BatchBook Blog
Archive for the “Using BatchBook” Category
I’ve written in the past about some clever uses for Tags and how they can be used to help track all sorts of things from To-Dos to Communications and more. In chatting with the rest of the team and in working with our customers, it seems that most folks are using tags to denote that some sort of action has been completed or that the record is part of a group such as clients, vendors, Western Region etc. While these are really great uses, in most instances folks are using tags to permanently note something about that record.
One thing that I find helpful though is to create and use tags on a temporary basis, in fact I often use tags as a pseudo To-Do item. While our To-Dos are useful for specific actions, I often find that using a single word tag is sufficient to remind me that a particular contact, or contact record, needs some attention. Here are a few examples:
BatchBox: All Items coming in to BatchBook through the BatchBox email get tagged automatically with a ‘Review’ tag. This lets me know that I haven’t yet acted upon that communication, be it to further process it or to verify that the contact it is attached to is completely populated and verified.
Review: This review tag gets used all the time as I’m working as well. If I am working and notice something inconsistent or incomplete in a contact record I’ll tag it ‘review’ so when I have time to go in and take another look I can find them easily.
Delete: I also frequently use a ‘delete’ tag to flag items that I don’t think I need to keep active any longer. I like to verify things before just removing data though so I’ll just tag these items and I can remove them all at once using a batch action.
Follow-up: A lot of times I’ll be looking through my contact list and come across a record and think I really need to call or email them. I could create a To-Do for that but even with our quick add that could break the flow of what I am working on. I can hover over the contact though and add a quick ‘call’ or ‘email’ tag to follow up on later.
It’s easy enough to filter or search for all the records I’ve tagged and work through them as I have time. Removing the tag when the action is complete returns things back to normal.
Imports: Another really useful place to assign a temporary tag is on a new file import. Say you’ve got a list of leads you collected at a trade show and you have a series of actions you want to perform with that list, a weekly mailing for example. You could create tags for each of the dates and the step of the mailing – aug23intro, aug30intro2 etc. These tags remind you that you need to perform that action and also let you grab and consolidate the recipients together easily without needing to enter in a unique ToDo item for each record.
These are just a few examples of how I use temporary tags as part of my workflow – I don’t doubt that our smart users have plenty of others – feel free to share them in the comments.
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Tags: tags, todos, workflow
Several people sent me the link to NYC VC Fred Wilson’s blog post in which he asks his readership for suggestions for a “Family CRM” service. He explains that he and his wife Joanne Wilson a.k.a Gotham Gal are looking for a way to share basic contact/calendar information, build some e-mail lists for social correspondence, planning and general family-managing.
In the thread, a few BatchBook customers recommended our CRM BatchBook (thanks Boris, Sri, Stefano and Sandro!), so I’d talk about how I use my BatchBook account to help manage my busy family.
First, I should explain that BatchBook was not designed for managing families, but it WAS designed for those small businesses that are about the same size, shape and energy level of an on-the-go family. I think the folks who recommended us recognize that the flexibility of BatchBook makes it work for all sorts of situations, including the work/life balancing (or is it juggling?) act that we small business owners face every day. As we know all too well, the line between business owner and family member frequently blurs.
My other co-founders and I started BatchBlue so that we could build a business deeply integrated with our family lives (I have three small children; they have two). Part of the solution for me has been using a personal BatchBook account to manage my family life. Here’s how I do it:
- I use my personal BatchBook account for my holiday mailing list, I’ve created a separate record for each person in a couple and link them with a “spouse” affiliation. I also created a field for how I want to address the collective them – ie “Dr. and Mrs. Allen” for my best friend’s older parents vs. “Sean Ransom & Michelle Riggen-Ransom” for my modern dual-name friends. I also created a field for their kids names so I can include them in the addressing.
- I’ve created tags for #doctor (which includes custom fields for hospitals & medications – my son has medical issues), #poker (my husband organizes a monthly game), #house (I seem to always call the plumber from the road), #holiday list, #teachers (with comments for gifts given so I don’t duplicate as multiple kids go through the same classes), #coach (same as teachers), #travel (my sister and I plan our family’s annual vacation so I’m usually dealing with hotels, house rentals, etc.)
- I am now the official keeper of my extended family’s official birthday and anniversary list, so I’ve created custom date fields for birthdays and anniversaries. My husband and I share a Google calendar and events I create from these dates automatically feed to it.
- I don’t keep my daily task list in BatchBook, but I do add events for recitals, performances, doctors appointments, etc. that feeds into my professional and my husband’s calendars.
- If I wanted to I could see my friends’ and families’ most recent Tweets, Flickr images, blog posts, etc. from within BatchBook, but honestly I don’t use this feature much in my personal account. These are all the same people I have on my special private Twitter list and I tend to keep up over there.
- I keep these all synced to my Android (and before that Blackberry) through Gmail. There is also a mobile version of BatchBook, and we are working to release native apps for the iPhone and Android soon.
My favorite criteria listed in the comments of Fred’s post (from wife Gotham Gal) is that the application they need should be built by a mom (we have a lot of those at BatchBlue, though we would add that a busy Dad’s probably just fine too!)
