Tracking calls, times on calls and sorting them.

[Mich2too]

Have used Lotus Organizer for YEARS and have migrate to Outlook 2002 at work to meet licensing requirements for our Non-Profit agency.

Lotus Organizer has a feature that allows the user to quickly hit a button when an incoming call was answered and the timer would automatically start. The call could be matched to an existing contact or no contact if not needed. There is also a Cost code feature that would allow for totalling all time spent for each cost code so that proper time allocations could be made later. Same held true for tracking outgoing calls.

As I work in one particular department, but also act as receptionist when there is not a volunteer staffing the receptionist desk, it is important for me to be able to track the time I spend on calls for other departments so that proper allocations can be made. Would also be handy to be able to use it to time spent on various projects within my dept as well. How would I go about doing this in Outlook? Is there a way to count the number of calls as well as total the amount of time on phone by department etc?

THANKS for any assistance any of you can give.

 

[GeekGirlau]

What you need is the Journal.

When you insert a new Journal entry, you'll see there is a "Start Timer" and "Pause Timer" button. This allows you to record the duration of the item (such as telephone calls and meetings).

You can link a Journal item to a Contact, but I'm not sure how you'll go with the Cost feature. I know you can export Journal data, but I think you would need to look at automating the process to get the results you want. Apart from working via code, I don't know of any automatic function to display the data you're talking about (but am happy to be proved wrong!)

 

[Mich2too]

Okay....have tested the Journal option. Added a new item, clicked on the start timer button and did some editting on the form. When I clicked the pause button, the duration box never filled in with how much time was spent on that task. Shouldn't this automatically complete? Or am I missing something here?

 

[Mich2too]

Have also exported the journal using default mapping. Checked to make sure that all field were mapped before exporting. Once exported and opened in Excel, it was discovered that there is no diration field and that there seems to be no way to track the actual amount of time spent on each task.

 

[GeekGirlau]

Do you know roughly how long you were editing the form? You won't see any duration displayed until you have been running the timer for at least a minute.

I ran the export in Outlook 2003 and the Duration field was included - which format did you export the data to, and what version of Outlook are you running?

 

[Mich2too]

Sorry it took so long to respond....THANKS Geekgirlau!

After playing with the timer a bit longer and reading your post about the full minute thing, I was able to export and the duration showed up. Am sort of disappointed with some of the results. When exporting to Excel, duration displays in whole minutes. If reformat the column to be a time showing hh:mm:ss, the entire column turns to 0:00:00.

We need to be able to get actual minutes and seconds so that true totals can be calculated. Pretty simple concept when considering that 15 or more phone calls can be answered and transferred to another department and each call only last 45 seconds or more. The way it looks in Journal, those 45 seconds would be ignored and never counted when in truth, 11+ minutes need to allocated to SOME department.

Suggestions?? Ideas??

 

[GeekGirlau]

I think you're looking at building a custom application for this, or perhaps investigating some off-the-shelf software - Outlook is not going to do it for you

 

[youngcougar]

Try adding an extra column, then doing some time math
For example if column A is start, and column B is end, then make column C the duration, and create a formula that subtracts column A from C. Format column C to be hh:mm:ss

Hope this helps

 

[Mich2too]

Thanks to both of you for responding. Youngcougar, haven't tried your suggestion yet, but will give it a try in the next few days. As for building a custom application or something 'off-the-shelf'...well...just another reason for looking into the purchase of Lotus Organizer for everyone in the office. For about $500-600 we can outfit the entire office vs buying MS Exchange which will cost well over $1,000!!

Hope your New Year has been a safe and joyous one so far!!!

 

[GeekGirlau]

YoungCougar's suggestion will work for a quick and dirty option, however you'll probably need to build in some shortcuts for inserting the current time and selecting an activity (Phone call etc.). For the time option you could create a macro (and attach it to a shortcut keystroke) where the macro is simply:

Activecell.Formula = Now()

You would press the macro keys to record the start time and then the end time of the activity. To insert the activity type, you could set up Data Validation in the spreadsheet and have a drop-down of options appear. As YoungCouger suggested, calculating the difference between the two times is simple.

One option to consider is to have a macro check the last record entered. If it contains both start and end times, then start a new record and enter the start time. If only the start time exists, enter the end time. That way you could have a single macro to start and end an activity, and you wouldn't need to move to the right cell first - the macro would take care of that for you.

This is obviously a very simplified option, but might help you get started (and save $500-$600 as well!).