Keeping Track of Records

If you’re like us, you have thousands of contacts in your CRM, and not enough time or resources to keep track of all of them. Zoho’s new CRM update provides new filter tools – Touched Records, Untouched Records, Record Action, and Related Records Action – to better visualize where you are with your clients or leads, and what your priorities need to be.

This feature is available through the Views in Zoho CRM, which makes it much easier to create and manipulate data, than having to create a new report. The following excerpt from Zoho goes into detail on the different filter types:

Use Time Tracking Filters

Advanced filters include a set of time-tracking filters, whose purpose is to easily let you filter records that have been worked on or not worked on in a specified time period.

For example, you can filter out leads that have been”untouched” for 6 months. You don’t need to run a separate report – the time tracking filter called “Untouched records” will give you this picture.

Following are the time tracking filters and their definitions:

  • Touched Records: Gives you records that have been updated in the specified period. This includes changes made to the related child records as well.
  • For example, if you are running this filter on the Contacts module – and an associated deal has been edited in the specified period. In this case, this contact will also be considered as “touched” or worked on and will be displayed in the results.
  • Untouched Records: Gives you records that have not been updated at all.
  • For example, if you are running this filter on the Contacts module – contacts that have not been updated at all in the given period, will be brought up by this filter.
  • Record Action: Records that have been modified in the specified period. This only brings up the records if any field in the record has been edited. This does not include changes made to the related child records.
  • For example, if you are running this filter on the Contacts module – contacts whose direct fields have been edited will appear in the results. If an associated deal has been edited, this contact will not appear in the results.
  • Related Records Action: Gives you records, only when their related child records have been updated.
  • For example, if you are running the filter on the Contacts module, and an associated deal has been updated, this contact will appear in the results. This contact will not appear in the results if the contact alone has been updated.

In essence, Touched Records = Record Action + Related Records Action.

In all of these filters, you will find the following parameters in the criteria:

  • By User: Refers to records updated by a CRM user.
  • By System: Refers to records updated by the CRM system via workflow field updates, APIs, record conversion, auto-merge of records during deduplication.”

What does this mean for you?

For companies using Zoho CRM, this feature allows for better contact and account tracking. It is useful to see when you haven’t touched an account for a couple of months, and need to reach out to make sure they are happy or discuss the next project for example. Our focus with the Time Tracking Features is keeping good relationships with all clients, by understanding when the last time we reached out or performed work for a client. The feature is another step forward with Zoho’s continued system improvements and added functionality.

If you are looking for any further assistance with features like this, feel free to schedule a consultation with Catalyst Group, or check out the Catalyst blog for even more New Zoho features.