I saw this article on the the power object blog. Custom activity types is something on my todo list of things to check out.
I have a possible need for some custom activity types. A user wants to create activities for themselves but they aren’t always just email/phone calls etc.
Here is the link to the article, you should definitely check the blog out because they always have a few interesting articles to look at.
What I like about this article is it is short and sweet and gets to the point straight away. Which is very useful when you just want to know how to do something. They also offer help to people who need it (like the A Team) so if you have any questions or need any help with CRM, give them a call
CRM 2011 allows a user to define his/her own activity type. For example, if we want to conceptualize sale transactions as activities, and report, analyze and view them on a par with the out-of-box CRM activities, we can define our new custom entity as an activity type. In 3.0 and 4.0 this would not have been possible (at least in a supported fashion); in CRM 2011 it is quite easy.
When creating the custom entity, such as “Sale Transaction” below, check the boxes labeled “Define as an activity entity” and “Display in Activity Menus”, as shown below. Save, publish, and you’re done!
Having defined our custom entity, we can now see it in the Activities tab of the Workplace ribbon toolbar under the pull-down list called “Other Activities”:
Since we checked the “Display in Activity Menus” checkbox on our custom entity definition screen, Sale Transaction appears in the pull-down list along with the nine standard activity types when we create a new activity:
The Sale Transaction record itself is structured much like the other activity records. For example, you can regard it to other entity types, set an Actual End date, and mark the activity as complete:
Finally, we see that in the list of a contact’s completed activities, the sale transactions appear alongside the other activities with this record.
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