Actions & Journal

Overview

Actions are used in Invenias to record activities such as Telephone calls, Emails and Interviews. All actions are saved into the Invenias Journal and users can select to save Actions to the Journal of selected People, Company, Assignment or Programme Records.

The Global Journal contains all actions from all users, every People, Company, Assignment and Programme Record also has a Journal which only displays actions which have been saved to that record.

There are many places where you can create an action in Invenias, the actions themselves will be described first, then the locations where can be launched will be detailed. 

This article covers:

Telephone Action & Introduction to Action Features

Professional Desktop

Many actions contain common features, these will be described in detail in this section of the article, along with an explanation of this particular action.

This action is used to record a Telephone call:

The Invenias user can specify which Records this action is saved to in the section shown below:

Depending on where this action is started from, some of these fields will be auto-populated. For instance, if a Telephone call action is created for a Candidate from the Candidates tab in an Assignment, the Candidate will be added to the People section, and the Assignment added to the Assignments section. 

When the action is first created, the user can change the date and time:

This allows a user to record their actions at a later date to when the action took place. Note that all actions have a Created Date which is used for reporting purposes and is different to the date/time recorded in the action. 

The Subject Field allows a user to document the subject of the call. 

The Type field presents the user with a list of Types to select from:

The Type can be used to classify the purpose of the call i.e. Business Development, Candidate update etc. This list can be customized and the process to do so is described here. 

The central section in this action allows the user to record what happened on the call. The nature of the call, any outcomes, etc.

  • Confidential - Each Invenias User is assigned to a User Permissions Group by a Systems Administrator. If a journal item is marked as Confidential it means that it will be hidden to all other users who are at a lower permission group than the user who is the Owner of the action.
  • Pin to Journal - Pinned Journal items will always appear first when viewing the Journal of any Record this item has been saved to. It should be used as a means of marking the most important items.  

Create a Follow Up Task / Appointment

If the Telephone Call resulted in requiring a follow up at a given date/time, you can create an Outlook Task or Appointment from this action by clicking Task or Appointment in the sidebar to expand the panels shown below:

When the action is Saved this will add the task/appointment directly into the Calendar associated with your Outlook account. This is a useful way to setting a reminder of any necessary actions following an activity. 

Professional Mobile

The Telephone action on mobile contains the same fields as described for Professional Desktop above:

Note Action

Professional Desktop

Notes can be recorded using this action:

The fields in the note action are identical to those previously described in the Telephone action except the Meetings Field.

Meetings Field - This field allows the user to Link this note to an Appointment or Meeting action.  

Professional Mobile

The Note action on mobile contains the same fields as described for Professional Desktop above:

Email Action

Professional Desktop

This action is used to create Emails using Email Templates: 

The fields in the Email action are identical to those previously described in the Telephone action with the exception of the following which are all from the central section:

  • To - Specify the recipient(s) of this Email.
  • Subject - Add a subject line for this Email.
  • Template - Select a Template from the Invenias Email Templates library.
  • Attachments - Add an attachment to this Email from Invenias or from the users PC. 
  • Type - Choose a type from the list configured in system preferences. 
  • Importance - Specify the importance of this email. 
  • Sensitivity - Set the sensitivity of this Email. 
  • Create Individual emails to each recipient - If this email has multiple recipients, this option will create individual emails to each recipient. Each email will only be addresses to a single recipient. 
  • Create a single email to all recipients: If this option is checked, a single email will be created with all recipients in the To field, revealing their email addresses. We advise to use the previous option which is the default.  

Clicking OK will open create the email in Outlook, allowing the user to make any edits they wish before sending. After the Email has been sent it will automatically be saved back into Invenias. 

There are some points to consider when sending Mailshots from Outlook. The main limitation with this activity it that Invenias works with your normal mailbox in Outlook. So any email you send, whether it is to 1 or 100 people will go out through that Outlook mailbox. The key factors to consider in this situation are:

  1. Outlook is not designed for sending bulk email. Outlook on your desktop and your email Server may therefore struggle with the increased technical load of sending large volumes of emails. 
  2. Outlook has none of the features you would want in order to be able to manage a campaign and track it's success such has “how many of my emails were opened”.
  3. A range of other IT factors can influence the “maximum” number of emails you can send. These could include the size of the template (including any inserted images), the quality of your PC, your network and your internet connection. 
  4. There is no way in Outlook to offer a recipient the option to opt out or unsubscribe. As a consequence there is a real risk that the emails are treated as SPAM and your IP address and Domain get blacklisted. 

The legislation in different jurisdictions is complex and ignoring this poses risks for any organisation, which is why we are looking at partnering with platforms that help our customers minimise that risk. Invenias is not providing legal advice about whether the communications you are sending is actually SPAM and if this communication poses risk to your company’s non-compliance with any relevant legislation. But what we are trying to do is provide a platform that has the appropriate tools to help you minimise this risk.

