Hi S, there are a few posts on the forum now addressing this exact question. Maybe have a peek at them and it’ll help?

What I think you need to do is to sit down and think about your workflow for Solve, then plan how to implement the strategy (both the operational procedure and the setup of the custom fields) and then from there it should be obvious what you should do.

If you’re not sure, sit down and do this anyway, use Solve every day for over a week with real clients and you will for sure know what to do then.

My own rule of thumb is to use the custom fields to gather specific data from a number of possible options and that are meant to be long term/permanent data. Most of my data is centered towards sales automation.

I use tags for short term things, i.e from a few days to a few weeks/months only, where I know at some point I won’t need to keep that info (and if I do, it goes into the background or a new custom field).

YES you can use tags redundantly with custom fields. Just set up a system so that no matter what you do you are consistent. Same thing with your other users, if there are any.

Tags are great for quick here and there’s until you can move them over to a field. Having too many tags could just confuse and slow you down IMO.

Best,

Ronald Lee
http://www.elevatedmarketing.ca
604-781-7093 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
...follow us on twitter! http://twitter.com/ElevatedMarket

Seems you’ve covered the important points that we’d normally offer - here is some supporting commentary ...

Fields like dropdowns have the benefit of limiting the choices and are worth considering when structure (control) is desired.  Tags are generally easier to use, easier to search on, used to provide lists in reports and pop-up in places such as Webmail Group Recipients etc.  The option of selecting multiple tags can also handle many different scenarios such as “show me all the high-value clients interested in attending next year’s conference” (or in your case so me all of “Dan’s High-value clients”).

I currently set up a dropdown custom field where I can choose the salesperson

You most likely know this already and have a reason for using a custom dropdown (e.g. listing non-Solve people) but just to be sure, there is a standard field called “Assigned to” which is intended to appoint someone from your team to be the account manager etc. The benefits of this are currently that the list is self populated on the users using the system, there is a custom filter for this field ... and most likely a “mass reassign” feature may find it’s way in at some point.

Engineering SpecialOps - Jun 23, 2010 02:21pm

there is a standard field called “Assigned to” which is intended to appoint someone from your team to be the account manager etc. The benefits of this are currently that the list is self populated on the users using the system, there is a custom filter for this field ... and most likely a “mass reassign” feature may find it’s way in at some point.

It is supposed to self-populate? Not on my Solve, I have to manually assign each time. Is there an error?

Also, what happens if a user that a contact is assigned to is removed from Solve, what takes that users place in the field?

It is supposed to self-populate?

I am referring that the list of options is a list of users on the system i.e. you don’t need to maintain them.  You do need to choose the option from the list when editing a contact.

If you remove a user the common name displayed will be replaced by a number.

To follow up:

At this point I think I am going to forgo using the blogs(creates a lot of redundant info for me and with most of my customers being one time transactions I’d rather keep everything involved in one place)  80% of my customers will be a one time transaction.  My current interest lies in the other 20.  With my few repeat customers I would like to track the different transactions.  This is simple enough to keep clean and separate using the section header feature.  But over a 5 year period I may have 1 to 2 transactions with these customers per year.  The salesman could vary.  So, whether using the “assigned to” or a custom dropdown “salesman” field it seems it would be difficult to track the salesman history(other than through notes which are not sortable) as those fields can only hold one name at a time.

So, how do you track which salesman sold which job over time, without using blogs(which with my sure to stay 50 blog limit wouldn’t be around to search/sort years down the road anyway)?

That’s easy.

Just go to custom fields and add a text field to the opportunities activity called:

“Sold by”

I’ve actually added that and a whole bunch more (notes, date, discount, installments, etc…)

Nice! I had only been focusing on adding fields for contact and/or blogs.  This opens up a whole lot of options…..

On a side note: how do you post screen shots here?

Yeah, it would be great if someone posted all the code to do formatting in this forum.

Usually the text input box has icons to format, but they aren’t on this one. Why not?

stratum - Jun 24, 2010 12:17am

On a side note: how do you post screen shots here?

See below screen shot: click on Options, Attach Files

To get the screen shot I just do Shift PrtScr, open and paste into Paint, cut what I need and save as a new paint file. I’m SURE there is a better more elegant way, but this is quick enough for the few times I need it