AffinityLive has a lot of modules and features, and along with this, several terms to help describe certain functions and object. Here are some of our definitions:
This is the core, fundemental tool you will use in AffinityLive. When logging time you'll use an activity, communicating with a client, or simply between staff. These are the emails, notes, meetings and schedules you create. Any form of communication in and out of AffinityLive is captured as an activity. When a client sends you an email, this will be tracked as an activity in AffinityLive, and you can see that the medium of communication was an email. Likewise if you create an activity in AffinityLive and choose the SMS activity type, then the recipient will receive the message via their mobile phone, but AffinityLive tracks this interaction as an activity – of type SMS.
The link between a contact and a company. An affiliation holds the data specific to that contact’s relationship with a company, such as their email address or phone number. A contact can have many affiliations. Many other items (e.g. prospect, issue) require you to associate an affiliation when you create them.
1. When creating an activity, you can “action” the activity to indicate that you have addressed this item. Actioning an activity removes it from your to-do list. Some activities when actioned will prompt you to fill in a report.
2. Progression action is a business rule which you configure against a progression, within the jobs area as an administrator. From the user perspective, when they move a job from one status to another via a progression (& not manually editing the status) then if any actions are configured against that progression the user will generally respond to these – such as updating a date field or being prompted to upload a document – depending on the action types configured.
3. When working with a prospect record, you can “action” a prospect to indicate that it has been dealt with and you no longer wish for it to be part of the current prospect list.
When creating an activity you can add attachments just like when sending an email. These are stored in an attachments folder for the object they relate to, but are also linked to the activity. Using the Resources search from the main navigation, you can also search for them. Any emails capture by AffinityLive will also have their attachments captured.
A tool for marking an item so that you can easily find it again. Generally you can bookmark records such as a company or job record, & you can save search filters which also appear in your bookmarks page (found on the main toolbar).
A campaign action is the list of targets that you wish to push into Campaign Monitor. You can have as many actions inside a campaign as you like, however the targets that you select can only be viewed from the campaign targets. Example, 'May Newsletter' would be a campaign action inside a 'May' campaign.
When looking at a company screen, the Activities are contained in a blue box on the right side of the screen. They refer to any Prospects, Issues and Jobs that are open for a client. The Activity tab on the left-hand-side of a company screen is for seeing the most recent communication against a company, as well as any activities - such as "Issue created".
A piece of work within a job. These are effectively the big tasks that need to be completed. When you invoice for a job, the components are automatically converted into line items - so you might also consider them to be the key services provided.
A contributor is a contact that you specifically link to an item as they have some association or connection to the work that is happening. Contributors can be added to records such as a job, issue or prospect. You can configure the type of contribution they are intended to make, and will also be able to include them on communication against that record.
A custom field is a customizable field that you can place within progressions. Just about every item in AffinityLive is made of up fields, as these contain the information which needs to be recorded or tracked. Specifically, a custom field that has been added to an item (such as a job type) so as to extend the amount of information that can be entered & tracked. These are configurable by an administrator.
1. The main dashboard in AffinityLive is your home dashboard which is available from the toolbar. This allows you to add panels so you can see a variety of lists and charts to review data in AffinityLive which you care about.
2. Many modules in AffinityLive have their own specific dashboards which allow you to review activity and performance specific to that module. For example, click “Company” in the main navigation to view it’s dashboard in the main window.
This feature is found in many list screen or search results within AffinityLive, allowing the user to alter the results or list of items in view by specifying certain search criteria. For example, when working with a company list, you can bring up a filter to specify you are only interested in companies which have a status of ‘Active’. Each filter will only display criteria relevant to the item you are working with.
A reply to an activity. One of the options when reviewing activities on your to-do list is ‘follow-up’. It lets you create an activity in response to, or following on from the activity you select. You can then easily see all the activities in a specific conversation as replies are nested or indented.
Refers to the search feature located in the top-right corner of the AffinityLive page. It is made up of a field for entering search terms, a drop-down list to select the type of item, and a ‘Go’ button to begin searching.
1. The term "item" may be used to loosely refer to an object or record, such as an issue, prospect and so on.
2. In the accounts module, an item may refer to a line item against an invoice. Line items allow you to give a breakdown of the services or products provided.
A special field type which allows the user to perform a search to “lookup” a record, such as an affiliation or company record, and have the value used or stored in some way – depending on the process which is being completed at the time.
For example, when adding a new company there is a lookup field which gives you the option of specifying a parent company to the company which you are creating.
A configurable field type typically used to add extra detail to a company or contact record, though other items in AffinityLive can have profiles configured for them. A user attempting to add profile details to a record will only be able to choose from a list of profiles which have been defined for that item type by an administrator.
Profiles are similar to extensions, except that a prospect profile will apply to all prospect types, whereas extensions only relate to the type for which they have been created.
The movement of an item from one status to another using the progression functionality (located on the taskbar for that item), as opposed to manually editing a record and updating the status. Progressions allow for the configuration of business rules & alerts to be triggered. Some items in AffinityLive have built-in progressions, while others (such as jobs) are highly configurable.
Typically refers to any object in AffinityLive which you can view - such as a company, prospect, job and so on. E.g. when you want to edit and issue, you should first find the issue record.
Images, files, documents & any other media which have been either uploaded into a resource folder for a record, or captured from an activity with attachments. Many items in AffinityLive have the ability for resources to be stored under them via the resources link-tab. Resources are indexed and searchable via the Resource folder in the main navigation.
A method of sorting or grouping items in AffinityLive, which aids in the managements & reporting of those items. For example, company records can be segmented by the category (industry) they are in, their size, the products they are using & so on. Segmentations are defined by an administrator.
Segmentations by definition must have values (or options) which are limited, so that you can actually segment your data properly. Hence, you cannot create a segmentation that is a free text field. Typically, segmentation fields have a handful of fixed options which the user must choose from.
The standing or condition of a record. Nearly every object in AffinityLive has a field for tracking the status so you can manage the lifecycle of each record. For example, a job might have a status of pending, active, complete, or inactive. Each item type will have its own set of statuses available, many of which can be configured by an admin.
Underlying status - this refers to the built-in set of statuses. When you create statuses in AffinityLive (via the admin panel), you must link them to an underlying status. This is because many system features refer to this underlying status to present you more relevant data. For example, the "Activities" box on a company record will show all records that have an underlying status of "open" - within this underlying status, you may have defined several different statuses, but what's important for reviewing current activities is the ones that are considered "open". Additionally, when you run a search in AffinityLive, any objects which have an underlying status of "closed" or "inactive" will be hidden.
Targets are the contacts within a Campaign Action or Campaign. They are clients from within your AffinityLive used to send email campaigns to.
Tasks are used throughout AffinityLive to help you keep track of small pieces of work. You can create tasks against companies, prospects, issues and components. Tasks are useful for breaking down the budget on a component or issue and assigning work to various staff. Tasks are also what make up your schedule.
Whenever you load a page in the main window, there is almost always a grey taskbar under the page title. This area holds a number of key tasks/buttons which allow you work with that record – such as Edit, Export, Create Activity, Bookmark & so on.
The term toolbar generally refers to the area higher on the screen (pale blue bar) which holds the buttons for accessing the dashboard, to-do list, bookmarks and your schedule & work functions. This toolbar is always available.
A space for building & managing components into a job – effectively the project plan. Allows you to re-order components and the duration allocated to them. You can also create a template from a workflow so it can be re-used.