Method Community

I am new to Method and the migration of our company's data from our previous CRM has been trying and complicated and still is incomplete, so obviously it's interrupting our work flow. 

The latest issue is activities automatically and incorrectly relating themselves to opportunities that I have not even viewed or selected. I'm not sure exactly what's going on, because I'm still getting situated and learning how method works and how it will best work for us. We have not done any customization yet. I blew our free set up consultation on assistance wtih importing our previous opportunities & leads and the support rep was not able to help me import any tastks or notes previously associated with those opportunities so there are spreadsheets of raw data uselessly sitting on my harddrive. I feel left in the cold by Method and the solution offered is paid hourly consultation when I haven't even imported my data and begun to use the program properly yet. Definitely starting to feel up a creek without a paddle here. 

All that was a rant, excuse my delay in getting to the point at hand!

Currently the issue is that when I enter an activity and schedule a follow up, save and complete, it takes me some time to find the follow up activity I just made, and the original related activity and trace the "breadcrumbs". When I locate the follow-up activity in my activity list, I click on "go-to" to be sure this is indeed the follow up activity I just made. I am unsure what the activity is all about in the general activity list, because there are no comments in the follow-up activity field (only comments in the original activity, but how am I to know at a glance what this phone call outgoing activity is all about?). I click "go to" activity and it takes me to an edit screen for a completely unrelated opportunity. This has happened mulitple times. I am not inadvertently relating an activity to an opportunity when creating the activity. I've noticed that the activity number happens to be same as the opportunity number, or in other cases the follow up activity is the number after an opportunity number. Somehow, Method is automatically relating an activity to an opportunity by the same number even though I do not select it and have not even previously viewed that opportunity.

There seems to be a bug. I have gone in and tried to unrelate the activity and clear the related opportunity by clicking "..." and this does not always unrelate the activity! I have reloaded screens, logged out and back in. I'm not sure what's going on.

Another time I created an activity related to a campaign. I then created a follow up activity and related to the campaign. Days later, I click on the follow up activity in my activity list (I click on it because all it says is phone call outgoing and the due date, there are no comments to tell me what my activity is to be) and it takes me to the edit screen for an unrelated opportunity that is not even assigned to me, but another user. I have not even viewed this opportunity before. I notice that the number of the activity is sequential to the opportunity. Must be a bug! 

I've been going in circles trying to unrelate activities to opportunities, and even this task is not simple when there are follow ups involved. There don't seem to be many occurences of this issue, I just notice it when I'm trying to go through a work flow. 

As I'm just learning Method, this problem really adds complication to my learning process and throws a huge wrench in the program's usability! I would like to get back to the daunting task of importing my customer data into method and get to using the CRM properly, but this is just not working!

Please help. And please excuse my rambling post. I'm tired after many many many hours everyday of trying to learn and integrate Method, and so far it is only causing more headaches. 

thank you.

quick follow up: when I go to opportunities list and filter to view by next activity, almost every activity we have made since starting our method account seems to have auto related to an opportunity by the same or sequential activity number. Clicking on go to the activity, and then clicking "..." to clear the opportunity brings a yellow alert window to the top of my screen that says "! Opportunity is empty. The button is used to clearn the opportunity # associated with the current activity". I save the activity and go back, reload the screen. The activity is still showing as related to the opportunity in the opportunity list. Or, when I click on activity from teh activity list, it takes me back to that unrelated opportunity again. 

an unending loop!

Thank you so much in advance for help!!

Hi Michele,

First of all, I am sorry for your frustrations and we will do our best to help you get over these issues. 

Activity getting related to Opportunity Issue:

- You are correct, this is a bug in our system, however we do have a fix for this that is getting pushed out to our live site shortly.  One thing to note about updates in Method, if you take a look at our Main Login Screen, you will currently see two options, "February Release" and "October Release".  Typically when we have a group of updates to get pushed out, we first offer a "stage" site to our Customers, this allows you to go in and test our our latest bug fixes and new features (we also do in-house testing before sharing our 'stage' site).  

