Activities are the running history on a record - the tasks, notes, calls, and attachments that tell the story of your work with a person or organization. Every record in CoolFocus can have activities, so wherever you are, you can capture what happened and what needs to happen next.
Tasks - something that needs to be done, with an owner and a due date.
Notes - written context about what happened or what was decided.
Calls - a record of a phone conversation and its outcome.
Attachments - files and documents kept with the record.
On a record's timeline - the full history, newest first.
In record sections - quick counts and recent items while you work.
Recent activity - a rolling view of what's happened lately across your work.
A record's timeline can also surface activity from closely related records, so you get the full picture in one place - for example, a donor's timeline can include activity tied to that donor's giving. This saves you from opening every related record to piece together the history. An activity logged from a scheduler appointment's panel likewise shows up on that appointment's own timeline, in addition to being attributed to the client it's about.
Tasks, notes, calls, and attachments each have a Person field linking the activity directly to the client, donor, or contact it belongs to. CoolFocus sets this automatically based on the record the activity was added on (for example, a request, service received, contribution, conversation, appointment, or visit), so activity can be traced back to the right person for reporting and filtering, not just described in text.
Every task, note, call, and attachment now carries a Person field, so an activity is always tied to the individual it's about, not just the record it was logged on. When an activity is added to a request, a service received record, a contribution, a conversation, an appointment, or a visit, CoolFocus automatically links it to the person behind that record. If an activity is added directly on a person's record, it's linked to that person automatically.
You can also set or change the Person field by hand from the activity's detail view. This makes it possible to find or report on everything logged about a specific person, even when the activities were created from a related record rather than from that person's own page.
Every task, note, call, and attachment also has an Activity Type field - a shared classifier you can use to tag what kind of activity it is (for example, a call outcome category, a note category, or a document type). One list of activity types is used across all four kinds of activity, so tagging stays consistent no matter where an activity was logged.
Some organizations mark certain activity types as restricted - for example, a medical or legal note type that should only be visible to the staff who need it. A restricted activity type is hidden from any user group that hasn't been explicitly granted access to it; unrestricted types stay visible to everyone, just like before. Administrators manage restricted-type access per user group from Settings > Security > User Groups, under the Activity Type Access tab on a group's edit screen. See User Groups and Permissions.
Whether any of this applies at all is controlled by an organization-wide Use Activity Type Security setting (Settings, Organization Info, under Security). It's on by default. When it's turned off for an organization, such as many Love INC: Community Assistance organizations, the Activity Type field is hidden on tasks, notes, calls, and attachments, and the Activity Type Access tab is hidden from user groups since there is nothing to restrict.
Untyped activities (no Activity Type set) are always visible to everyone, and administrators can always see and manage every activity type regardless of restrictions.
Because tasks, notes, calls, and attachments are linked to a Person, their grids and exports also show that person's contact details as their own columns: Contact First Name, Contact Last Name, Contact Email, and Contact Phone. These columns are filled in automatically and are display-only, so you can see or export who an activity belongs to without opening the record, but they don't show up as import fields.
The Tasks, Notes, Calls, and Attachments grids can be exported for every client at once, instead of one client at a time. Each row in the grid and export includes contact columns pulled from the linked person, so you can identify and filter activity by who it belongs to:
Contact First Name
Contact Last Name
Contact Email
Contact Phone
Because these columns come from the linked Person, you can search by a client's name to find all of their activity, or filter the grid by client to return everything logged about them, even when the activity was originally recorded from a request, service received record, contribution, conversation, appointment, or visit rather than from the client's own page. These contact columns are for identifying and filtering activity; they are not used when importing records.
You can pin an important activity so it stays at the top of the timeline - handy for a key note or a standing reminder the whole team should see.
Log activities close to when they happen, and write them so the next teammate can pick up where you left off. Activities are shared team memory.
