topic Re: A calculated property for first meeting date? in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

A calculated property for first meeting date?

WojciechWB — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 20:52:02 GMT

Hi,
I was wondering if there is a way to have a calculated Contact property that would pull information from associated activities.
In SQL it would be something like this:
SELECT min(a.activity_date) From Activities a LEFT JOIN Contacts c on a.associated_contact_id = c.id WHERE activity_type=meeting and c.id = <<current record id>>

The left join and the last "value" is just to highlight the need to store this on Contact, so there has to be an association there, right?

Is such a thing possible within calculated properties?

Re: A calculated property for first meeting date?

karstenkoehler — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 21:10:30 GMT

Hi @WojciechWB,

Unfortunately not, no. Calculation properties can only reference data from associated activities.

Best regards

Re: A calculated property for first meeting date?

WojciechWB — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 07:20:42 GMT

Hi @karstenkoehler,

thanks for taking a look. Wouldn't those meetings be associated to those contacts though?
I want to save the date of the first meeting on the contact. I don't have Sales Enterprise and meeting types are not an option. Is there nothing that could be done?

Re: A calculated property for first meeting date?

karstenkoehler — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 07:27:22 GMT

@WojciechWB my apologies, I didn't formulate my previous answer correctly. Calculation properties will either only count (rollup) associated objects (contacts, deals, tickets, companies, custom objects) but as of now, associated activities cannot be referenced. Unless the information about the activity is stored in a contact property, it cannot be accessed as part of calculation.

As far as workarounds go, here's what you could do:

Create a workflow that enrolls records when they're associated to a meeting, then logs the current date in a custom date property (the main downside here is that the workflow won't know whether it's the first meeting and that this won't work retroactively)
[Operations Hub] Use a custom code action and leverage the Engagements API to look up the date of the first associated meeting and log it to a custom date property

Outside of that, there might be marketplace apps or third-party automation (e.g. Zapier) which might help accomplish this.

Re: A calculated property for first meeting date?

WojciechWB — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 07:53:36 GMT

Thanks a bunch! I'll investigate the workflow approach and see what I can
do. If I create a meeting counter as another property updated in the
workflow I can probably make it so it only stores the date if the counter
is 0/not set. Won't help with historical data, but it's a step forward!
Again, thanks a lot 🙂