Logging and Managing Interactions in ActivistCentral

Interactions give your team a shared history of its work with each person in ActivistCentral.

You can log phone calls, emails, in-person conversations, notes, tasks, and other activity directly on a contact's record. This helps staff understand what has already happened before they reach out or take the next step.

Find the Contact

Start in:

Contacts

Search for the person and open their contact record.

You'll find the Interaction Timeline on the contact's profile.

Log an Interaction

Select:

Log Interaction

Choose the type of activity you want to record:

• Call
• Email
• In Person
• Note
• Task
• Other

Then add the information that will be useful to your team.

Depending on the interaction, you can record details such as the date and time, direction, status, subject, and notes.

When you're finished, save the interaction. It will appear in the contact's Interaction Timeline.

Choose a Direction

If useful, you can record the direction of an interaction.

Choose:

• Inbound when the contact reached out to your organization
• Outbound when your organization reached out to the contact
• Internal for activity or information that is internal to your team

Direction is available under the additional interaction options.

Choose a Status

You can also use a status to describe the state or outcome of an interaction.

Available statuses include:

• Completed
• Scheduled
• Left message
• Cancelled
• Open

For example, you might mark a phone call as Left message, a future task as Scheduled, or something that still needs attention as Open.

Add Notes and Useful Details

Use the interaction details to record information another staff member may need later.

For example:

• The outcome of a phone conversation
• A question the contact asked
• Follow-up that is needed
• Notes from an in-person conversation
• Background information your team should remember

For a general note about a contact, use:

Log Interaction → Note

This keeps the note in the contact's history along with other activity.

Add Attachments

You can attach files to an interaction when a document belongs with a particular conversation, task, note, or other activity.

Add the files while logging the interaction, or add and remove attachments later when editing it.

Keeping the attachment with the interaction makes it easier for other staff members to understand why the file is relevant.

Edit an Interaction

If you need to correct or update an interaction:

1. Open the contact's record.
2. Find the interaction in the Interaction Timeline.
3. Select Edit.
4. Make your changes.
5. Save the interaction.

You can update the interaction details and manage its attachments.

Understanding the Interaction Timeline

The Interaction Timeline includes more than activity that staff manually log.

Depending on the contact's history, ActivistCentral may also show activity such as campaign messages and calls, event participation, and historical activity imported into ActivistCentral.

This gives your team a broader view of what has happened with a contact without requiring staff to manually recreate activity that ActivistCentral already knows about.

The Interaction Timeline displays the 50 most recent items. If a contact has additional history beyond those items, ActivistCentral will let you know that older activity is not currently shown.

Building a Useful Contact History

Interactions become especially valuable when your team uses them consistently.

After speaking with someone, for example, a staff member can log the conversation and its outcome. The next person who opens the contact can review that history before reaching out again.

Over time, the Interaction Timeline becomes a shared record of your organization's relationship with that person instead of leaving useful information scattered across individual inboxes, personal notes, or staff members' memories.