Custom Activities

Custom Activities allow you to create a custom action type to record a specific type of activity. The most common examples include forms filled in by prospects, support tickets, call outcomes, invoice/payment items, and various structured notes such as call playbooks.

In our samples below we'll use a Sales Qualifying Call as an example.

Sales Qualifying Call as a Custom Activity example

Custom Activities behave just like any other default activity (email, SMS, call, note) - you can create, edit, search/filter, and report on them. You can also add them via our API or Zapier in case you want to integrate Close with other services (e.g. automatically create Inbound Form custom activity when a prospect fills out a form).

Creating a Custom Activity Type

Before we can create an instance of a custom activity on a lead page, we have to define its structure by using Custom Activity Type. Common examples of types are:

• Intercom ticket
• Sales Qualifying Call
• Stripe invoice
• NPS Feedback

To create a new Custom Activity Type, go to Settings > Custom Activities > + New Custom Activity, give it a name, and click Save.

You can enable Restrict Editing that will prevent other users from adding/editing/deleting instances of this type - for example you'd want to restrict Sales Qualifying Call activity to Sales Team only. To control who can add/edit/delete custom activity types - make sure that the user has Manage Customizations permission enabled on a Roles & Permissions page.

If you are using the custom field exclusively through an integration (API or Zapier), you can enable Hide (for API use only) so that type is not visible on a lead page, and as such Close users can't create one from the app user interface.

Custom Activity Fields

Upon the new activity type creation, you'll be automatically redirected to add some fields to this activity type. Each field is just like a Custom Field you can use on Leads and Contacts - it can be Number, Text, Date & Time, etc. We'll create several ones for our Sales Qualifying Call activity type:

• Text Are they qualified?
• Text What's their current CRM?
• Number How many users?
• Choices (single) How did they hear about us?
• Choices (single) What's their sales process?

You can also mark any field as Required - that way users won't be able to create an instance of this type without filling out this field.

When you have your fields (structure) the way you want it - you can go ahead and start creating actual Custom Activity instances.

Creating a Custom Activity Instance

Custom Activities are created through the Lead page view, just like any other activity. Go to the Lead page > Activity > Sales Qualifying Call to add a new instance. Fill in all the details and click Save. Congratulations - you've just added your first custom activity!

If you fill in some details and navigate away from the page without clicking Save, we'll automatically save it as Draft that you can delete or save later on. Required fields are optional for drafts.

If you marked your Custom Activity Type as Hide (for API use only) then you won't see it here, but you'll be able to create one only through the API.

Limits are per calendar month which means they reset on the 1st of the month, independent of your billing cycle.

Searching and Filtering Custom Activities

Each Custom Activity Type will be visible within the Narrow your results search sidebar on a Leads page. You can search & filter by:

• date created

• date last updated

• created by

• last updated by

• any field within a custom activity

Reporting

You can report how many times you've created a specific custom activity via Activity Overview and Activity Comparison reports.

Simply add a new tile and you can immediately start tracking your new metrics:

Custom Activities in Activity Overview report

The same applies for Activity Comparison where you can select the custom activities as well:

Custom Activities in Activity Comparison report

API Documentation

If you’re interested in connecting to our API to automate your Custom Activities you can take a look at our API documentation for a list of different endpoints.