Logging Many Calls or Contacts Per Record

[Craig_Cox]

Hello-

I am attempting to use Airtable as a CRM. As such, I have some contacts with whom I communicate just once or twice, and others with whom I must log many calls and emails.

Of course, I want to keep all call/email logs for each contact name within one record. Is there a sample base showing how people maintain logs that can contain widely varying number of call and email contacts per record?

Thanks.

[Julian_Kirkness]

You should probably start with the Sales CRM template as a starting point - this has an Interactions table which logs interaction with your clients.

[Katherine_Duh]

Hi there! If you’re going to be contacting individuals multiple times, I would suggest making a separate table of all the calls/outreach attempts you’ve made that’s linked to the table of contacts. That way when you pull up an individual contact’s record, you’ll be able to get links to all the specific times you called/emailed/met in person. I would also suggest making the primary field in the outreach table a formula concatenating a couple of fields, something like {Contact}&", "&{Date}.

I’m in transit right now and can’t get any good screenshots, but let me know if you need extra help understanding how to set this up!

[Katherine_Duh]

Maybe these will give you some ideas:


For reference, the formula I used in the Name field of the Interactions table was {Contact(s)}&", "&DATETIME_FORMAT(Date, 'M/D/YYYY')

You can also include a rollup field with the MAX(values) function on the contacts table to automatically pull the date that you most recently reached out to a contact:

[W_Vann_Hall]

I put together a quick demo base in response to a similar request a while back. It follows the same general structure as the ones @Katherine_Duh provided – in my demo, what she calls ‘interactions’ I call ‘notes,’ based on the original requester’s terminology – and allows you to drill-down to the underlying list of contact attempts for each contact. However, it also allows the most recent interaction to ‘bubble up’ to your main CRM dashboard screen, rather than simply the date of the latest interaction. This is a frequently requested functionality for CRM/contact management/trouble ticketing systems, but one whose implementation in Airtable is a bit non-intuitive,[1] so I thought I’d try to save you some time. :winking_face:

(Feel free to ignore the ‘Orders’ field; I tacked that on later in response to a different question. Also, since read-only access doesn’t allow one to examine field configuration, I’ve entered the formula for significant fields in the fields’ descriptions, along with a brief explanation as to why such a formula is being used. Of course, you can always make a copy of this base and gain full access to all fields.)

_____________ ’

1. Well, it was for me, at least. The technique used in the demo was taken from posts by always-helpful Airtablers @Katherine_Duh and @Matt_Bush.

[Craig_Cox]

Thanks so much, Vann, Julian and Katherine. This is all very helpful and I will work to adapt your models into my bases. As a newbie to Airtable, your help and ideas are invaluable.

-Craig

[Chuck_Haskins]

As a follow up to this, is there a way in IOS when clicking on a phone number to call that number, that the call is logged in the interaction record contact and datestamp. I can goto the notes field when I finish the call.

Thanks!
Chuck