With the holiday season upon us, it is time to put your plans for holiday outreach into action. Ongoing client communication is vital throughout the year, but there is perhaps no other season when opportunities for natural points of contact are so readily available to you. This presents you with multiple occasions for building good will and strengthening your client relationships.

Redtail provides a significant amount of documentation and video help to assist with marketing and outreach. We’re including links to all of that here, along with a brief description where necessary of what you’ll find at each link.

Additionally, following these links we offer a FAQ for Holiday Resources.

We hope this resource on Holiday Resources in Redtail will prove useful to you in your efforts to spread good will and stay in touch with your clients during the holidays.

Redtail CRM tools:

Any combination of the tools within Redtail below may play a part in your holiday outreach preparation and process.

Client Segmentation

You may want to send physical mailings to a certain group of contacts while sending email to another. Or, perhaps you want to create a social holiday campaign. Redtail makes it easy to segment your contacts so that you can pinpoint which of your contacts are targeted with a specific holiday outreach effort. If you haven’t already done so, you can go ahead and begin creating Quicklists or Tag Groups of the various contact groups that you intend to reach out to this holiday season. Once you have your groups segmented, you’ll be ready to go in terms of lists for putting together your mailings, etc.

Mail Merge

You can create your own holiday message templates within Microsoft Word and upload those to merge with your contact records. Instructions for doing so are here (or for Mac users here).

After uploading your template(s), you can then merge them with contacts individually or in bulk. If you need to address a letter to both spouses or partners, instructions for doing so are here.

You can also merge labels or envelopes from within your CRM, including custom labels that you create yourself.

Custom Exports

If you want to include fields in your merge template that are not on Redtail’s list of available mail merge fields, you would need to create a Custom Export that includes those desired fields, export your desired contacts, and run the merge within Microsoft Word itself. Instructions for accomplishing this can be found here.

Broadcast Email

You can create and send holiday greetings via email to your selected contacts from within Redtail CRM, using our Broadcast Email functionality. Instructions are here.

Workflows and Calendar

Don’t overlook the importance of mapping out your holiday planning and outreach. Workflows and/or Calendar Activities can assist with keeping those responsible for meeting your holiday outreach on track to meet the necessary deadlines.

Reports

Two standard reports in Redtail that could prove useful for the purposes of creating your groups for outreach and/or gift giving where applicable are the Contact User Defined Fields Report and the Contacts by Keyword Report, if your office uses UDFs and Keywords to track more detailed information about clients.

Integration partner tools:

Below is a list of Redtail integration partners that might prove valuable in your holiday outreach efforts.

Advisor Stream

If you have an account with AdvisorStream, you can sync Redtail contact data to their platform for the purposes of digital marketing.

Clout

Import your Redtail contacts into Clout to take advantage of their growth marketing campaigns.

Constant Contact

If you have a Constant Contact account, Redtail allows you to send contact data tailored for their  automated email campaigns.

e-Relationship

With this integration you can sync your Redtail contacts to e-Relationship and reach out to them using their marketing tools.

FMeX (Financial Media Exchange)

If you are an FMeX subscriber, you can sync your Redtail contact data over to their platform and then reach out to your clients and prospects via custom branded emails, e-newsletters and social posts using FMeX’s extensive, licensed library of articles from established financial publishers.

FMG Suite

If you have an FMG Suite account, Redtail allows you to sync contact data to their platform and take advantage of their automated campaigns, including email, social media, video, birthday and holiday campaigns.

Leadjig

With a Leadjig account you can sync your Redtail contacts to their platform to take advantage of their financial advisor marketing tools.

Lead Pilot

Send your Redtail contacts to Lead Pilot to take advantage of their customizable marketing campaigns for advisors.

Levitate

With Levitate you can sync your Redtail contacts over and use their keep-in-touch marketing tool for advisors.

MailChimp

If you have a MailChimp account, Redtail allows you to send contact data tailored for their automated email campaigns.

MarketingPro

If you are a MarketingPro subscriber, you can easily push any of their holiday templates over to your CRM in order to merge them in bulk with your selected contacts.

