Joining an Active Streak Pipeline (2 of 2)
Before we tackle Part Two of “Joining An Active Streak pipeline”, start with Part One here if you’d like to see basics, get tips, and review how to update boxes. This post will focus on using your fresh perspective to optimize and improve the pipelines you’re joining. Goal: Your team says: “Wow! Where did you learn how to do that!”
4 Essential Streak Features Your Team Will Thank You for Discovering
First and most important! All of the features below lead up to enabling you to use a Saved View find the box you need, at the moment you need it.
Using the data you give us (features #2 and #4 below) and the information we track for you automatically (#3) — create a View to automatically find the boxes relevant to the specific task you’re working on.
1. Saved Views
The opposite of using a Saved View is clicking on the main pipeline. If open the main pipeline, you’re telling us: “Hey Streak, show me all boxes and all columns.” It’s unlikely you’re able to update all existing boxes at one time. Instead, you might only want to know if there are any leads assigned to you that have not been updated in the last 7 days:
More Examples of Saved Views
- Show me the boxes that are assigned to me.
- Find all leads that were created this week and haven’t been emailed yet.
- Surface all candidates where the last email is from me, the box hasn’t been updated in the last 7 days, and their expertise is Front End Development.
- Show me all support boxes where the total number of sent messages is > 3 (implying it was a tricky issue).
Although we’re getting ahead of ourselves, let’s continue with the ‘so what?’ of Saved Views to show you how this key ingredient is central to powerful work flows like:
- Segmenting your pipeline to run Mail Merge and reach a specific group of people
- Adding your Saved View as a custom Chart in your Reports dashboard: How to add a custom chart
- Seeing new leads directly at the top your inbox with “Show in Inbox”
*We follow our own advice: Each of our internal pipelines has 20+ actively used Saved Views*
Streak Help Tours: How to Use Saved Views, How to Add a Saved View to Your Inbox
Video: Saved Views
Blog: 6 Saved Views to use in 2016, Managing Saved Views
2. Add Additional Columns
Custom Columns are your chance to give us (Streak) information. If you want to find all boxes where the City is set to “San Francisco”, you’ll need to add a column to store that data point. The more specific pieces of information you track, the more granular your filter results can be.
As a new user, double check your team’s pipeline for columns or notes that mix different data points. Each ‘fact’ about your box needs a separate column. We offer a range of Columns to store your information in the appropriate format:
Specific Examples of Good Column Use:
A) Using a ‘date’ column instead of a ‘free form’ column ensures everyone on your team is entering dates in the same way. If one person types ‘March 1st’ and another enters ‘3/1’, your Saved Views will be affected. Plus, date columns don’t have room for typos!
B) Speaking of ‘no typos’, Tag and Dropdown columns allow your team to choose from existing options instead of entering text each time. To go back to our initial City example, San Francisco vs City San Francisoc is important because if you say to Streak: “Show me all boxes where city = ‘San Francisco’… ‘San Francisoc’ won’t count.
Streak Help Tour: How to add a column to a pipeline
Video: Custom Columns
3. Magic Columns
Magic Columns automatically track 50+ unique pieces of information about your pipeline and may be added at any moment for instant data turbocharging. This is our (Streak’s) chance to give you information. Here’s an example of just the email section:
Check your pipelines to make sure existing users aren’t wasting time on data entry of information we’re already tracking (work smart, not hard!).
Streak Help Tour: How to add a column to a pipeline
Blog: Introducing Magic Columns
4. Fill Up Your Boxes With Contents
The final pieces of data that will complete your boxes are found in the ‘Contents’ section of boxes:
We trust the Magic Column section above caught your eye. In order to take advantage of the free automagic data in Magic Columns to build Saved Views like ‘all boxes with a call log last week’, you’ll need to add the appropriate items to your box:
- If you enter ‘call on 3/1’ into your ‘Notes’ field as free form text — no help from Magic Columns is available.
- If you add the notes as a “Call Log” in the box contents — we can automatically track and report on the relevant details.
Streak Help Tours: How to create a task, how to create a call log, how to add an email to a box
Video: Tasks, Call Logs / Meeting Notes
Blog: Tasks, Call Logs / Meeting Notes
We could go on: Reports! Formula columns! Power tools! … but if your team is not currently using Saved Views, they’ll thank you forever for introducing an easier way to work!