- So, if you were to log into our "February Release", you can test this out, however you should find that the unrelated Opportunity won't get created any longer.  In my original testing on this bug, I believe it would occur only when creating a "Follow-up" activity.

Please give this a try and let me know if this has helped.

Importing Customers/Contacts/Leads:

- We realize this can be somewhat challenging at times, however we worked had on offering some informative blogs/videos/documentation on providing some step by step instructions to help you get going on this.

- Please understand, the last thing we want to do is leave our Customers high and dry if they get stuck in certain area's of Method.  If we know a Customer has gone through our Online Educational Resources and are still struggling with a stock Method feature, at this point, we are willing to offer some quick help.  For example, if you are stuggling getting your importing working in Method, if you were to give us a call in Support, we would be able to at least go through one example with you, like we would assist you in importing 1 of your Customer records.  Our goal after doing this is that you would know how to import the rest of your records after seeing first-hand how this is done.

Here are a couple of resources that should help:

Blog post on Importing Customers/Contacts and Leads

Blog post on Importing Multiple Contacts into Method

Help Center Article on Importing/Exporting in Method

Please take a look at these resources when you have some time and see if they might help you get further with your Imports.  If you have any follow-up questions, you can post here and we will respond.

-Ben

Thanks for your reply!

Do you recommend I use the February version or the October version? 
When will the fix apply to both versions? 

I have successfully imported my contacts, that wasn't a complicated process and didn't take long to learn, but the issue was importing notes and tasks that were associated with those contacts. My previous CRM arranged the data into very different tables and importing the related customer information is a nightmare. I'll check out the links you posted, but I believe we'll need to enter this data manually. 

I'll definitely be in touch after looking through the links you sent and re-immersing myself in the help center. I have indeed spent many, many hours with the online educational resources. I'll be sure to contact support with some follow up questions for persistent issues. I'm smack in the middle of my busy season now, so further customization and training on how to utilize method optimally for my business is necessarily going slower than I would like. 

Hi Michele,

Just to clear this up, the February release is essentially a temporary updated version of our main site, when we have bug fixes or new features we introduce it in a 'stage' release.  Once we have confirmation that there are no issues with this new version, it will then replace the October Release and the option to switch between releases would go away.

As an example, let's say it is July of this year, and we have just finished adding some additional features to Method.  We would first add our 'stage' release option, this would be labelled as "July Release", then you would still have an option to continue using our live site without these additions, it would be labelled "February Release".

With all this said, if you log into the February release currently, and create an activity with a follow-up activity, the fix is there so that there would be no unassociated Opportunity.  However if you have some unrelated Opportunities from the past and log into the February release, these will not change, you would still have to correc them manually.  The fix in the February release only works when for this actual 'action' when it is performed.

Also, if you were to log into the February release, create this new Activity and Follow-up Activity, then logged out and back into the "October" release, there would be no changes the activity and follow-up activity would still remain as they were, correct.  But if while still in October you create a new Activity/Follow-up Activity, then it would still be broken after doing it, looking from both versions.

I hope that makes sense, just let me know if you have any further questions about that part.

That's great you have already been able to import your Contacts, I understand it is your busy season so you have to put this on the back burner for a little while.  However, when you are looking back at adding your notes from your old CRM, this shouldn't be too difficult, your best bet would be to export your current contact list from Method.  You should then be able to open it in Excel, add whatever notes you want for each contact (not sure if you can organize your spreadsheet in a way that would allow you to copy and past your old notes into this spreadsheet), then reimport them back to Method, making sure to compare the "RecordID" field during import so you don't create duplicates.  

Also keep in mind, there is a note field for individual 'contacts', but there is also a notes field for each "Customer" Record.

Activities/tasks, that is a bit of a different story however, this wouldn't be as easy an import as contacts, there are a few relationships that would need to be established for it to work correctly, and you would have to make sure you have included all of the mandatory fields during the import.  You might find this easier to do manually as you mentioned above, however you can relook at this when you have more time.

-Ben