SendOutCards

If you have an account with SendOutCards, Redtail makes it easy to prepare an export of contacts tailored to their system which you can then import into your SendOutCards account.

Snappy Kraken

Import your Redtail contacts into Snappy Kraken to implement their complete digital marketing strategy with your clients.

Stamps.com

Finally, if you have an account with Stamps.com, you can also handle all of your official US postage needs for all those mailings you’ll be sending from the desk in your office. From your Advanced Search page, you can select the Stamps.com Export from the Exports menu to prepare the contact files with which you’ll be working.

Sample Templates

While only one or two of the templates below are holiday-specific, you might find some of them valuable as a starting point for holiday mailings that you can edit as you wish.

• Sample Mail Merge Card Templates
• Sample Mail Merge Envelope Templates
• Sample Mail Merge Letter Templates

Video / Recorded Webinar Links

• Broadcast Email [14:39] – Broadcast Emails provide you with a method of sending out an email to any number of your contacts, personalized to each recipient through the use of acceptable Email Merge Fields. This tutorial goes over some of the important points of setting up and utilizing Broadcast Emails.
• Redtail Essentials: Broadcast Email [24:50] – Here’s a Broadcast Email webinar where we dove into the features that make Broadcast Email such a useful tool.
• Redtail Essentials: Mail Merge [43:57] – The holidays are a great time to send physical mailings to clients and Redtail helps streamline the mailing process through its mail merge feature. This webinar covers creating/uploading your mail merge templates, selecting your recipients, and running the merge. Additionally, we take a look at creating labels and keywords to assist in the process.
• Segmenting your Client Data [36:40] – Lists provide a great way to segment your contacts for marketing purposes as well as for holiday outreach. There are two ways in Redtail to create lists and each option offers its own distinct advantages.
• How To Use Redtail CRM for Marketing [35:26] – This webinar covers some of the tools available within Redtail that can assist you with your marketing/holiday efforts, ranging from client segmentation methods to blast emails to your selected groups.

• Best Practice Partner Webinar – AdvisorStream [34:04]
• Best Practice Partner Spotlight – FMeX [29:43]
• Best Practice Partner Spotlight: FMG Suite [43:37]
• Best Practice Partner Webinar – Lead Pilot [21:21]
• New Partner Spotlight: Levitate [32:08]
• New Partner Spotlight: Snappy Kraken [23:01]

FAQ

Below are some of the most common questions we receive about holiday marketing, as reported by members of our Support Team.

How do I make one mail merge template and use it on one Quicklist or Tag Group for married as well as single people?

This is one of the most common questions we receive about mail merges, and the process for setting up a mail merge template to accomplish this is pretty straightforward. See a write-up explaining the process here.

I haven’t assigned Family Names to single individuals in my database. Now, when I run mail merges where the Family Name merge field is included and single individuals are a part of my list, I’m not sure what to do.

You have two options here:

1. From your advanced search page where you have your list for your mail merge pulled up, run this search to locate all individuals in your list without a Family Name entered:
   If you have time, you could then go through and add Family Names for those single individuals. Read more about Family Names and how to use them here.
2. Alternatively, run the search above and use a different mail merge template without a Family Name field included for those single individuals.

I’ve heard I can use Tag Groups, Quicklists, Keywords, and/or User Defined Fields as tools for client segmentation, but I don’t really understand how all of these work. Can you explain the difference?

What distinguishes Tag Groups from QuickLists is that the process of adding contacts to or removing contacts from a Tag Group is manual.  Contacts in your Tag Groups, in other words, are handpicked by you to be in that particular group and are static unless you add or remove contacts. Quicklists, on the other hand, are saved searches, and hence dynamic, since the search parameters you’ve used to establish a Quicklist can produce different search results as contact data is updated.

You can read what distinguishes Keywords and User Defined Fields here. While their uses are a little different, it’s important to remember that contacts can be sent to Advanced Search based upon their Keyword or UDF values, which means you can then take further group actions, such as a mail merge, based upon groups that share a Keyword or a UDF.

