Tracking contacts based on a date and custom property that need to be linked

[dtavenues]

Hi, here is the problem and wondering if anyone has suggestions for a solution.

We are an education company with several schools. What I would like to be able to do is create a timestamp when someone became intereseted in a particular school for a particular school term. 

A thought would be to just have a bucnch of date properties named somehing like "Campus1 - 2023 - Term1" but that would  spiral out of control very quickly. We have 5 campuses and each one has 2 terms per year.  Another thought was to have a custom object to house the campus and date property together, but in that case not sure how we would not create duplicates since the same contact could have several touchpoints for the same campus/ term. 

Any thoughts super appreciated.

[jolle · Accepted solution]

Hey @dtavenues, thanks for reaching out! This is a really cool use case.

Is it absolutely essential that you use date stamp properties here to store a specific date? If so, it's possible, but it's going to be a lift that will require heavy ongoing maintenance.

Like you said, you would need to create a separate date property for each campus and each term (5 campuses X 2 terms = 10 total properties/year) . You would then need to create a date stamp workflow for every single term (10 workflows total) and define the hand-off point between term 1 and term 2 to ensure that term 1 workflows are turned off, term 2 workflows are turned on, and all reporting/lists/workflow criteria are updated accordingly. There's a lot going on there, but it could work for you if this information is absolutely essential.

Honestly, I feel like the term of interest may be of more use to you than the date of initial interest in a particular term. This may exist already, but you could have a multi-select property for each campus containing a value for each term. This property could be used internally (i.e., updated by a workflow, target lead score) and externally (i.e., within a form where the prospective student can indicate their term(s) of interest). You could then easily identify contacts interested in a particular term, contacts interested in past terms, etc. You could also create a standard date stamp property like "Date of first interest in [campus]" that would look like:

• Enrollment criteria = "Campus - Term of Interest" is known
• Set date stamp "Date of first interest in [campus]"

So you'd still be able to create a date stamp when the term of interest is first identified, but it wouldn't be tied to the specifc term. While not term-specific, this approach would be easier to scale and maintain.

Hope this helps get some ideas flowing! If you're able to share some additional info around how you'd be using these date stamp properties, we may be able to offer some additional workarounds!

[dtavenues]

Thanks for your answer @jolle, you are correct we already have a multi-select property for the term and campus and can get a report like the one you mentioned.

The reason we want a timestamp is to be able to see where we are with inquiries (leads) for a given term and campus  at the same time this year vs last for forecasting purposes. The reason a single  "first interest" property is not really  sufficient is that families often have multiple students that would be interested in different entry terms.