Welcome to foreAction & AccessE11!
This is a guide to introduce you to the basics of the system. Included is a basic breakdown, as well as a ‘Cheat Sheet’ of the various terms you’ll find around the software application.
A Guide to the System
There are three main pieces of foreAction and AccessE11: Contacts, Case Work, and Activities. Let’s go through what each one is and how it can help you.
Contacts
At its core, the system is a tool that helps you manage your contacts and your interaction with them. On top of basic contact management features such as storing the phone numbers or emails, we offer several tools to further enhance you experience, including:
- Tags – make it easy to categorize contacts in a more flexible and customizable way. Very useful for specifying groups of people when creating Target Criteria (see below).
- Attributes – A more customizable version of a Tag. While tags are simple text, attributes can include dates, statuses, and other values. Note: this feature may not be enabled for you.
- Search
- Target Criteria (Advanced Search) – an advanced tool that allows you to find all contacts matching a specific set of search criteria. Once created, Target criteria allow you to do many different things with the results, including: printing a report, tagging, and creating an activity.
- Reports – lets you generate a CSV file containing the data you need from the system. Many reports will let you target specific groups of contacts. You’ll be able to choose from all contacts within a specific Contact Group, all contacts matching a Target Criteria, or all contacts that were part of an Activity.
For more information on Contacts, check out the following articles:
How do I create a Contact?
Click ‘Create Contact’ on the home page. This will bring you to the create page. Fill in any information you have for the Contact and click ‘Save’ on the bottom-right.
Note: A contact requires at least a name and either a phone number, email, or address.
How do I find an existing Contact?
Click ‘Find Contact’ on the home page. This will bring you to the
search page. From here, the search box at the top allows you to perform
searches for your contacts, while the bottom displays the results.
You can switch to a more Advanced search by switching the tab to Advanced at the top of the search box. You can also search by the Contact’s ID by selecting the ID tab.
Once the contact appears in the search results, click on them to view or edit them.
How do I tag a Contact?
Find and open the Contact you’d like to tag. You should see a Tags section at the top. Click the + icon, select the desired in the ensuing pop-up, then click the submit button on the bottom-right of the pop-up. Finally, make sure you save the Contact, otherwise your changes will not be saved!
How do I add an Attribute to a Contact?
Find and open the Contact you’d like to give an attribute. You should
see that there are different tabs at the top of the page. When you
first open the Contact, you’ll be in the Details section. Switch to the
Attributes section. Here you’ll see tables representing the different
Attributes available. To add one, click the + icon on the top-left of
the attribute’s table which you’d like to add. Fill in the desired
information then click ‘Submit’.
How do I add an address to a Contact?
Find and open the Contact you’d like to open. Find the Civic Address
section in the middle of the page. Start typing in the ‘Civic Address’
box until you find a matching address, then click the matching address.
If you don’t find the address your looking for, that means it doesn’t
yet exist on foreAction, so you’ll need to create one. Simply click the
+ icon to the right of the ‘Civic Address’ box, fill in the address
information in the ensuing pop-up, and click ‘Add Address’.
Finally, make sure you save the Contact, otherwise your changes will not be saved!
How do I find a Contact’s ID?
Find and open the Contact you’re looking for. Scroll to the very bottom and you’ll see a section called IDs. The foreAction ID is that contact’s unique identifier within foreAction.
What is an Organization?
An Organization is a special kind of contact that represents an entire organization, not just one person.
Note: Unlike contacts, organizations only require a name.
Case Work
This is where you’ll create and manage cases for your case office.
If you want more information on Case work, check out the following articles:
What is a Case?
A case is a task for your case office. A case generally contains:
- The affected contact
- A short summary of the case
- A category (which allows you to sort through your office’s cases more easily)
- You’ll probably also want to assign the case to one (or more) people from your office
How do I Create a Case?
Click the ‘Create Case’ on the home page.
You’ll see a page broken down into multiple sections. The only required pieces of information to create a case are a Title, Contact, and Category. However, there are many different fields to define more detailed information about your case:
- Top Row - In this section you can define the status of the case (open or closed), Priority of the case, Due Date, and Opened Date. By default, opened date is today. However that can be changed if this case was intended to be opened at a different time.
- Summary - In this section you can define the title of the case, give a brief description, as well as mark the case as Confidential and Mark it for review if necessary.
- Contact– Set the Contact that has initiated this case. Contacts can be an individual or an organization.
- Custom Fields – Shown as Citizen Issues Fields in the example above, Administrators can define multiple Custom Fields for creating cases with any extra information required by your organization. These can be marked as required.
- Attachments - Add any attachments needed for this issue. Can include documents, photos, videos, and much more.
- Notes - Add required notes for the case. These notes can be marked as Public, Internal, Secure, or Standard.