Our Support Team is always happy to help you troubleshoot this or any other questions you may have about marketing or holiday resources within Redtail.

The Redtail Calendar allows you to stay on top of the schedules of everyone in your office. With customizable views and color coding for activity types, you’re able to set up default views for your calendar; you can also override those default views easily when a different view is necessary. Additionally, you can sync your Redtail Calendar to other popular platforms as well as access it via your mobile devices.

Because your Calendar is so important to the success of your business, we have a significant amount of documentation and video help at your disposal 24-7. We’re including links to all of that here, along with a brief description where necessary of what you’ll find at each link.

Additionally, following these links we offer a FAQ for Redtail Activity Management. Initially, we are seeding this with a handful of the most common questions our Redtail Support team receives about activities and the calendar, but we will continue to add to this FAQ over time.

We hope this resource on Activity Management in Redtail will prove useful to you in your efforts to stay on top of your Calendar.

Documentation Links

The Basics

• Activity Management – offers a broad overview of activity management and your Redtail calendar
• Calendar – a more detailed look at using and navigating your Redtail calendar
• How do I add an Activity in Redtail?  – a detailed walkthrough of all of the fields available to you when adding an activity in Redtail
• Using The Quick Add Option – Here’s a look at your quickest method for initiating activity creation, either from a template or from scratch.
• Manage Your Account: Activity Templates – You can set up Activity Templates within Redtail, allowing you to pre-define many of the default field values as well as any formulaic descriptive text for types of activities that are typically handled in a similar manner.
• Activity Privacy Options – You have the ability to restrict access to an Activity to yourself, to a Team or to the Activity’s User Attendees only.
• How Do I Set Up Repeating Activities? – When creating activities within your database, you will most likely want to establish some of them as repeating activities (e.g. weekly meetings, regularly scheduled appointments, etc.).
• How Do I Delete Repeating Activities? –  Sometimes you may need to delete a single instance of a repeating activity – sometimes you may need to delete the entire series. This post covers each scenario.
• How Do I Delete Multiple Activities From The Calendar? – This post highlights the easiest method for deleting activities in bulk.
• How Do I Assign Activities To Other Database Users? -One of the great things about Redtail CRM is that with a single subscription you are allowed to add up to 15 database users. What this means in terms of scheduling tasks, meetings, phone calls, etc., is that anyone who is a database user can create, monitor and follow up on activities that they create for another database user.
• How Do I Reassign Activities From One Database User To Another? – At times you may have the need to reassign an activity or activities from one database user to another.
• Add An Activity To Contact Records In Bulk – Learn how to add identical activities for multiple contacts at one time.
• How Do I View All Of My Past Due Activities? – quickly access all of your past due activities from one place
• How Can I View Or Restore Completed Activities? – quickly view and/or restore a contact’s completed activity
• How Do I Restore Activities That Have Been Marked Complete? – an alternative to the above, when an activity was not linked to a contact
• How Do I Link A Document To An Activity? – If you need to link a document to an activity, learn how here.
• How Do I Link An Activity To A Specific Account For A Contact? – You can also link a client’s accounts to an activity. This post details that process.
• I Need Different Colors For My Activities. Does Redtail Allow You To Color Code Calendar? – It does – learn how here!
• Today — Activities – working with activities from your dashboard in Redtail
• Today – Things To Do Today – view and work with your day’s activities from your dashboard in Redtail
• Today — Reminders – You can access all of your different Reminder types from your dashboard. You also have an option from your Actions menu for each reminder to add activities based off of the reminder.
• Contact Overview Menu: Activities – You’ll see an “Activities” link when you have the “Contact” area of the Left Menu Bar expanded when within a contact record. This link is associated with activities attached to the contact in question.
