When To Use A Field Verses A Group In ClientLook
ClientLook commercial real estate software gives you the ability to create custom fields to hold any data point you care to track. It also allows you to create groups and assign your contacts, companies, deals or properties to those groups. One of the questions users ask frequently is “Should I make [xx] a custom field or a group?”.
When To Use A Group
There isn’t a firm right or wrong answer most of the time, but here are some basic guidelines to help you decide what makes the most sense for you:
We are not fans of creating fields for “yes or no” or “true or false” kinds of data in most cases. Things which can be answered in this manner should probably be groups. For example, if you are trying to track which clients and prospects are on your monthly newsletter mailing list, you should probably create a “Newsletter” group rather than making a “Newsletter?” field which contains a yes or no. On the other hand, a field for “Do not call” might be more useful than a group, since you can see it right on the detail page for the contact before picking up the phone, without the need to switch to the groups tab.
Fields are better for tracking values. It’s easier to search when you have a field for “Occupied Square Feet” which contains a value like “10,000” than to assign the record to a group for that size range , i.e. “Tenants 5-9k SF”, “Tenants 10-14k SF”, “Tenants 15k SF+”, for example.
Powerful Searching
Searching for data is important. Fortunately with ClientLook CRM both fields and groups can be searched within our advanced search module. You can, for example, find all tenants with values between 10,000 – 15,000 square feet in the “Occupied SF” field who are also members of your “Hot prospects” group.
Fields have the advantage of being displayed right on the main detail page for the record, and being searchable in ranges. Groups have the advantage of being “clickable” – meaning, you can simply click the group name and pull up all of it’s members, without having to do a search.
In the end, use whichever makes the most sense to you – after all, your customized version of ClientLook belongs only to you!
How To Create A Group
Click on your name in the upper right corner of any ClientLook page and select “Setup”.
Select the “Groups” tab, then choose which module you want to create groups for. In this case, I’ll choose “Contacts”.
Click the “Add a group” button to pull up the group addition dialog box.
Enter a name for your group, followed by an optional description, then click the “Add this group” button to save your new group. You’re done!
How To Add A Field
Click on your name in the upper right corner of any ClientLook page and select “Setup”.
Select the “Custom Fields” tab then choose which module you want to create a field for. In this case, I’ll choose “Contacts”.
Click the “Add new field” button to pull up the field addition dialog box.
Enter a name for your new field, select a data type and an optional description. Click the “Save” button when you’re done to save your new field.
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