Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Set up a contact log that works automatically

Keeping a contact log sounds good in theory, but seems like a lot of tedious work. This week’s tip, shared by hwebbjr, shows a simple way to set it up so it “catches” tasks automatically and keeps them handy for searching later.

As a school administrator, documentation is king. If one doesn’t have a record of an issue, problem resolution, or situation, the other party’s narrative has a lot more weight. One problem is parents who swear that you never called them back or dealt with an issue. So, I adapted RTM to be my contact log to document all conversations, meetings, and conferences. It starts off by creating a Smart List called Contact Log and uses this search query:

((name:call OR name:email OR name:meet OR name:meeting OR name:conference OR name:Conf OR tag:phone) AND status:completed AND completedAfter:6/30/17) NOT (name:confirm)

I begin all my contact tasks with “Call Mary re…” or “Meet w/ Tom re…” or “Conference w/ Jim”. This identifies a task as a contact. So, the query causes the list to look for completed tasks that contain the words “call”, “email”, “meet”, “conference”, or “conf”. For GTD'ers, it also looks for the “phone” context tag. The “completedAfter” search operator limits the search to my current school year, ignoring previous years’ records. Since I sometimes use the abbreviation “conf” instead of conference, I use the “NOT name:conf” segment to ignore all my tasks to “Confirm” something.

Finally, when I need to pull something out of my contact log, I simply search for:

name:[person's name] AND list:"Contact Log"

This pulls up all recorded contacts with that particular person and, since I put all my notes in the “Notes” fields, all details of the call, meeting, or email are there.

In addition of documenting important conversations or calls, it also makes me look VERY good with callers. When I receive a call and the person identifies themselves, I do a quick search to bring up any previous conversations I may have had with them. When they say, you may not remember me, but we talked briefly 6 months ago about my son’s math class. Immediately, I can join in and say, “I remember our conversation…” and then summarize our previous conversation. In people-related professions, that personal connection is golden!

Thanks for sharing this tip, hwebbjr! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we’ll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.