• Contact Overview — Activities And Notes – This area on a contact’s overview page allows you to see all Past Due activities and activities coming up in the next 30 days for the contact.
• Alerts – Alerts provide you with a visual cue of upcoming activities you have scheduled.
• Timeline Events – From your dashboard you can see your database’s number of recent Timeline updates (which links to the main Timeline, showing the past 30 days’ updates, including activities)
• Change Site Preferences: Calendar Management – detailed information on how to set all of your default preferences for your Redtail calendar
• Change Site Preferences: Notification Options – detailed information on how to set up your default notifications, including those for activities and alerts
• Change Site Preferences: Activity Management – Activity Management preferences all apply to the creation of activities in Redtail.
• Can I Add Additional Activity Types To My Database? – If the default Types for activities don’t meet your needs, you can always add more within your database.
• How Do I Add New Activity, Note, Workflow, Or Document Categories To My Database? – If the default Categories for activities don’t meet your needs, you can always add more within your database.
• Can I Import Activities From An Excel Spreadsheet Into The CRM? – You can, and our Welcome Team is happy to help. Learn more here.
• Redtail Mobile 3.0 (For iOS) – You can view, add, edit, and/or complete activities in Redtail’s free mobile app. You can learn more about that in our mobile documentation for iOS here.
• Redtail Mobile 3.0 (For Android) – You can view, add, edit, and/or complete activities in Redtail’s free mobile app. You can learn more about that in our mobile documentation for Android here.
• Retriever Cloud For Office 365 – Retriever Cloud allows you to sync your Activity and Contact data between Redtail CRM and Office 365.
• Retriever Cloud FAQ For Office 365
• Retriever Cloud For Office 365 And Redtail Hosted Email – For users who have Redtail-hosted Email that want to use Retriever Cloud for Office 365, there are two different routes to take, depending on your end goal.
• Retriever Cloud For Google – Retriever Cloud allows you to sync your Activity and Contact data between Redtail CRM and Google.
• Retriever Cloud FAQ For Google
• Retriever Cloud For Microsoft Exchange Users – If you have Hosted Microsoft Exchange (Exchange Online or a hybrid deployment),Retriever Cloud can be used to sync in this situation.
• How To Use The Retriever Cloud – Office 365 Connection To Sync Between Redtail And Calendly -Calendly works with your calendar to automatically check availability and help you connect with your best contacts, prospects and clients. We do not have a direct integration with Calendly, but through the use of our Retriever Cloud-Office 365 integration, we can connect our platforms!
• How To Use The Retriever Cloud – Google Connection To Sync Between Redtail And Calendly -Calendly works with your calendar to automatically check availability and help you connect with your best contacts, prospects and clients. We do not have a direct integration with Calendly, but through the use of our Retriever Cloud-Google integration, we can connect our platforms!
• Download And Usage Of Retriever For Tailwag -Retriever for Tailwag is a synchronization application built using the Microsoft .NET Framework. The application allows you to synchronize your Contacts and Calendar Activities between Redtail CRM and a locally installed version (Non Click-to-run) of Microsoft Outlook.
• What Information Will Retriever For Tailwag Sync To Outlook?  – see which activity fields sync between Redtail and Outlook using this tool.
• What Is iCal? – iCal offers an alternative method of syncing Calendar data from Redtail to other solutions. Learn more here.
• How Can I Sync Redtail With My ICal Program? – Learn how to set up the iCal feed from Redtail to your iCal program.

Reports

• Standard Activity Reports – The Standard Activity Reports available in Redtail offer you several different ways of looking at your Activity data within Redtail CRM.
• Documents By Activity Report– Documents can be attached to activities. This provides a reporting option for any activities with associated documents.
• Contacts With No Upcoming Activities Report – The Contacts with No Upcoming Activities Report allows you to run a report for contacts that don’t have any scheduled activities within a selected date range.
• No Contact Report (No Notes Or Completed Activities) – The No Contact Report allows you to see which contacts you have not entered a Note for or completed an Activity for in a specified amount of days.

