Method Community

Hello all,

I have added a few leads that have been deleted, and all if fine when I'm in Method CRM, but one I export an activity list, I'm seeing blank fields.  I thought I had intered some information wrong, but it's actually activities from those deleted leads.  Is there any way to completely remove these so I'm not sifting through what's a mistake and what should've been deleted?  Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

SMFletcher91:

Is there any way to completely remove these so I'm not sifting through what's a mistake and what should've been deleted?

Not currently.  When you delete a lead from Method we delete them from the Customer table but any activities associated with them still live inside the Activity table.  If you need to completely remove these it might be helpful to export the activity table and clean it up before re-importing.  

Alternatively, you could probably build a custom process to handle deleting a lead better depending on your needs.  If you require any help please feel free to reach out to us for a consulting session.

~C

Would deleting the activity first, then deleting the contact or lead provide me with the end result I'm desiring?  I've been doing this today, but I've got so many blank fields that I'm not sure if it's making a difference in my export files.

SMFletcher91:

Would deleting the activity first, then deleting the contact or lead provide me with the end result I'm desiring?

Yes.  I just confirmed this on my account, deleting an activity then exporting the database will show those rows removed.  

If you had multiple activites to delete, and you didn't want to go through them one at a time, this help center article covers the steps to delete multiple records while viewing them in a grid.

~C

Thank you for your time and advice; this will help tremendously with sorting out our leads and customers!

Glad we could help!

~C

I don't have the time to watch hours of videos, my work place won't allow that much time to train, so I took the alternative approach and exported the list, then imported it again.  Big mistake because now I've got doubles on just about everything EXCEPT the "ghost" activities.

Is there any way to completely clean the activity table then import the cleaned up list?  I can't find anywhere to completely swipe the table clean.  And I only want to clean the Activity table, nothing else.  Is this possible, or am I juust asking too much?

I also notice when I look at my activities list, not all of my activities are on there.  Why is that?  Even activities that I want to keep don't show up; it's like they don't exist but I know they do.

SMFletcher91:

Big mistake because now I've got doubles on just about everything EXCEPT the "ghost" activities.

I know why this happened; I deleted the ghost activities before importing the list again in hopes that it would rewrite the table.

SMFletcher91:

Is there any way to completely clean the activity table then import the cleaned up list?

There is no clean table feature - your best bet is to build a custom screen to loop through a grid based on the table you want to clean.  The tutorial I linked above should give you a good overview of how to acheive this.

~C

You had me really confused, but once I got into it, it was pretty simple to create the custom screen.  Worked perfectly.  I was able to export, clean up my activity list, then create the custom screen to delete everything, then import it all again.  :)  Thank you.  My activities are clean, and all of them are finally showing up in the activity list screen, and best of all, it took me only 30 minutes to figure it and and implement.  Thank you for your help!

I'm glad that article helped you out!  Keep on the look out for more articles in the near future.

~C