When considering an email campaign, keeping the batch sizes and overall volumes at a reasonable levels (our advice would be start with small batches of around 25 and slowly increase the quantity in a batch) keeps the technical risk to a minimum. This does not completely remove the risk of your machine crashing or the emails not being sent. For larger volumes of emails, whilst we investigate delivering a service that could support this, you may want to consider looking at purpose built Email & Marketing Service Providers like iContact, MailChimp, CampaignMonitor, CommuniGator, GetResponse, dotMailer, Constant Contact etc.

Document

This action creates a Document from a Template:

The fields in the Document action are identical to those previously described in the Telephone action, with the exception of the following fields:

  • Addressed To - Select a person to Address this Document to.
  • Template - Select a Template from the Invenias Document Templates library.

Send CV

This action is specifically for sending a Candidate CV to a Client:

For this action only, this action can only be saved to People, Companies and Assignment Records, the other fields are identical to those described in the Telephone action above, with the exception of:

  • Client - Specify the Client who will receive this CV. 
  • Candidate - Specify the Candidate who will receive this CV. 

There are 3 options for Completing this action Do Not Send, Send CV/Resume by Email and Print CV/Resume. 

Do Not Send

Clicking "Do Not Send" will not create a Document or Email template. This is typically used to record where a Candidate has been submitted to a Client, but this may have already happened, or happened during a meeting or telephone call so that they don't require sending a CV. 

Send CV/Resume by Email

This allows the user to send the CV via an Email using an Email Template:

  • Subject - Add a subject line for this Email.
  • Template - Select a Template from the Invenias Email Templates library.
  • CV/Resume - Select a document from the Candidate's Person Record. 
  • Attachments - Add an attachment to this Email from Invenias or from the users PC. 
  • Importance - Specify the importance of this email. 
  • Sensitivity - Set the sensitivity of this Email. 

Print CV/Resume

This allows the user to send the CV via a Document using a Document Template:

  • Addresses to- Select a Person to address this document to.
  • Template - Select a Template from the Invenias Email Templates library.
  • CV/Resume - Select a document from the Candidate's Person Record. 

Interviews

The Interview action is used to confirm either a Consultant interview (with an Invenias User), or a Client interview with a Client person.

Confirmation can be sent via Email, an Outlook meeting or by printing the Candidate's CV /Resume.

Client Interview:

The fields in the Interview action are identical to those previously described in the Telephone action, with the exception of the following fields:

  • Client(s) - Specify the Client attending the Interview.
  • Candidate: - Specify the Candidate attending the Interview.
  • Interview Date / Time - The Date and time of the Interview.
  • Location - Specify the Location of the Interview. 
  • Add Interview to My Calendar - Add this interview to the current users calendar with an option to set their status during the time of the interview. 

There are 4 options for the Interview Action which will be detailed next:

No Confirmation Required

To be selected if this interview has already been arranged and no confirmation is required.

Send Confirmation by Email

This allows the user to select to send confirmation to the Client and Candidate using an Email Template:

Send Outlook Meeting

Send an Outlook Meeting invitation to all attendees:

Print CV Resume. 

Create a Document from a Template for the Candidate and Client:

Consultant Interview

When selecting Consultant Interview the options are similar to Client Interview, except the Client field has changed to Consultant to allow the user to specify which consultant is attending. Also there are no options to create an emails or documents addressed to the Invenias user who is attending. 

Task

A Task action opens a new Outlook task which is automatically saved to Invenias:

Feedback

The Feedback action has been fully detailed in a separate article.

Appointment

An appointment action creates an Outlook Appointment:

An appointment is a scheduled event that doesn't include any other people.

Meetings

A Meeting action creates a Meeting in Outlook:

A meeting is an event that includes other people by invitation. Here is a recording from a recent webinar we ran which discusses adding Meetings/Appointments to your diary, but also the different methods of getting them in to the diaries of your colleagues. 

An Invenias User can add notes to this Meeting by clicking the Meeting Notes button in the Invenias section of the Appointment toolbar. This opens a window allowing the user to add notes:  

 

These notes are saved back into Invenias and an be viewed in the journal tab. 

Creating an Action

Professional Desktop

Actions can be created by clicking the shortcuts from the following locations:

Record Toolbar

Open any People, Company, Assignment or Programme Record and you will see the following Action shortcuts in the Record Toolbar:

If you select a row for a relational Record in tab within a Record, a Selected Row toolbar will load into the toolbar. For example select a Candidate in the Candidates tab in an Assignment to reveal the following toolbar in the Record:

Context Menu

Right click on any People, Company or Assignment Record from a Global list e.g. People List, or from a Tab within a Record, e.g. Candidates Tab in an Assignment, to show a Context menu containing shortcuts to actions:

This menu will have different options depending on the Record Type, however the Actions shortcut is always present. 