Sample Templates and “How to Handle” scenarios we’ve put together that make use of Redtail activities

• Sample Activity Templates – You can use any of the sample activity templates we provide here as a starting point for building your own activity templates!
• How to Handle Canceled Appointments – It happens too often; your office takes the time to schedule a client appointment just to have them cancel or not show up. Rather than deleting the activity or adjusting the activity for the new or rescheduled meeting, we recommend tracking those cancellations. By using a cancellation process, offices can see where the issues may be coming from. Is it your process or do you have a few frequent offenders?
• How to Handle Client Reviews  – Redtail can help you execute client reviews efficiently and consistently. Use this playlist on tools and concepts to guide you to a better understanding of how to tackle them in your office! Note that this is just one common way to manage client reviews within Redtail; many offices adapt the process to their own preferences by using a different variation of features.
• How to Handle Client Onboarding – Congratulations! You’ve just added a new client to your book of business. There is a lot to be done to get your client up and going with your practice. Redtail provides a number of tools to make this transition as efficient as possible.
• How to Handle Scheduling Appointments – Client reviews aren’t the only time that your office meets with clients. In fact, depending on your sales process, there can be many different types of appointments that are held with prospective clients or clients. Consistently inputting activity information directly results in reporting capabilities.
• How to Handle Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI) – With the rollout of Regulation Best Interest (or “Reg BI”), it may feel overwhelming navigating through all of the new requirements. As with any situation that involves compliance or auditing, it’s always best to have a process in place. Knowing where to start and what is available to assist in tracking information is always a tricky part of such processes. Redtail has some general recommendations involving new and existing CRM tools for storing your client communication regarding Reg BI.
• How to Handle a Style Guide – In an advisory business, numerous processes are happening at the same time. With multiple people, tasks, steps, and other items all ongoing at once, it is important for everyone to be on the same page. This is especially important in offices experiencing growth or employee departure, and in offices where employees may “wear many hats”. Building a style guide will get everyone on the same page when it comes to segmenting contacts within the CRM. Redtail recommends starting outside the CRM to find labels and pieces of information that are important to your office so the data can be input with a purpose. Creating a contact and effectively labeling them will allow for later reporting and searching.
• How to Handle Client Events – Part of the client experience includes providing world-class events for your exclusive clientele. Redtail CRM tracks events from start to finish, keeping all information about leads, prospects, and clients in one central hub.
• How to Handle Employee Departure – Employee departures may be either incredibly frustrating or for the best. Either way, these are the steps you’ll need to take to remove your ex-employee’s access to the CRM and reassign their responsibilities.

Video / Recorded Webinar Links

• Redtail Essentials: Activities [35:24] – Scheduling errors are a common mistake that can negatively affect your clients’ experiences. That’s why it’s important that your office take advantage of tracking those to-dos as Activities. By using Activities, you can easily stay on top of your Calendar while also allowing other staff members to see your schedule at a glance.
• Redtail Essentials: Calendar [26:44] – Do you wish your office was more focused on task collaboration? Do you find that tasks are getting skipped or that appointments are being missed? It could be that you don’t have a central location for all staff to check. That’s why it’s important that your office use a calendar that allows everyone to see quickly what others in the office have scheduled as well as giving them the ability to assign calendar items to others.
• Redtail Essentials: Retriever Cloud With Office 365 [29:12] – Retriever Cloud is a feature within Redtail CRM which offers true two-way syncing of contacts and activities between Redtail CRM and Office 365. This webinar will show you how you can set up and begin using Retriever Cloud to eliminate redundant data entry and/or scheduling between these two platforms.
• Redtail Essentials: Retriever Cloud With Google [28:18] – Retriever Cloud is a feature within Redtail CRM that offers true two-way syncing of contacts and activities between Redtail and Google. Join us for this webinar session where we’ll show you how you can set up and begin using Retriever Cloud to eliminate redundant data entry and/or scheduling between these two platforms.
• Calendar Syncing Series – Part 1 [40:53] – We often hear advisors say their lives are run through their calendars, and, because Redtail is designed to be the beating heart of your business, that makes the Redtail calendar an integral tool in your day-to-day operations. The modern advisor, however, may need access to that calendar across a variety of platforms, depending on their purpose. For Part 1 of our two-part series, we focus on the different ways Redtail has made it possible to sync your calendar, be it to your desktop Outlook, Outlook 365, your Google Calendar, etc.! We’ll also focus on a number of unique benefits that come with using each method and which syncing abilities might best fit your office.
• Calendar Syncing Series – Part 2 [42:55] – For Part 2 of our two-part series, we shifted our focus toward many of the independent scheduling tools that exist outside of Redtail, as well the different ways you can use them to better provide accurate availability to your clients.
• Syncing Your Data With Redtail CRM [21:21] – Join us as we cover how you can go about syncing your contacts and calendar information between Redtail CRM and other products, including Outlook, Office 365, Google, and other integrations.

