To see the new “skip” links, look in the playbook details section at the bottom of a contact’s screen.

We hope you find this feature useful and, as always, we welcome feedback as PlaybookIQ continues to evolve.

Letter templates are assigned to a playbook just like an email template.  When a letter template is assigned a step in the playbook and comes due, you will be given the option to ‘download pdf’ instead of ‘compose email.’ Once you send the letter, you can save it and attach to the contact under the Attach Document link.

To convert an existing email template to a letter template, choose the email template you’re converting.  Edit the template and add in the necessary address fields to the body of the template.  Choose to save as a letter template and save.  Now the former email template is now a letter template.

*Number of subscriptions may be limited.  Proof of service required.

For example, a group of contacts imported from a purchased list have completed all steps in a lead playbook.  Viable leads have been followed through and all others are deemed dead.  A search for the dead contacts by tag or playbook will now yield the option to delete:

To delete all listed contacts, check the box at the top of the list (be sure to ‘show all’ if you’re managing more than 20 contacts) and click delete.  You’ll be asked to confirm you want to delete the chosen contacts:

Verify you desire to delete the contacts.  All chosen contacts, along with any associated tasks, comments and history, is deleted.

A reminder that the administrator of the account can deny permission to any user to delete contacts.  For more information on PlaybookIQ permission management, visit our Help Center.

Marking contacts private will allow only the user importing the contacts and the administrator to view the contact and associated information.

When the contact full history is shown, user generated comments are now preceded by a balloon and appear in black lettering.  System generated history (contact created, task completed, etc) are preceded with a green check mark, have a gray background, and gray lettering:

This new format allows users to still see the big picture of their sales process but draws attention to comments.

Users can also now choose to view Comments only by clicking on the “Comments” link:

This new feature segments out comments only for easy review.   Clicking “History” returns to a listing of all user and system generated history.

Now when you set up your web forms in PlaybookIQ, you can check the fields you want to include.  Only those fields will be populated on the form.  Data collected from those fields will be automatically uploaded to your PlaybookIQ Account.  We also added two new fields, Company and Title.

Your existing PlaybookIQ Web Forms can be edited to change the standard fields to be included or to add the new fields.

For more information on our Web Forms, visit our Help Center, or view a Sample Web Form.

Unfortunately, these file types are also among the least standard and least structured ways to share information.  We have recently introduced three updates to help smooth out the CRM import process.

• We added a sample csv file that has been verified to import to PlaybookIQ.
• We added a “common reasons” help section which identifies and describes common issues with csv files.
• We simplified the import process from four steps down to two.

These small changes should make the import process more useful and more reliable.

So in comes the user friendly application.  But what is user friendly to one is not to the next.  So how do we serve both?  How do you avoid insulting the more technical users while not leaving the not-so-technical behind?

We’ve decided with our import feature, which has admittedly caused the most user errors in our system, to begin the process with a basic “1-2-3″ step process without much upfront instruction.  Import should really be a simple function, and for the user who is familiar with imports and CSV files, this approach should work well.  However, alongside the easy 1-2-3 process, we’re linking to more in-depth instructions and information for those who are unfamiliar with imports and CSV files and need additional help.  We’re providing this further information in easy-to-understand verbage and concepts, in an attempt to not only help our users use our system, but also to educate them.  Oftentimes, this is by providing links to the help section of the current systems they are importing from, systems that have already discovered the best way to explain converting data from their system to a CSV file.

Our goal is to make importing contacts easier than ever.  However, even for the technical savvy, errors with CSV files that cause an import to bomb out.  A missing comma, missing quote, too many quotes – can cause the whole file to fail.  In this case, we’ve decided that more eyes are better, and after our users have examined their file and tried again, we’ll invite the user to send the file to us and try to help resolve the problem.

Our more user-friendly Import feature will launch this week.

Setting up custom fields is easy in PlaybookIQ.  Under the Admin link in each account is a Custom Fields option.  Simply click “edit”, input the desired fields, and save.  Now each time a contact is added or edited, the custom fields appear for data input.

Custom fields can be easily searched and segmented like any other contact field.  This allows for specific industry target marketing or followup.  Custom fields can also be used when importing contact data, to ensure none of the data associated with your contacts at import.