Custom fields on Activities

Craig Holmes
Craig Holmes Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
Third Anniversary 25 Up Votes 10 Comments
edited July 2022 in Ideas and Product Feedback #1

It would be super useful if custom fields could be created at an activity level.  We use activities to prompt our sales people to make calls to prospects.  Being able to create a custom field against the activity to track the downstream outcome would be a huge help

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  • Amit Sarda (AmitSarda.xyz)
    Amit Sarda (AmitSarda.xyz) Member Posts: 1,612 VERIFIED MEMBER
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    edited July 2022 #2

    Craig - a workaround here is to add the custom field to a deal and pull that field in the activity list view.

    But this ability to add custom fields in Activities would be immensely useful and one can customize this to cater to their sales process.

  • Inês Batata
    Inês Batata Posts: 2,027 VERIFIED MEMBER
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    edited February 2022 #3

    Hi @Craig Holmes !

    Besides @Amit Sarda suggestion, you can also create a customized type of activity (that signals a certain outcome, for example "outcome: failed") and then create an automation that changes your activity type to the new one once a particular type of note is entered in the activity signalling that it had that outcome.

    This way you can filter by a certain type of activity and know which outcome you're filtering for.

    Here's a suggestion of how to set it up:

    image
    Creating a dedicated type of activity for a particular type of activity outcome.

     

    image
    Automation: the trigger.

     

    image
    The action: overview.

     

    image
    The action: detail.

     

    You can and should, of course, adapt this to your specific workflow needs and preferences, but it could be a way to achieve your end goal with minimal manual work. Hope it helps!

     

    In any case, I have forwarded your suggestion for custom fields in activities to our team for consideration.

  • Craig Holmes
    Craig Holmes Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Third Anniversary 25 Up Votes 10 Comments
    edited May 2020 #4

    Craig - a workaround here is to add the custom field to a deal and pull that field in the activity list view.

    But this ability to add custom fields in Activities would be immensely useful and one can customize this to cater to their sales process.

    Hi Amit thanks for sharing.  I'm hoping to track the outcome of multiple activities associated to the 1 deal so don't think this one will work with what we are looking for.  Appreciate you replying though!  Cheers

  • Craig Holmes
    Craig Holmes Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Third Anniversary 25 Up Votes 10 Comments
    edited May 2020 #5

    Hi @Craig Holmes !

    Besides @Amit Sarda suggestion, you can also create a customized type of activity (that signals a certain outcome, for example "outcome: failed") and then create an automation that changes your activity type to the new one once a particular type of note is entered in the activity signalling that it had that outcome.

    This way you can filter by a certain type of activity and know which outcome you're filtering for.

    Here's a suggestion of how to set it up:

    image
    Creating a dedicated type of activity for a particular type of activity outcome.

     

    image
    Automation: the trigger.

     

    image
    The action: overview.

     

    image
    The action: detail.

     

    You can and should, of course, adapt this to your specific workflow needs and preferences, but it could be a way to achieve your end goal with minimal manual work. Hope it helps!

     

    In any case, I have forwarded your suggestion for custom fields in activities to our team for consideration.

    Hi @Inês Batata  thanks for your message.  I currently have about 15 different activity types that I'm hoping to track the outcome against so unfortunately the above solution wouldn't able us to track the outcome against the original activity.  Thanks for responding anyway!  Cheers, Craig

  • Amit Sarda (AmitSarda.xyz)
    Amit Sarda (AmitSarda.xyz) Member Posts: 1,612 VERIFIED MEMBER
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    edited May 2020 #6

    Craig - a workaround here is to add the custom field to a deal and pull that field in the activity list view.

    But this ability to add custom fields in Activities would be immensely useful and one can customize this to cater to their sales process.

    Yeah. In that case it makes sense to have it at the activity-level, and I so wish this was available right away.

     

  • Inês Batata
    Inês Batata Posts: 2,027 VERIFIED MEMBER
    2500 Comments Third Anniversary 25 Likes First Answer
    edited May 2020 #7

    Hi @Craig Holmes !