FAQ

As mentioned above, the initial version of this FAQ will only include the most common questions we receive about Activities and Calendar Management, as reported by members of our Support Team. That said, we’ll expand on the number of questions here over time.

Can I color code Activities on the Calendar by advisor or database user rather than by Activity Type?
At this time, colors can only be assigned to Activity Types. That said, we can recommend a workaround that will allow you to color code by database user. To do so, create individual Activity Types for each user and then you would be able to color code those as you would like.For example, let’s say you have two advisors, Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Lethem, and you’d like to color code their individual appointments, phone calls, and client reviews specific colors. To do so, you would:

Add the following new Activity Types:

Appointment – Margaret Atwood

Appointment – Jonathan Lethem

Phone Call – Margaret Atwood

Phone Call – Jonathan Lethem

Client Review – Margaret Atwood

Client Review- Jonathan Lethem

For more information on adding new Activity Types, see this help documentation.

Then, go to your Calendar, click the Actions menu, and select Change Colors. You can then designate the colors you’d like for each of these six new Activity Types.

Details on how to change Activity Type colors are available in this help documentation.

After establishing these new Activity Types and assigning them a color, going forward you would just need to make sure that everyone using your database knows the appropriate Activity Type to select for each of these.

What is the best way to print Activities in order that all or most of the information associated with the Activity will be included?
You have several options here. First, if you want to print an individual activity for a contact, you can do so from the Activities and Notes area of their Contact Overview. Just click the Actions button for the activity and select Print:
If you would like to print multiple activities, you can do so from the Activities by Contact report. To access the Activities by Contact Report, click the Reports option from your left menu bar to see all of the available standard reports within your database. On the resulting page, your Activities by Contact Report is accessible within the Activity Reports section. After clicking Activities By Contact, your report will open. From there, you can use the Filter button to narrow down your search to the activities you want to print. Then, click the “export” button to download the activities in csv format (which you can print) or the “pdf” button to download a pdf file suitable for printing.

How do I set up a recurring activity to repeat on a quarterly basis?
To demonstrate, let’s say you want to set up a repeating activity that occurs quarterly on the 16th of the months in which it repeats. And, let’s say that begins on October 16th. The below example displays the setup for this:
The important fields in our example in regard to establishing the activity’s recurrence are:
Start Date: in this case, 10/16/2020
Recurrence: Custom
Repeat every: 3
Unit of measurement: month(s)
Repeat Ends: never
Repeat on: Monthly on day 16

You have multiple options to select from in each of these fields, but that’s a quick look at setting up an activity that repeats on a quarterly basis. You can see a lot more detail on your options for setting up repeating activities here.

Our Support Team is always happy to help you troubleshoot this or any other questions you may have about your activities or calendar.

While Workflows may not be the Redtail CRM tool that most new subscribers begin using right out of the gate, they are one of the tools we make available that can have the greatest impact on your office’s productivity and efficiency levels.

That said, they can have a lot of variability in regard to their complexity and purpose. Workflows can be set up for simple, straightforward checklist-like processes or they can involve multiple steps with multiple tasks and outcomes. They can be attached to contacts, seminars, or opportunities. They can be triggered by automations, set up as templates, and cloned as desired to save time when establishing digitized versions of similar processes.

In the end, with your workflows mapped out in Redtail, whether a process is routine or is performed only occasionally, there will be no question about the steps involved or about which team member or members are responsible for each component of a given process.