When it comes down to it, running a family is about managing relationships. No need to pie chart the likelihood of closing the deal, or dole out sales scripts to new employees. Just give me my son’s last prescription data when I need it, help me manage three different soccer schedules and keep me in good graces with my elderly Southern relatives who expect to hear from me no matter how busy I might be with work. Thanks to BatchBook, all that I can do.
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Tags: batchbook, contact management, how-to, supertags, work/life
We love being able to pull in information related to your contacts and their actions on the Social Web. While our ‘Search Social Network’ option lets you pull in some of this data automatically, it’s really very easy to set up custom fields to bring in information from a variety of different sources as well. Our SuperTags are capable of pulling in and populating your contact data with any RSS Feed. (For a quick primer of RSS, check out this handy video from the fine folks at CommonCraft)
For example, I’m a music fan and a long time user of the last.fm service which records all of the music I listen to on my computer. I think music is a logical conversation starter so I’m a big fan of adding information about what my contacts are listening to and adding that to their profile. Here’s how I did that:
(more…)
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Tags: Dossier, Last.fm, rss, supertag
Customer: Piers Shepperd
Company: Stagelink Limited (www.stagelink.com)
Tell Us A Little Bit About What Your Company Does And What Services You Provide:
Stagelink provides specialist technical design and production services to the live event industries. We have worked all over the world, helping teams from the Rolling Stones and U2 to the Opening Ceremonies of the 2004 Athens Olympics and 2010 Vancouver Olympics. We provide specialist 3d technical design solutions using AutoCAD and Rhino, technical drawings, specifications and technical direction. Much of our work involves the coordination of lighting, sound, video, rigging and staging teams to ensure that everybody is heading in the right direction. Our real ‘buzz’ is bringing together hugely complex projects and teams to realize a creative dream.
How Did You Get Started:
After leaving school, I worked as a lighting technician on events all over the world, before moving onto the technical design of stage sets.
How Long Have You Been In Business And How Many Employees Do You Currently Have:
I have been involved in the technical side of live events for the past twenty years. We don’t have any full time employees. We use a network of specialists from around the world, who we call on depending on the exact requirements of our clients.
What Is Your Target Audience:
We seek out teams who are producing ‘mega events’ wherever they are in the world. The industry is relatively small, so we rely on our network of existing contacts.
How Does Your Company Stay Connected With Clients And Your Business Community:
We run a successful website which provide free listings of people and companies working in the events industry. We communicate regularly using email, and run document management systems to allow for the distribution of drawings and specifications.
Can You Offer Any Advice For Anyone Else Looking To Start Their Own Company:
Strive for excellence.
Is There Anything Else You Would Like To Add:
We connect to Batchbook using the API to automatically generate pdf contact sheets for every production, which are available for our clients to download from our website.
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Tags: Blue By You, small business
I recently did some customization of the BatchBlue fan page on Facebook. We thought it would be fun to have a little give-away for our friends on Facebook, so I added one of our very own BatchBook Custom Forms to our page. Now, when friends sign up on our Facebook page, their information is magically transported to our BatchBook account so we’ll have all the important information we need to notify the winners.
One of our super smart customers, Alex Webster, outlined the steps for adding a BatchBook form to your Facebook page in our forums and I thought I would share some steps and screenshots here for you.
Step 1:
The first thing you will need to do is set up your form in your BatchBook account. We have a handy FAQ which explains the process. Create the form and save it in your account. I would suggest that you set the return URL to the URL for your Facebook Wall. Then, you’ll need to take a little trip down memory lane to visit Adam Darowski’s post on customizing BatchBook forms. Grab the source code from your form and pay particular attention to step 2 so your form will work with your BatchBook account. Save the code in a text file. If you would like to add your own custom css you can add it at the top of this file between some style tags or use inline styles for the elements you would like to customize. If you don’t use your own styles, then the default Facebook styles will be used for your form. If you need help customizing the css in your FBML tab, here is a great tutorial.
Step 2:
Head on over to your Facebook fan page. Click on the edit button below your profile picture. You will need to add the FBML application from this page. If you don’t see it listed at the bottom of the page under “More Applications”, then click on “Browse More” and do a quick search for it. Adding this application to your Facebook page will allow you to create a custom tab on your Facebook page.
Step 3:
Click edit to customize the tab.
You will need to give the tab a name and then you will paste the form code from your text file into the large box of the FBML application. Click “Save Changes”.
Step 4:
FBML can be saved as a box or a tab. We will be setting this up as a tab, so you will need to make the following edits. Find the name of the FBML tab that we just created and click on Application settings.
You will need to change the settings to look like what we have in this image. The wording is a little confusing, but make sure that you change it to “Box: Available” and “Tab: Added”. That will make your form appear on it’s own tab.
Step 5:
You can set the form tab to be the default landing page for new visitors to your Facebook fan page. You can do this by clicking on the “Edit” link under “Wall Settings” and selecting your form page from the drop down menu.
Ta Da!
You now have a new Custom Form on your Facebook Fan Page. Who’s cooler than you? Please share your Fan Pages with us, we’d love to see them!
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Tags: facebook, forms, Social Media
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