    Besides @Amit Sarda suggestion, you can also create a customized type of activity (that signals a certain outcome, for example "outcome: failed") and then create an automation that changes your activity type to the new one once a particular type of note is entered in the activity signalling that it had that outcome.

    This way you can filter by a certain type of activity and know which outcome you're filtering for.

    Here's a suggestion of how to set it up:

    image
    Creating a dedicated type of activity for a particular type of activity outcome.

     

    image
    Automation: the trigger.

     

    image
    The action: overview.

     

    image
    The action: detail.

     

    You can and should, of course, adapt this to your specific workflow needs and preferences, but it could be a way to achieve your end goal with minimal manual work. Hope it helps!

     

    In any case, I have forwarded your suggestion for custom fields in activities to our team for consideration.

    No problem @Craig Holmes . I sent your suggestion over to the team.

    Meanwhile I thought about it again and a simpler automation will probably do: instead of changing the activity type, you can simply have the automation update the activity subject to include a keyword that lets you uniquely identify the outcome and use it as a filter condition.

    Something like this, where I used the fields in brackets [] to keep the original activity's subject, and added some manual text to it to identify the outcome in a way I can filter it if I want to. Based on the same trigger conditions I showed previously.

    image
    The action in the automation.



     

  • Lisa Berghaus
    Lisa Berghaus Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited August 2020 #8

    Custom fields for Activities would be very helpful for my team. We have a lot of "exceptions" that require more customization. I prefer not to use Deals as a work around.

  • Aleksandr Salekh
    Aleksandr Salekh Member Posts: 8 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment
    edited February 2022 #9

    Dear @Inês Batata

    I have Custom Field in Person named "Category". This field contains number. From 1 to 5. 

    It is analog of rating to list of contacts I have.  

    I want to create an Automation Workflow where it triggers on finishing type of activity "Call" and in dependence of number in custom field "Category" set new call in next day\week\month\year and etc. 

    Is it possible to do so with custom field in person? 

    Thank you in advance. 

  • Inês Batata
    Inês Batata Posts: 2,027 VERIFIED MEMBER
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    edited August 2020 #10

    Dear @Inês Batata

    I have Custom Field in Person named "Category". This field contains number. From 1 to 5. 

    It is analog of rating to list of contacts I have.  

    I want to create an Automation Workflow where it triggers on finishing type of activity "Call" and in dependence of number in custom field "Category" set new call in next day\week\month\year and etc. 

    Is it possible to do so with custom field in person? 

    Thank you in advance. 

    Hi @Aleksandr Salekh !

    I'm afraid currently it's not possible to cross-reference the Person's custom field with an Activity type of trigger, so the answer would be no, unfortunately.

    Take a look at the integrations we offer in our marketplace, as they allow you to create more automations outside of the scope of our native automation feature. I did a quick search for you, take a look here.

    Pro tip: for these types of questions reach out to our Support team, you'll get a faster answer. 😉

  • Luke Spano
    Luke Spano Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited September 2021 #11

    I agree this solution would unlock a lot of flexibility in terms of being able to analyse different types of outcomes from different type of activities i.e. how did a meeting go out of 10 and then being able to filter that based on person, deal type, deal size etc. etc. And yes there will likely be multiple activities associated to each deal so suggested solutions don't solve for this

  • Paul Cohen
    Paul Cohen Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Photogenic
    edited June 2022 #12

    I agree it would be very useful to create custom fields at an activity level. @Pipedrive The original post is from 2 years ago...has there been any development on this? 

  • Beth D
    Beth D Member Posts: 3 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment

    I would also like to see this feature!! Any update on this??

  • Felix Brumme
    Felix Brumme Member Posts: 27 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Third Anniversary 25 Up Votes 10 Comments Name Dropper

    Ditto, we currently have 28 different activity types (at times there were even more) and we are always looking for ways to better group them together. Since we also create and read the activities through various automated processes, we need elements here that we can uniquely define. 

    If there were user-defined fields in the activities, then we could regulate many things via these fields and it would give us the possibility to make the structure of the activities much clearer. 

  • marco.racanelli
    marco.racanelli Member Posts: 4 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Photogenic First Comment

    Hi, just adding my two cents here - it would be immensely beneficial to have the possibility to add custom fields on activity types.