Because Workflows are so heavily utilized by Redtail subscribers, we have a significant amount of documentation and video help at your disposal 24-7. We’re including links to all of that here, along with a brief description in some cases of what you’ll find at each link.

Additionally, following these links we offer a FAQ for Redtail Workflows. Initially, we are seeding this with a handful of the most common questions our Redtail Support team receives about workflows, but we will continue to add to this FAQ over time.

We hope this resource on Workflows will prove useful to you in your efforts to digitize your processes and achieve greater office efficiencies.

Documentation Links

The Basics

• How Do I Set Up Workflow Processes In Redtail? – A step-by-step walkthrough of the process for creating workflow templates in Redtail
• How Do I Clone Workflow Templates? – Sometimes you’ll have processes that are very similar to one another. The ability to clone an existing workflow template and then make any necessary edits for your new process can often be a huge timesaver, particularly for lengthier, more complex workflow processes. This doc explains the process for cloning a workflow template.
• Attach Workflows To Your Contacts In Bulk – For a process that involves more than one contact in your database.
• Workflows – You have a “Workflows” link in your left menu bar in Redtail. This post details where this link takes you, which is, by default, a listing of your active workflows in Redtail. The post goes on to outline all of your available actions from this page.
• Contact Overview Menu: Workflows – You’ll see another “Workflows” link when you have the “Contact” area of the Left Menu Bar expanded when within a contact record. This link is associated with workflows attached to the contact in question.
• Contact Overview: Open Workflow Tasks – Open tasks for any workflows attached to a contact show up within the Open Workflow Tasks area of their Contact Overview.
• Today – Workflow Tasks To Do Today – On your Today page, which is the default screen after logging into Redtail, you have an area that displays your workflow tasks that are due today. This post goes over this section in detail.
• Today — Reminders – This is an area where you can view your Workflow Task Reminders in the context of other Reminders you might have coming up.
• Change Site Preferences: Calendar Management – You can also set Workflow Tasks to display on your main Calendar by default. Learn how here.
• Change Site Preferences: Notification Options – Learn how to control which notifications you receive in regard to workflows.
• Change Site Preferences: Contact Record Options – Workflow Step notes and workflow summaries can be displayed by default on a contact’s Notes page – learn how to set that default here.
• Using The Quick Add Option – Here’s a look at your quickest method for initiating workflow creation, either from a template or from scratch.
• Seminar Management – While this document is primarily focused on the Seminars tool in Redtail, it does cover how you go about linking a workflow to one of your seminars.
• How Do I Add New Activity, Note, Workflow, Or Document Categories To My Database? – If the default Categories for workflows don’t meet your needs, you can always add more within your database.
• Manage Your Account: Automations – Automations used in tandem with Workflows can boost your productivity significantly. Learn more about how to create automations here, and how triggering events in an automation can be set up to automatically attach a workflow process to a contact.
• Redtail Mobile 3.0 (For iOS) – You can view Workflows in Redtail’s free mobile app, and you can view, edit, or complete any Workflow Tasks assigned to you from within the app as well. You can learn more about that in our mobile documentation for iOS here.
• Redtail Mobile 3.0 (For Android) – You can view Workflows in Redtail’s free mobile app, and you can view, edit, or complete any Workflow Tasks assigned to you from within the app as well. You can learn more about that in our mobile documentation for Android here.

Reports

• Standard Workflow Reports – A Workflow Report and a Workflow Tasks Report are available in Redtail. Learn more about each here.
• Seminar Workflow Tasks Report – Workflows can be attached to seminars. This provides a reporting option for any tasks associated with those specific workflows.

Sample Templates and Workflow Copies

• Sample Workflow Templates – You can use any of the sample workflow templates we provide here as a starting point for building your own templates!
• Sample Automation Templates – As we mentioned above, you can create further efficiencies by combining the use of workflows with the use of automations. We’ve provided here a few sample automation templates that include workflows for your consideration.
• Loring Ward (Workflows) – Redtail has partnered with Loring Ward to provide some basic workflows that can be copied from a database managed by Loring Ward to anyone that asks for “Loring Ward Workflows”. Learn more here.

