After doing my google search and community search, I haven’t found a solution to this. I’m interested in having someone complete a note template (or any data capture area, like webform, internal form, etc.), adding some tags, and then having the note description passed into an e-mail. Here’s the scenario:
Customer indicates they’d like to work with some of my vendors. My sales rep fills out a note template called [Lead - Vendor Request]. In the note they add a couple of tags. On the basis of those tags certain vendors receive notification of the client from merge fields, including - here’s the important part - a description of the services they’re looking for, which they could get from the description field in the note template.
Visually it looks like this: Sales Rep → Note Template → Passes/Merges Description → Vendor Email.
You guys have any idea if something like this is possible?
The easiest way to do this would be to have your initial data input into an Internal Form, then have that data create the Note and have the data available for your decision diamonds, emails, etc. You could also have checkboxes inside your form that could apply tags that would trigger automation.
Here is a quick video of how I have this set up. Lmk if you have other questions.
This is exactly what I’m looking for. Bravo! I’ll need to study your video a little closer before I understand the necessary steps. But wow, that’s really cool.
Hi @Jeff_Arnold
With regard to your custom fields in your internal form: do those fields exist only within the form, or are those fields in your internal form part of the 100 (max.) fields available to a contact record? It seems that if they are of the 100 (max.) fields available to a contact record, then I would need to pre-create those fields as part of the customer record and then reference them in the internal form. Am I right?
They are part of the 100 custom fields (if you are using ‘fields’ in the form). If you are using checkboxes just to apply tags or drive decision diamonds, then those aren’t ‘fields’.
You can set them up in advance, or, there is an ‘add custom field’ option at the bottom of the drop down when you drag a ‘field’ into the form.
I’ve been considering your solution further, and I’ve hit a barrier. With my clients, we’ll be working on as many as 6 opportunities at the same time. This means that I could have as many as 6 internal forms to fill out. But Infusionsoft is very focused on the contact record, and not on assigning internal forms to opportunities. This means I really have one internal form per contact, whereas I need about 6 of them each containing their own discrete data.
So in my original scenario: Visually it looks like this: Sales Rep -->; Internal Form -->; Passes/Merges Description -->; Vendor Email
One way around this would be to fill out the internal form, submit it, and then on re-open clear all the data. That way the data is never persistent and the form can be reused multiple times per contact. Do you have a procedure for doing this?
And any other recommendation you may have would be good to know.
If you are using any 3rd parties (PlusThis, Zapier, etc.), you can run a script that will clear out the data in a field (I use PlusThis to do this). Otherwise, you can create a ‘work around’ where you use the ‘set field value’ inside a campaign after you merge in the data into your emails. This would be ‘set field value’ to “-” (I enter a hyphen, as it won’t take a blank entry). Make sure to use 'override existing data = yes". That will allow you to reuse the internal forms regularly. I also use fields called “temp field 1”, “temp field 2”, etc. (I have 4 of them) and just use those for the data that I’m entering. That way I know that the data I’m using is only temporary (3-5 minutes), since I’m going to merge it where I need it, then clear it out.
Yeah, that makes complete sense. Jeff, you’ve been an amazing source of info for me. Could I impose on you again with one other issue I’ve been having?
It is impossible for me to leave notes that are Opportunity specific or discrete. From when I began leaving next action item notes on every opportunity, with many opportunities assigned to a single contact, I’ve learned that all opportunity notes become co-mingled for any one contact. Now if I look at a specific Opportunity to see if we’ve sent a sample, I see 6 different notes about sending product samples, but I have no idea if any of those notes are referring to the opportunity I’m presently reviewing.
Have you found a satisfactory method for filtering opportunity notes -or- appending opportunity notes with opportunity identifying info?
I’ll be honest – I don’t use Opportunities at all because they can’t be 100% automated.
The only way I know of to add an Opportunity specific note, would be to put the name of the Opportunity in front of the note, just as an identifier. So, if they were in the ‘closing’ opportunity, just start the note with “CLOSING: …” and then type in your data.
However, I’ll grab this and send to my Dir of Ops – she worked at Infusionsoft for 6 years and has worked with the Opportunities, so I’ll see if she has any different info. I will update here IF she has something different.