To help you manage your lead, contact, and deal related activities, Sell provides the ability to add and manage tasks. For example, you might create a task for yourself to reach out to a new lead and set a date and time for its completion.
Tasks can be directly associated with leads, contacts, and deals.
This article covers the following topics:
- Adding tasks
- Updating tasks
- Deleting tasks
- Marking tasks as complete
- Filtering your task list
- Viewing a lead, contact, or deal’s next task
- Creating automated tasks, triggers, and actions
Adding tasks
Tasks can be created and managed on the Tasks page and also on the lead, contact, and deal cards.
To add a task from the Tasks page
- Select the Tasks page.
- Click the + Task button.
- Enter the task details. You can also associate a task with a lead, contact, or deal using the Related To field.
- Click Create and the task will be added to your task list and, if you’ve associated a lead, contact, or deal with it, it will also appear as an active task on the lead, contact, or deal card.
To add a task from the lead, contact, or deal card
- From the Leads, Contacts, or Deals pages, select a lead, contact, or deal.
- In the Active Tasks panel, select the Add Task button.
- Enter the task details as shown in the example above and then click Create. The task will be added to the Active Tasks panel on the lead, contact, or deal card and also on the Tasks page.
Updating tasks
Tasks can be updated from either the Tasks page or or from a lead, contact, or deal card.
To update a task on the Tasks page
- Open the Tasks page.
- Hover your cursor over the task you want to update and the Edit Task icon (a pencil) will appear, click it.
- Change the details as needed (for example, changing the due date or time).
- Click Update to save the updated task.
To update a task from a lead, contact, or deal card
- Open the task from a lead, contact, or deal card.
- Change the details as needed (for example, changing the due date or time).
- Click Update to save the updated task.
Deleting tasks
If you want to delete a task, rather than mark it as completed, from either the Tasks page or or from a lead, contact, or deal card.
To delete a task on the Tasks page
- Open the Tasks page.
- Hover your cursor over the task you want to update and the Delete Task icon (a trash can) will appear, click it.
- You’ll be prompted to confirm that you want to remove the task. Click Remove.
To delete an from a lead, contact, or deal card
- Open the task from the Tasks page or from a lead, contact, or deal card.
- Click the Delete Task button. You’ll be prompted to confirm that you want to delete it.
Marking tasks as complete
As tasks pass their specified due date and time, they are marked in red to indicate that they have not been completed on time. You can either update the tasks to change the due date and time or mark the task as completed. You can do this on the Tasks page or from a lead, contact, or deal card.
Simply click the task’s completion check box.
You can reactivate a task by clicking the completion check box again (unselecting it).
When you mark a task as complete, it is removed from the Active Tasks panel on the lead, contact, and deal card. On the Tasks page, you can view completed tasks by selecting the Status = Done filter (described in the next section).
You can also mark a task as complete on the Sell Dashboard.
Filtering your task list
The Tasks page allows you to view and sort your tasks based on specific criteria. For example, you can quickly filter all your active or completed tasks.
To apply filters to your task list, you use the Filters panel.
The Status filter is always active; meaning that you can view either all your active tasks or all your completed (done) tasks. The other filter options, such as Relation, are secondary filters and are applied to either the active or completed tasks (whichever status you’ve chosen to view in the task list).
You can remove the secondary filters by clicking the Clear button.
Viewing a lead, contact, or deal’s next task
In the Table view for leads, contacts, and deals, you can add the Next Task field and see the next upcoming task.
For more information about adding custom fields, see Creating and managing custom fields.
Creating automated tasks, triggers, and actions
You can use Automated Actions (Sell Enterprise and Elite) to automatically create tasks. To create triggers and or actions to automate setting tasks, use third party applications such as Zapier with Sell (requires Sell Professional, Enterprise, or Elite).
You can also update tasks attributes through the Zendesk API or reach out to Zendesk to learn about the options that help with task updates.
7 Comments
is there a way to bulk upload tasks to a number of contacts, or set a recurring task - perhaps weekly or monthly for example?
Hi Martyn Evans,
Thank you for reaching out!
I'm afraid you cannot bulk update tasks or set a recurring task from within your account. I will make sure our Product Team reviews your above post to see if we can add this functionality to all Sell accounts!
Please note that (depending on your plan level) you can use our Automated Actions feature to automatically create tasks and you can use third party applications like Zapier to create triggers/actions to automate setting tasks.
Additionally, you can reach out to our team to discuss assisted implementation options to assist with task updates or reference our API documentation (specifically our supported Task attributes) if you are familiar with updating through the API.
Feel free to reach out with additional questions!
I can assign a task to some users in Sell but not all of them. Why not?
Hi Zak Wilkowski,
Is the task associated with a Lead, Contact, or Deal? In other words, is the task already created on a specific page in your account?
If so, I would make sure the user you are trying to select to be the new "Owner" of the task can view that Lead, Contact, or Deal. If someone does not have access to a record, they cannot be assigned a task on that same record.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you are still having trouble with a specific task :)
Hi Katie,
The issue we face is that we have an internal Sales team that will book meetings/appointments for our Field Sales team. Due to Sell not allowing users to assign appointments to anyone but themselves, we are having to use Tasks for this purpose instead (suboptimal but it shall do for now).
The tasks we are trying to assign are associated with both Leads and Contacts. All of the users in Sell should have full access to view and edit all Leads and Contacts but they can only see a limited list of users when trying to assign Tasks to others.
Is this due to how the Users are set up in the User Hierarchy? What would I need to change in order for all Users to be able to assign each other tasks?
Thanks, Zak
Hi Zak Wilkowski,
You are correct that users can only assign appointments to themselves.
If you open up your user permissions to allow visibility to all leads and contacts for all users, then yes, they should be able to assign tasks to others. However, if you want to keep the hierarchy for your users, you need to make sure the users who need to assign tasks to others have permission to view leads and contacts they don't own.
In your current workflow, if your internal sales team creates tasks for your field sales team, your internal sales team needs to have permission to see all leads/contacts owned by your field sales team. If they can see a record owned by someone else, they should be able to create a task on that record for the owner.
In other words, try moving the members of your internal sales team higher in your hierarchy than your field sales team.
Lastly, please feel free to contact our customer support team who can look into your account at specific examples so we can make sure your hierarchy is set up as you need it to be!
Okay thanks. I did contact them a week ago on the issue but had no reply so I commented here also.
On your point about giving all users access to all Leads and Contacts, I have done this but they still see a limited list of users when assigning a task to others. I also have the internal sales team higher in the hierarchy than the Field Sales team but they still cannot assign to them. Please can you advise?
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