Video / Recorded Webinar Links

• Redtail Essentials: Workflows [31:51]
• Workflow Series – this four-part series covers conceptualizing and whiteboarding workflows, building them within Redtail, the live application of workflows, and other complementary tools, including automations.
• Workflow Workshop W/ AdvisorTouch (Formerly Fox Financial), May 2018 Series – this is a two-part series that focused on using Redtail automations with workflows to enhance productivity and on building your own workflow automations.
• Practical Application Of Office Procedures Through Redtail Workflows With Kate Guillen [43:13] – led by industry consultant Kate Guillen, the founder of Simplicity Operations Management, this webinar shares best practices for applying Redtail workflows from Kate’s knowledgeable experience.
• Practice Management Spotlight: Strategies For Improving Workflow Functionality With Adam Cmejla [58:39] -Adam Cmejla, CFP®, founder of Integrated Consulting & Advisory Solutions, shares his insights on taking your existing workflows and supercharging them using other tools and strategies.
• Launching & Completing A Well-Constructed Workflow Presented By AdvisorTouch (Formerly Fox Financial Planning Network [49:18] – this was a live demo of launching and completing a well-constructed Redtail workflow.
• Practice Management Spotlight Featuring Jeff Rose [50:59] – Jeff has had considerable success, both as an advisor and as a financial services blogger, all while operating out of southern Illinois rather than one of the big coastal cities or major financial hubs. His approach to Redtail workflows is one of the topics covered in this recorded webinar.
• Business Development Series – In part two of this three-part series, applying workflows and automations to sales processes is covered.
• Using Redtail Speak And NexGen Workflows – AdvisorTouch (Formerly Fox Financial Planning Network) [43:11] – this webinar includes information on the first ever NexGen workflow library.

FAQ

As mentioned above, the initial version of this FAQ will only include the most common questions we receive about Workflows, as reported by members of our Support Team. That said, we’ll expand on the number of questions here over time.

• Can I un-complete a completed workflow step?
  Workflow steps cannot be un-completed once marked as complete. Only workflow tasks can be undone (up until the point the step they are a part of is completed). However, if it is a multi-step workflow and the completed step was not the final step (which would close out the workflow), then you can use the outcomes feature to backtrack and accomplish what you are looking to do. This will take several steps (which we’ll outline below), so if you are not concerned with the timestamps on the workflow, you may want to instead just delete/re-add the workflow and complete the steps/tasks up to the point at which you originally meant to stop. If the timestamps are important to the process though, here is what you’d need to do:
  —Click the dropdown for the step after the one you completed by accident and select “Add Outcome”:— You’ll see the following dialog box. Give your outcome whatever name you want and then select the previous step for the “Next Step” field (“Set up client meeting” would be the previous step in our example):— Complete the step you just added the outcome for (Step B). When given the option, select your outcome from the “Step Outcome” field. This will reopen the previous step:— Go back into the drop down menu for the step you just completed (Step B). You will want to select “View Outcomes” and then remove the outcome you just added for this step. This ensures that when you complete the step for real it doesn’t direct you back to the previous step again:— The final thing you’ll want to do is to set an outcome for the step you just reopened (“Set up client meeting”, in our example). You’ll want this outcome to take you to the next step in your workflow (“Step B”, in our example) so that the workflow redirects you to that step. This allows you to reactivate that step, clearing out the completion timestamp that was added when you used it to redirect to the previous step.
• Can I link a document to a workflow?
  This functionality is not currently available in Redtail CRM. If you’d like to receive an email notification if/when it is introduced, you can send an email to support@redtailtechnology.com inquiring about this capability, at which point your email address will be added to the notification list.
• Why can’t I complete a workflow?
  Typically if you encounter this situation, it has something to do with the outcomes you’ve established (or haven’t established) for your steps on the workflow. If you review those, you’ll likely find the issue. That said, our Support Team is always happy to help you troubleshoot this or any other questions you may have about your workflows.