Invenias pane

Action shortcuts are found in the Invenias Pane in Outlook and the Summary Pane within Invenias:

Professional Mobile

To add a Journal action, use the Add menu when inside any Record e.g. People Record:

Viewing the Journal

Professional Desktop

Global Journal View

To open the Global Journal which contains all Journal items from all users, click into the Invenias Tab in Outlook and click into the Journal Global view:

This will open the Global Journal view, shown below:

You may notice that some email and document journal items show in the journal with an icon which is split in half. This is because the item hasn't downloaded yet to the temp folder on your computer and is currently stored at our data centre. This would typically occur when another user sends an email and you can see it in your Journal but the actual email is not yet in your local machines temporary folder.

You can filter the global view using any of the columns in the view to easily filter by User, date created, Type etc. View this Article for more information information about Display Views in Invenias

Journal Tab inside a Record

Open any People, Company, Assignment or Programme Record and the Journal Tab is pre-selected as shown below:

Professional Mobile

Open any People, Company, Assignment or Programme Record and tap into the Journal button:

If you cannot see the Journal button then there are no Journal items to view in this Record. 

Removing/Deleting a Journal Record

Permission Required: Please note, to delete a journal item requires the user permission "Delete Journal Records".

When any Journal record is created, it is added to the Global Journal for your database and can also be linked to specific records of your choice. The Journal Record will be visible in the Journal tab of any linked Records. 

Any user can add or remove the individual links between a Journal record and any other record from where-ever you can view the journal item, however Journal records can only be Deleted from the Global Journal View. 

Professional Desktop

Right click on the journal item from within a Record and select Remove:

Alternatively, open the journal item and remove the Record by clicking the X next to the name of the record you wish to Remove:

Note that at this point only the links have been removed and the Journal Record still exists in the database.

To Delete a Journal Item, open the Global Journal View and locate the item you wish to delete by searching/filtering the list, then right click and select Delete:

User Configuration 

Opens User Preferences from the Invenias Tab in Outlook>Options>User Preferences: 

Adding Appointments

The options on this page are for when an Invenias User Saves an appointment back into Invenias, after it's been created in Outlook.

  • Companies/Assignments - Auto populate Companies and Assignments in the Appointment/meeting action. 
  • Populate Notes with Links and Info - This setting will auto populate the notes section of an Appointment/Meeting with links to the Records included as relations. 

Adding Tasks

The options on this page are for when an Invenias User Saves a Task back into Invenias, after it's been created in Outlook.

  • Companies/Assignments - Auto populate Companies and Assignments in the Appointment/meeting action. 
  • Action Type & Follow Up - Set the default action type and follow up action for a Task. 
  • Populate Notes with Links and Info - This setting will auto populate the notes section of an Appointment/Meeting with links to the Records included as relations. 

System Configuration

Permission Required: Please note, to see access system preferences requires the user permission "Access System Preferences".

System Preferences>Actions:

Email

You can edit the Types a user can select to categorize the Email Action by clicking Modify Email Types. 

Automatic Save to Invenias - With this option checked all sent Emails will prompt the user to automatically Save to Invenias provided the Email Address is recognized as from a known Record. 

Enable Auto Send - With this option checked, when a user creates a Invenias Email Action, a new check box option appears in the action for Auto Send. If this option is checked in the Email action, the email will be sent as soon as the action is Saved, meaning the Email won't open in Outlook for the user to manually send. Invenias would advise to leave this option unchecked. 

Telephone Call

You can edit the Types a user can select to categorize the Telephone Call Action by clicking Modify Telephone Types. 

Note

 

You can edit the Types a user can select to categorize the Note Action by clicking Modify Note Types. 

Default meeting Note Type - Select a default Type to apply when creating Meeting Notes. 

Document

You can edit the Types a user can select to categorize the Document Action by clicking Modify Document Types. 

Send CV/Resume

 

You can edit the Types a user can select to categorize the Send CV Action by clicking Modify CV/Resume Types. 

  • Default Email Subject / Template - Set the Default Email Subject and Template for the Send CV action. 
  • Default Document Template - Set the Default Document Template for the Send CV action. 
  • Role to auto-populate Clients - This setting is used to select which Client User is auto-populated in the Send CV action when created from a Send CV action from the Candidate Tab of an Assignment.

Interview

You can edit the Types a user can select to categorize the Interview by clicking Modify Interview Types. 

Candidate/Client Confirmation

  • Default Email Subject and Template - Set the Default subject and Template for Candidate/Client Emails from this action. 
  • Outlook Meeting Option
  • Default Email Subject - Set Default subject for when creating an Outlook meeting from this action. 

Print Option

Candidate/Client Confirmation - Set Default templates to be used. 

Role to auto-populate Clients - This setting is used to select which Client User is auto-populated in the Interview action when created from the Candidate Tab of an Assignment.

Appointment/Meeting

You can edit the Types a user can select to categorizeAppointment/Meetings by clicking Modify Appointment/Meeting Types.

Task

You can edit the Types a user can select to categorize Tasks by clicking Modify Task Types.