You can remove your own access to the workgroup then you won’t see it.

Hey, good idea, that worked great. thanks.

I’m trying to see the need for hiding contacts or workgroups and why they would be a distraction. Is it just so you don’t see them in the Contact or Project list on the left hand side?

If yes, maybe I can add a few cents worth: My understanding and experience of the power and design of Solve is to actually not even use the contact list at all to find a contact or project. Instead you use, as Adrian wrote in a few posts on the main Solve page, the ‘CRM Money Bar’. Use the power of Solve to search and filter (via tags and search box) the results you are after, then those will be displayed in the left hand column in a much smaller list and you can then find what you are looking for. For example, if you have a bunch of sales opportunities that are cold, they should have a tag ‘cold’ and conversely if they are active or hot prospects use a tag called ‘hot’ (vs your idea of starring them as you wrote in another post. By starring them, you can’t narrow the search any further; you can only show starred projects or contacts regardless of any other tag or status or search criteria, but using tags you can). By properly using tags and the other features of the CRM money bar, you can now search for all your ‘cold’ or ‘hot’ opportunities or a combination of whatever tags you have. Add tags for different products or services you offer as well, then you can find all your hot leads, for a given product or service etc.

This also goes along with the intent that workgroups were created for security settings, not to group people or projects together (as posted here: http://norada.com/forums/viewthread/1287/). That is what tags are for. So if workgroups are used only for security, then you should tagging the associated Contact or Project as dormant.

the CRM Money Bar: http://norada.com/index.php?uri=/norada/crm/the_crm_money_bar/

Hope this helps. Look forward to hearing what you think.

Hi Dave,

Yes, I have been using tags the way you describe. I use them for immediate short term segmentation/identification. I also have custom fields for more longer term/permanent data.

I don’t see tags to be much help, the way its set up, for long term usage on DORMANT leads. I’d much rather hide those leads. Having a LONNNNGG list of tags isn’t ideal for us (how many tags do people use, number-wise? That would be another good Poll I suppose).

And I use the horizontal view of the contact page to keep track of who and when I should contact next, and continue rolling over a certain field to stay on track of it.

I do intend to go through all my contacts and see what insight I can gleam from them in about a week or so’s time, that’s why I haven’t put into Solve the other half of my leads, I’d like to keep the list manageable so I can mine the database.

That’s much easier done without distractions from data not related to what I’m supposed to be looking at.

And yes, as an extra redundancy, I actually put a custom field to also select the company that I will be looking for, but workgroups works quite well the way SpecialOps says.

So I differ in your use, in that I don’t just use one. I use both the contact list and tags, along with the search.

Ronald - Jun 19, 2010 10:16am

Hi Dave,

Yes, I have been using tags the way you describe. I use them for immediate short term segmentation/identification. I also have custom fields for more longer term/permanent data.

Perfect - that is what I do as well

Ronald - Jun 19, 2010 10:16am

Hi Dave,

Yes, I have been using tags the way you describe. I use them for immediate short term segmentation/identification. I also have custom fields for more longer term/permanent data.

I don’t see tags to be much help, the way its set up, for long term usage on DORMANT leads. I’d much rather hide those leads. Having a LONNNNGG list of tags isn’t ideal for us (how many tags do people use, number-wise? That would be another good Poll I suppose).

I use 25 tags for Companies - which is where I manage my sales process until we close the deal. Then I make one project blog for our software installation and training (which then gets archived upon completion), and a second project blog for general and technical support issues and tasks. I have about 20 tags in PB’s since they are also used for our internal development. I am actually in the process of reducing the number of tags as some of them are, as you wrote above, longer term/permanent data. I use tags mostly to move a project on sales cycle along it’s path.

I suppose that you could also Archive Contacts or PBs you don’t want to see, but that may get messy

Actually now that I look at my tag list, some of them are permanent and will stay permanent so that I can filter easily. Company catagories such as: Client, Partner, Supplier, Reference etc

Example: I can quickly pull up my list of Clients who will act as References when I need to provide one

Filtering my Custom Form Field is more cumbersome and you can only choose one value

Just my 3 cents worth

Yes, archiving the contacts and then trying to sort/revive them later….could be messy. Haven’t done it yet, but that is an option I’ll eventually use.

