An introduction to how to use and set up the Activities budget.
Introduction
In the Activities budget, you can set up activities and create a budget for your company/departments expected activity each month to track whether or not you reach your targets or not. Activities are tracked based on logs made in, e.g., the company card, contact person card, candidate card or project card, and to track them properly, you have to define the correct triggers in the Activities budget module. With a good setup, you can utilize the activities budget in a dashboard widget for a simple overview.
Setting up the Activity budget
Starting out, the Activity budget will look like this:
Adding activities
To start off, one can set up the activities to track by going to Activities. Here, you can add activities and give them triggers that let the system count the ones. In the picture below, the activity "Phonecalls" is created and given triggers.
| Clicking + Add trigger opens up the selection of triggers, mainly in 3 categories, to differentiate the activities: |
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Logging activity in RecMan can be done in 4 different places, covering the different activity trigger categories discussed above.
| Where an activity can be logged: | Trigger category |
|---|---|
| Company card | CRM |
| Contact person card | CRM |
| Candidates card | Candidates |
| Project card | Projects |
As an example: In the project card, one can use categories such as Telephone contact, Email, Meeting, Customer visit, Travel etc. This could be a logged phone call activity leading to a meeting.
Example log of telephone contact and meeting under a project.
Setting the budget
With 3 activities created, we can set the budget by going to My Budget → Edit Budget.
Setting up the budget
Here, you can set the budget for the individual months or use the Default to input the same value for all 12 months. You can also expand the activities to get a slider for adjusting the values.
Unable to edit budget
If the budget has been approved already, you won't be able to edit it. To fix this, go to budget approval and remove the approval.
Budget approval
Lastly, when the budget is set, it can be approved in Budget approval; this is also the first screen when you first navigate to Activities Budget. Here, you can see if a budget is submitted, which ones are awaiting approval and the ones that are already approved.
Using the activity budget in a dashboard widget
With the logged activities and budget set up, it can be deployed in a dashboard using, for example, the widget Activities list w/ budget.
The Activities list w/ budget dashboard widget
In the widget settings, you can choose the data level for which data to display. You can choose between:
- All
- Corporation
- Department group
- Department
- Co-worker
For options 2-5, you also choose the specific department or co-worker for the widget to track. You can select one or several or use a dynamic choice. Dynamic means the widget will adjust the data according to the user viewing the dashboard.
You also define which period the widget tracks, either by one of the standard values provided or by using a custom period to fit your needs, whether for the last week or the last year. Lastly, you define which activities to include, as we've covered earlier in the article.