- Category - Set the category of the case. Usually defined as different departments, case categories can have pre-configured details that will automatically be filled in when you select the category. In this section you can also set who the case is assigned to, as well as whether the case is only visible to assigned users (for increased privacy)
- Tasks - Quickly configure tasks necessary to complete this case. These tasks can be set with their own due date, separate assignee, and can be dependent on other tasks within the case.
- Location - By default, the location will be pinned based on the address of the Contact. Look up an address, intersection, description, or simply drag and drop the pin to set the location of the case. Note: If you do not see the map, it has been disabled by your system administrator.
A Tour of the Dashboard
The Dashboard gives you a visual breakdown of what’s going on in your case office. There are multiple sections in the dashboard:
- Graphs – The first thing you’ll see when you go to the dashboard are buttons at the top of the page and different charts at the bottom. The graphs give you visual indicators on whether you have many older cases, how many cases are assigned to who, and the frequency of cases of different categories.
- Tiles– each of these boxes show a description and the number of cases in the office that match that description. If you click on a tile, a table of all the data matching the description will pop out below it. The graphs below will also change to reflect your choice. For example, the first box lets you view all the open cases in your case office. If you click it, you’ll see that the table will reload to only show your case office’s open cases, and the graphs below will also now only show open cases.
- Table – if you click on one of the buttons above, you’ll see a table of cases appear below. There’s also a search bar and filter on the top-right of the table and a card on the right-hand side to see the selected case. You can view or edit any of these cases by clicking the pencil icon on the left-hand side of the title.
- Printing – we have two printing options. The print button on the
top-right allows you to print your entire dashboard, graphs included.
The second, which appears on the top-right of the table, generates a
more detailed PDF that separates the cases onto individual pages.
- Filters - Filter the results in your Tiles, Table and Graphs by department/category. Whatever filters you choose will persist across the entire dashboard.
- Reports - Generate reports in Excel or PDF directly from the dashboard.
How do I find Cases?
Click ‘Find Case’ on the home page.
This is where you’ll go when you’re searching for a case. Let’s break the page down into three sections: top, middle, and bottom.
- Top – you should see eight different buttons these allow you to do a simple search in one click. For example, click the ‘New this Week’, scroll down to the table, and you’ll see all the cases created in the past week
- Middle – you’ll see all the various criteria you can search by. For example, if you wanted to search for all closed cases, click the ‘Closed’ checkbox next to Status, uncheck the ‘Open’ checkbox, then click the green ‘Search’ button at the bottom-right of the page
- Bottom – This is where you’ll see the results of your search. To view or modify a case simply click on it in the search results.
My Assignments Dashboard
Click ‘My Cases’ on the home page and you will be brought to a page
that looks like the Dashboard above. This page will only show the cases
that have been assigned to you. Clicking on the tiles will open
different results in the table below. There are also four different
graphs on the right-hand side which summarize the cases you’ve been
working on.
Activities
Activities keep track of contact outreach on a larger scale. Here are the three most common types of Activities available. Please note: the activities you see could differ.
- MailChimp Activity – send out emails to large groups of contacts. When creating a MailChimp Activity, be sure to follow all the ‘Before you begin’ steps on the first page before continuing.
- Printed Canvass – create forms for door-to-door canvassing
- Telephone – create forms for telephone canvassing
If you want more information on Activities, check out the following articles:
How do I create an Activity?
Before creating an activity, you’ll want to clarify who it is you want the activity to target. You can target either your entire Contact Group, contacts matching a specific Target Criteria (see above), contacts from another activity.
Once you know which contacts you’d like to target, click ‘Create Activity’ on the home page. The steps for creating an Activity depends on the type of Activity being created, but if you follow the steps on the screen you should be good to go.
How do I find an existing Activity?
Click ‘Find Activity’ on the home page. First, find the activity you’d like to view. Once you’ve clicked on it, you’ll see various statistics for your activity. If you’re viewing a canvass activity, you’ll have the option to view different lists of contacts within the activity at the bottom of the page. You’ll can also save these lists as PDFs.
Cheat Sheet
Tag – Tags are used to tag contacts. Tags make it easy to categorize contacts in a more flexible and customizable way. See Target Groups to see how Tags are extremely useful.
Attribute – A more customizable version of a Tag. While tags are simple text, attributes can include dates, statuses, and other values.
Target Group – allows you to find all contacts matching a specific set of search criteria. For example, if you want a list of everybody tagged with ‘Holiday Card’, you can create a Target Group which targets everyone with that tag!
Master Contact Group and Contact Group – this is how the system organizes its contacts. Master Contact Group is a top-level group which can contain any number of Contact Groups.
Case Office – the office for your case work
Organization – a special type of contact that represents an organization
Activity – a generic term for different types of outreach available to you