assuming is you may want a report of All Accounts with No Open Activities, if that is the case you can create a custom report type in order to retrieve that data as I outlined above.
The only "gotcha" is this goes off Due Date so if the Due Date is not changed upon completion of a task/event the numbers can be a bit off, but my org is small enough I manage to ensure the dates are not greater then completion date. I have logged a case with SFDC because you can not get to Due Date with any updates or validation rules.
Does that make sense?
Two things that return "blank data" two ways My First Suggestion of Adding the Field is because I am then Reporting on Accounts (not activities) and merely saying if this date is blank let me know. The second suggestion is with Custom Report Types you can create them saying Object A does not always need Object B and your criteria is Object A so it will return data even if Object B has no activities in this case, however you need some type of Criteria for Object A, it could be as simple as All Live Accounts.
You can certainly get accounts with no activities as long as your criteria is from the Account perspective and not from an activities perspective. For example My Report is Called Accounts with or without activities. I generate the custom report type, however my criteria is based on the Accounts Not Activities.
Here is an example:
I run my report to say ALL Accounts and in my report I include some Account Fields as well as my Activity Fields, no criteria is set for Activity because my custom report says it does not require activities it runs the report with All Accounts with or without activities, then I sort by Action all the Accounts with No Action are at the top and that is my list. I then can put a criteria only to return where action = blank.
Yes- This is it. You can't report on 'blank' activities. Hence, if you have leads/accounts which have been worked, which contain probable opportunities, and you forget to schedule an activity, then there is not SF reportable way to find these lost leads/accounts.
We have a fast growth high volume business with lots of inbound calls seeking our products. Many leads/accounts are short term opportunity cycles, others require development. In the haste to service short term business, we often times forget to schedule a call back (activity). I estimate we have thousands of leads/accounts where we've tracked a precursor sales event (prior to creating an opportunity), then became busy and didn't schedule an activity. For instance, a 'contacted' and not converted lead which is not 'dead.' An account that's in a 'dialogue' stage, and not 'stalled', 'closed', or 'dead'.
I've been asking this question of SF for years, and they continue to say they can't report on activities which don't contain a value/date. This is the single biggest problem in my business, and my users have no SF report to highlight this info without mapping outside the database.
Do you know anyone at SF that can help? thx