And 25 tags?!?!?!??!?! I think you should think about reducing those and seeing what you can put into custom fields.

Then you’ll 1) have cleaner workflow
2) have less stress to worry about when trying to figure out how to identify/segment
3) since you’re used to tags, you’ll find other tags to use that may be even better, targeted, once you have some of your notation/data elsewhere in the contact.

Tags are great for short term, project stuff if you have data that you know will never change or change after a few months +, ease the burden and make a custom field for it.

That’s what I think anyway.

PS: I’m up to 12 tags and looking at my list, 4 should be custom fields…hmmmmm

dave@vm - Jun 19, 2010 10:34am

Actually now that I look at my tag list, some of them are permanent and will stay permanent so that I can filter easy. Company catagories such as: Client, Partner, Supplier, Reference etc

Example: I can quickly pull up my list of Clients who will act as References when I need to provide one

There is something I asked for elsewhere, that would make the whole searching for data easier.

Right now we can only search for data based on dropdown A and B in the search bar.

If we can add the ability to search for stuff based on 3 or more criteria, that will allow us to target our searches better. For example, maybe dropdown A and B and add a new column for another B list or something.

The search is powerful when it works, but there have been a few times I’ve been scratching my head wondering about it’s limitations.

For example I remember wanting to find data based on dropdown A and B, that didn’t have X in it or something.

25 is a lot but it’s pretty manageable, here is a screen shot. I have 3 main catagories, then a few extra descriptors.

Ex:
The tags with ‘1’ Describe what kind of company: Client or Client - Potential, Partner or Partner - Potential etc
When we’ve closed the sale I switch the tag from Client-Potential to Client
then ‘2’ is the state of the sales process, which gets removed once they become a Client
then ‘3’ is did we find them Directly, or were they a Referral from a partner (then I have my Partners in a Form Field pull down list
Then just a few other descriptors, so a company only ever gets 3-5 tags anyways

Ronald - Jun 19, 2010 10:38am

dave@vm - Jun 19, 2010 10:34am

Actually now that I look at my tag list, some of them are permanent and will stay permanent so that I can filter easy. Company catagories such as: Client, Partner, Supplier, Reference etc

Example: I can quickly pull up my list of Clients who will act as References when I need to provide one

There is something I asked for elsewhere, that would make the whole searching for data easier.

Right now we can only search for data based on dropdown A and B in the search bar.

If we can add the ability to search for stuff based on 3 or more criteria, that will allow us to target our searches better. For example, maybe dropdown A and B and add a new column for another B list or something.

The search is powerful when it works, but there have been a few times I’ve been scratching my head wondering about it’s limitations.

For example I remember wanting to find data based on dropdown A and B, that didn’t have X in it or something.

Better searching has been asked for numerous times and I think it will come, since it’s inline with the way Solve thinks, IMO.

dave@vm - Jun 19, 2010 10:45am

25 is a lot but it’s pretty manageable, here is a screen shot. I have 3 main catagories, then a few extra descriptors.

Ex:
The tags with ‘1’ Describe what kind of company: Client or Client - Potential, Partner or Partner - Potential etc
When we’ve closed the sale I switch the tag from Client-Potential to Client
then ‘2’ is the state of the sales process, which gets removed once they become a Client
then ‘3’ is did we find them Directly, or were they a Referral from a partner (then I have my Partners in a Form Field pull down list
Then just a few other descriptors, so a company only ever gets 3-5 tags anyways

Imagine how cool it would be to have two or more sets of tags on a contact page.

Your #1,2,3’s could be one tag. And the rest could be another. Easier to sort, manage, and apply from an end user POV (less thinking/load on mind).

I’ve put your 1,2,3’s as my custom fields actually, but do have tags for “hot prospects” and around certain offerings I have.