Activity Management in Salesforce

Activity Management in Salesforce are special, they consist of:

• Tasks (To-Dos)
• Events (meetings)

Task

Task is an object in itself that is used to assign a business activity such as making a phone call or other TO-DO items which have a target end date.

Event

Event is also an object which represents a calendar item such as a meeting or conference which has Start & End Date/Time and also it usually involves other persons who here are called as invitees.

Both of these objects come under Activities in the user interface but they are completely different objects in terms of API. Even in the setup menu under Activities,  they both have their own field list, validation rules, buttons & links, page layouts, etc. Yet we can add a field to the activity field list which will get added to both Task & Event’s page layout.

Types of Activities:

• Tasks
• Call Logging
• Events
• Email

There is no tab for Activities (Tasks or Events) in Salesforce. Activities can be created on Contract, Order, Campaign, Account, Opportunity, Product, Asset, Case, Solution, Coaching, Goal, and Metric standard objects. Also, the custom objects whose “Allow Activities” checkbox is checked can have activities on them.

Important fields in Tasks & Events:

Subject:

The subject field in activities is a combo box that can be described as a picklist that looks like a lookup field and behaves like a text field.

Related To:

This field’s API name is ‘WhatId’ and it defines which object’s record a particular task or event is related to. These objects can be any of the custom objects which allow activities on them and all the standard objects on which they can be created. This field is polymorphic.

Assigned To:

This field’s API name is OwnerID and it defines to which user the task or event has been assigned.

Due Date(On Task):

This field’s API name is ActivityDate and it represents the date by which the task should get completed.

Status(On Task):

This field describes the status of the task such as “In Progress”, “Not Started” or “Completed”.

Name:

This field’s API name is WhoID and using this field tasks can be related to a lead or contact. This field is also polymorphic.

Start & End Date/Time (On Event):

This field indicates the start & end date/time of the event.

All Day Event (On Task):

It is a checkbox which if checked, disables the End Date/Time field for the event.

Recurring series of Tasks: 

This field helps them to create recurring events or tasks daily/weekly/monthly/yearly.

Invitees are the Users, Leads, or contacts invited for a particular event. When we save the event and send them the update they get an email using which they can accept or decline the request which then will be visible in the Accepted & Declined related list on the event’s detail page.

Related Lists:

There are 2 related lists which appear on the page layout of the object which allows activities on it, following are:

1. Open Activities:

This related list displays all open tasks and events for the record and its associated records.

2. Activity History: 

This related list displays all the completed tasks, logged phone calls, expired events, outbound emails, mass emails, and merged documents for the record and its associated records.

Tasks assigned to users are visible on My Tasks related list on their homepage and events scheduled for in which a particular user is an invitee is visible on calendar related list on the home page.

Limitations with activities

• Notes & Attachments cannot be added to activities.
• Custom fields such as long text areas or rich text areas cannot be added to activities.
• Tasks cannot be assigned to a queue.

Let’s now head to Service Cloud and Case Management.