As we continue our series on Pipeliner concepts, we’ll now take up another straightforward approach for Pipeliner administration: fields and forms. As with much of our other functionality, we’ve made fields and forms far easier than other CRMs. No programming is required, and this function, along with other administration, can be learned in a few hours by anyone who is computer-literate.
Fields and forms are utilized with Pipeliner CRM entities—which is how we refer to different CRM functions. Entities act as data storage for their own individual areas, and are 9 in number:
- Account
- Contact
- Lead
- Opportunity
- Task
- Appointment
- Product
- Product Line Items
- Projects (just released)
From what we’ve seen, this broad variety of entities satisfies the needs of 95 percent of companies. We will in the future, however, make it possible for businesses to create their own unique entities.
Forms
Most of the entities in Pipeliner have multiple customizable forms available, which means you have multiple visualizations of data points. When you are setting up your system, you must first decide which forms you’ll need for each entity and how you will use them. Within a task, a form might be a call, an email, a survey, or a support ticket.
Different forms might be used for different departments. Or, in another example, you might have a partner program, and partners might be handled differently.
Fields
Within each form, you can create as many different customizable fields as you wish. These fields can be made accessible to varying degrees: not accessible at all, read-only, or with read-write permissions. We’ve done this because some roles will require access to specific fields and some will not, just as there will be various departments that will need access and others that will not.
While they might have been at one time, permissions aren’t simply a matter of preference. Today data security is a prime concern, so only certain positions or departments in a company should have privileges. There are even legalities involved, such as with HIPAA requirements, which means data access is a matter of law.
Project Management
Our new Project Management entity deserves special mention, as it is differentiated from other entities in several significant ways.
Project Management allows you to create different types of projects, utilizing different kinds of forms. As with other entities, forms can be edited and customized. Fields—such as rollup fields which can be configured to aggregate data about related records, and lookup fields, which are configured using filter criteria—can be customized and added to forms.
Once a project form is created on the back end, it is available as a template on the front end. The project would then have process-driven steps.
The project can be added to an account or opportunity, or it can even be used by itself as a standalone project. Within an opportunity, a project could be a particular customer’s buying process. It could also be an onboarding process, utilized with any new account.
Project management applications are generally not correlated with CRM. But the great news is that, in the case of Pipeliner, project management is built right in, and operates seamlessly as part of CRM.
Not Fixed
A significant aspect of Pipeliner’s fields and forms is their flexibility. After you’ve set them up, you can be assured that, if required, you can easily change them. Nothing is set in stone.
Our Goal—Your Independence
The reason we have made it so easy to customize Pipeliner’s fields and forms are to make it possible for you to independently run your system. When you need to set up new forms or fields, you can do so without the requirement of outside guidance such as a consultant—which you may or may not be able to find or afford.
In the design of our features, just as in the design of our CRM solutions, we utilize cybernetic principles—the science of simplicity. This simplicity applies to feature ease of use and also to their customization by an administrator.
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