Working with Notes

One of the easiest and most effective ways to improve your clients' trust in your office is to provide consistent, informed service. Everyone in your office that might come into contact with your clients should be able to quickly see what your most recent points of contact with a client have been.

When a client calls in and mentions a recent conversation with someone else in the office, detailed Notes can make a huge difference in your client's perceptions of your office after the call has ended. That's why after each point of contact with a client, everyone in your office should be trained to enter a Note into the client's record detailing the contact — in many cases, the Note can even be entered contemporaneous with the point of contact, particularly if the contact method is a telephone call.

Let's take a look at Note functionality within Redtail.

After entering a contact record, you can view the "Latest Notes" added to their record directly from their overview page:

Note that you can flip back and forth on the Overview between viewing a contact's "Past Due and Next 30 Days" activities and viewing their "Latest Notes."

Alternatively, you can access their entire Note history from the Left Menu Bar: 

What is displayed for each Note is different, dependent upon the type of Note you are looking at. There are six different types of Notes you can view here, controlled by the Note Filters widget to the right of your Notes.

If you need to add a Comment to any Note, click the "Comment" link beneath the Note and you'll see something like the below:

Just enter your Comment in the box, click "comment" and then click Close. You can always access the Comment or add more Comments by clicking that Comment link again.

Next to the Comment option, you can click the Actions link to perform various Actions upon the Note: 

• Pin Note "sticks" the Note to the top of the Notes page for the contact, regardless of other Notes that are added. If you've previously pinned a Note, you can select this menu to Unpin, which will then place it back in its historical context.
• Print downloads the Note as a pdf, suitable for printing.
• Change category allows you to change a Note's Category.
• Link to an account allows you to link the Note to a specific account or accounts for the contact.
• Link documents allows you to upload a file or files to link to the Note. Documents linked to notes will also be linked to contacts and/or accounts linked to the note.
• Permissions allows you to limit viewership of the Note to a specific database user or database user team.
• Timeline allows you to see the Note's history.
• Create Follow-up Activity allows you to create an Activity that is linked to this Note.
• Copy to a contact allows you to copy the note to another record within your database. The original note remains in this record. This option is only available for Notes whose type is "Note".
• Move to a contact allows you to move the note to another record within your database. The original note is removed from this record. This option is only available for Notes whose type is "Note".
• Delete allows you to delete the Note.

Above your contact's Notes, you'll see several additional options:

• If you click "options," you'll see a "Move notes" option. Clicking that will allow you to move any combination of notes with Types of Note, Activity, Mail Merge or Email Sent to another contact within your database.
• Click "add note" to add a new Note for the contact. You'll then see the below:
  
  
  

  Template: this allows you to choose from any Note Templates you've created within your database in order that you might pre-populate some of the data you need to enter.

  The text of your Note should be entered in the large text box that follows the template selection area. You do have some formatting options above this area that will allow you to format your note text in various ways. You can also insert hyperlinks or images using the applicable options from your formatting bar.

  Category: If you assign your Notes a Category, this will allow you to search Notes by that Category when running your Notes Reports.  

  Additional linked contacts: Use this to link the Note to one or more additional contact records. 
  
  Accounts: Use this to link the Note to one (or more) of the contact's Accounts.
  

  Notify user/team: You can select other database users or teams from these pull down menus to whom you would like to send an email notifying them of this Note entry.

  Create Follow-up Activity: If you check off this box, after saving your Note you'll be carried to an Activity Details page for the contact where you can create the follow-up activity. Be aware though that if you check off this box you'll see a "Follow-up Activity Template" pulldown menu added below the box, where you can select any Activity Templates you've established within your database to apply to the follow-up activity. So, if you want to use an Activity Template, select that prior to saving the Note.

  Permission Type: click inside this box to select User or Team and then select the User or Team to whom you want to give rights to view this Note. Those database users not included in the permissions for the Note will be unable to view it.
  
  Select Files: you can use this area to upload a file or files to link to the Note. Documents/files linked to notes will also be linked to contacts and/or accounts linked to the note. 

  Show Drafts: if you somehow navigated away from a Note prior to completion/adding it, the Note will be retained in Note Drafts in 25 character increments, allowing you to then copy it and save it as a Note.

  Once finished entering your Note, just click Save Note and it will show up in the contact's Notes area.

  
  Finally, let's look at the Note Filters box to the right of your Notes:
  
  
  
  
• Use the Types menu to select one, multiple, or all 6 Note Types to view on the page. You will need to click "apply" at the bottom after making your selection. Note: the Workflow Step type is only applicable for users who had databases copied over from legacy versions of Redtail CRM (prior to Tailwag). Checking it off won't affect your database one way or the other if this does not apply to you.
• Use the Categories menu to select one, multiple or all Note Categories to view on the page. You will need to click "apply" at the bottom after making your selection.
• enter a word or phrase in the Search notes box and click enter to search for that information within the client's Notes.
• Check off Show family notes to see all Notes entered for the client and those related to them via their Family section.