The Activity Timeline and Task Center features allow Association Admins to easily track changes, updates, and communications on records. While some activities are tracked automatically (such as renewals, drops, event registrations, etc.), Association Admins can add activities like communication-related notes and to-dos including calls, meetings, emails, and more.
Association Admins can also manually enter education credits for members if the crediting event was hosted elsewhere or if special circumstance arose that require manual crediting.
There are multiple pre-defined Activity Types available but admins have flexibility to create a custom Activity Type to track association-specific activities that aren't included in the pre-defined Activity Types.
When ready to create or edit an Activity, follow the steps below.
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Create New Activities
Step 1: Click to Add New Activity
There are various places to do this, including:
From the "Quick Create" plus sign at the top of every admin page.
On a record under the New button in the upper right-hand corner.
On a record's Timeline tab
Click the plus (+) sign on the right-hand side of the Timeline section.
From the Task Center:
In the Task Center, click the New Task button.
In the Task Center, click the plus (+) sign on the right-hand side.
Step 2: Enter Activity Details
When a new activity is selected, the Add Activity modal opens:
Within the modal, select the appropriate Activity:
Activity Type
The pre-defined activity types include Note, Meeting, Call, and Email and they share the same fields options.
These activities are different from a Task, Credit, or Parent Change activity.
Tasks are activities that can be assigned as a to-do item for oneself or another admin. Tasks can have Follow-up tasks that are automatically prompted for creation when the first task is marked complete.
Credit activities allow admins to manually add continuing education credits to a record.
Parent Change activities are added by the system (when a linked parent record is changed), but can also be manually created by admins to reflect a historical change in parent for a member or edited by admins to include additional notes.
Available Fields in Activity Types
Subject
This field is required and will automatically be filled in with the selected activity type.
Subject lines can be edited as needed or use the default text (which is the Activity Type).
Date
Select today's date or past/future dates for the corresponding Activity.
For Tasks, the selected date will represent the task's due date and will also determine the status (open or overdue).
For Parent Change, this will initially be the date the change was made in Novi, but can be edited by admins to reflect a different date (ex: Joe Smith's parent company was changed in June in Novi, but he left in May.)
Notes
Enter additional details, if applicable. This field is not required so it can be left blank.
Tip: Remember that notes can be searched in the Activity Timeline!
Member Record
This is the record attached to the activity.
This field will be auto-populate if the custom activity is created directly on a record.
Additional fields may or may not be shown at the bottom of the modal, depending on which Activity Type was selected above. Complete the fields below, as needed:
Contact
This is an optional field that can be used to track which individual within a company is the contact for this activity (ex: I called John Smith at ABC Company about the company's membership).
This field only shows if the record is a company.
Assigned To
Tasks include this additional field which allows admins to assign tasks to other admins.
This field only shows if the Activity Type is Task.
Credits Possible & Credit Awarded
Enter the number of available credits to earn in the Credits Possible field. Enter the number of credits actually earned by the record in Credits Awarded.
These fields only show if the Activity Type is Credit.
Note: Admins should only enter manual credits that were not earned through a ticket within a Novi event (events in Novi allow tickets to have credits attached and assigned when marked as attended). When in doubt, go to the Events tab on a record to see how many credits were earned.
Credit Types
If custom credit types have been set up on your site, you can select one or more types within this field.
This field is optional and will only show if the Activity Type is Credit.
Parent From & Parent To
When an admin updates the parent member of a record, the Activity Timeline inherently tracks this change.
If this activity is manually added to the Activity Timeline by an admin but the actual parent is not removed from the Parent Member field under the Details tab on the record, the Parent Member field will not updated and the parent will remain. Manual Parent Change activities are for tracking historical changes only.
If the Parent Change activity is edited later, this will also not update the linked parent for the record. To change a parent properly, admins should update the field on the Details tab of the record.
Click the Save & Close button to add an activity to the a record's Timeline.
Edit an Activity
To edit an activity, click the three horizontal dots to the right of the activity and select Edit.
This will open the Edit Activity modal. Click the Save & Close button once the update is complete.
Custom Activity Types
Additional Activity Types may be created by going to Members > Activity Types on the backend and clicking on the blue "Add Custom Activity Type" button.
In the pop-up modal, there are multiple icons to choose from to further personalize it. The 'Track as Task' toggle will treat the new Activity Type similar to the predefined Task activity, enabling assignment to an admin and visibility in the Task Center.
Toggling 'Create Follow-up Task' will prompt a follow-up task modal to appear upon completing the initial task. This feature seamlessly assigns the follow-up task to the original assignee.
View all tasks in the Activity Types list to easily see which ones are marked as follow-up tasks.
Pin an Activity
Pin important Activities to the top of Activity Timeline by clicking on the thumbtack image next to each activity.
Note: Reserve pinning activities for those that are important enough to need seen by ALL Association Admins. Pinning is not limited to a specific admin's view but impacts what all admins see when viewing Activity Timelines.
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