    For reporting purposes, I'd need a certain activity to store the value of the deal stage, when the activity was carried out. In fact, I've observed that pulling a report with "activity" and "deal stage" currently returns the latest deal stage value. So there is no way (at least that I know of) to know the stage of a deal when the activity was done. And, more importantly, how many activities are done in each deal stage.

    Whereas, if there were activity-based custom fields, one could easily set an automation to import the deal stage onto the activity, the moment it gets marked as "done".

    It'd be great if the Pipedrive team could share some updates on this request and if there are any plans to tackle it.

  • Christian Ayala
    Christian Ayala Member Posts: 61 VERIFIED MEMBER
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    Any update on this? @Inês Batata @Manuel Oliveira I love Pipedrive, but this feature has me looking at other options. Our entire process is task driven and we need to create outcomes for specific tasks. A small pop-up that asks you to choose the outome when you click "Done" would be great.

  • Manuel Oliveira
    Manuel Oliveira Admin Posts: 1,306 COMMUNITY MANAGER
    1000 Comments 250 Likes 25 Answers Third Anniversary

    Hi @Christian Ayala , custom fields in activities are not planned for 2023 at least. But there are other updates to custom fields in the works, we’ll reveal more as soon as it is possible.

  • Christian Ayala
    Christian Ayala Member Posts: 61 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Third Anniversary 10 Comments 5 Likes Name Dropper

    Thank you, @Manuel Oliveira. I would hope that this gets considered soon. It's difficult to create an end-to-end process if you can't use activity outcome data.

  • Craig Holmes
    Craig Holmes Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Third Anniversary 25 Up Votes 10 Comments

    I'm still very keen for this feature!

  • Bertrand M
    Bertrand M Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Photogenic First Comment
    edited June 4 #20

    Are there any updates on this? We use the activity module to collaborate internally too, so it would be useful to speed up our internal process to be able to add specific actions, for example, a sales person creating a task for a project manager about a deal, it would be great to be able to select from a drop-down menu the specific task required as well as the information needed for that task.
    But it could also be useful for qualifying a meeting or a call (client's needs, level of interest etc etc). Having only the notes does not allow for optimal qualification and analysis via reports.

  • Poloduf
    Poloduf Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Name Dropper First Comment Photogenic

    @Hi @Bertrand M

    You can try to use an external automation tool. My recommendation is Make. It's a very Powerfull tool, that interact instantly with your Pipedrive database. And you can easily create workflow on you own needs.

    I can help you with if needed, i'm Make Certificated.

    Have a good day.

  • KShaw
    KShaw Member Posts: 5 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Name Dropper First Comment Photogenic

    @Bertrand M

    I completely agree with what you wrote! If you have figure out how to do this, can you please let me know?

    "Are there any updates on this? We use the activity module to collaborate internally too, so it would be useful to speed up our internal process to be able to add specific actions, for example, a sales person creating a task for a project manager about a deal, it would be great to be able to select from a drop-down menu the specific task required as well as the information needed for that task.

    But it could also be useful for qualifying a meeting or a call (client's needs, level of interest etc etc). Having only the notes does not allow for optimal qualification and analysis via reports."

    (I would have linked your text the proper way, but it seems to be having an off day and not letting me.)

  • Jakub
    Jakub Member Posts: 4 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Fourth Anniversary 5 Likes Name Dropper First Comment

    Hi, I'm just adding here a point. I would say that custom fields on the activity level will help our company a lot. Doing all things through comments and activity type is so annoying.

  • Chris Tammes
    Chris Tammes Member Posts: 2 NEW MEMBER
    First Comment

    Is the team still looking into this? Custom fields for activities would be very helpful!

  • TT
    TT Member Posts: 17 VERIFIED MEMBER
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    edited November 5 #25

    Any updates regarding custom fields for activities?

    Missing some crucial items to put calender event status to activities, e.g. rescheduled, no show, cancelled.

    Now only the endpoints are done, open, empty or deleted the activity.

    if custom fields can be added many people can create their own needs to activities.