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Start an activity
Create an activity to provide a place for the people involved in a project to share information, to assign tasks, and to share resources such as tools, Web sites, and files.
No special access is needed to create an activity. If you have access to the Activities server, you can create an activity.You cannot use this procedure to create a community activity. You can only create a community activity from the Communities feature. See Creating a community activity in the Communities Help for more information.
Create an activity is easy: just click a button and fill out a form. There are no required fields. You can edit the activity later to add or change information.
To start an activity...
- From the My Activities view, click Start an Activity.
If you have an activity open, you do not see the Start an Activity button in the navigation pane. Click the Activities tab to exit the open activity first.
- In the Title field, type a short name that describes the purpose of the activity, for example, a project name.
The activity name is displayed in the subject of the notification sent to the people you add to the activity as members.
If you do not provide a name, the activity is given the name Untitled. You can give it a name later by editing the activity.
- In the Activity goal field, add a description of the activity. Provide a sentence or two that summarizes the goal of the activity, its audience, or the type of content that you want members to add to it.
Provide enough information about the goal to help members distinguish among activities with similar names. The information in this field is searchable and is displayed in the notification message that members receive when they are invited to join the activity. You can format the text of the description using the toolbar.
- In the Tags field, type a tag term. As you type, a list of matching tags from the tag collection is displayed. Click a tag to add it, or keep typing to add a tag that is not in the list. Separate multiple tags with commas.
A tag is a single-word label or keyword that you assign to an activity to categorize it. After the activity is saved, the tag is added to the tag collection. Later, you can use the tag to find this activity by clicking the tag from the tag cloud or tag list. Not only is this activity returned in the resulting list, but any similarly tagged activities are included also, thus helping you to discover related content. Keep in mind that the tag collection is composed of tags that are created by you and your colleagues; if no one has created any tags yet, you do not see a list of matching tags as you type into this field.
- In the Due date field, add a date by which this activity must be completed. Either type the date or choose the date from the calendar control.
- Add members to the activity by adding a person or group to the field labeled with the appropriate role.
To add a member, expand Member options. To add a member to a role other than the default role of Author, click the down-arrow next to the Author field, and then select Owner or Reader. The access level options are defined as follows:
- Author. Can view content and add entries.
- Owner. Can add content and can view and edit all entries. As the activity creator, you are automatically added to it as an owner.
- Reader. Cannot contribute to an activity; access is restricted to only viewing content.
Begin typing the group or person's name or e-mail address into the second field. As you type, a list of matching names is displayed. Click a name in the list to add that person.
Repeat this step to add additional members.
- To create the activity from a template, perform the following steps.
A template captures the tasks required to complete a specific job. For example, a patent template might link to the files, databases, tools, or Web sites that an inventor seeking a patent would need. It might also capture a list of to-do items that an inventor would need to complete as part of the patent application process.
- Expand Template options.
- Click Pick an Activity Template, and then select a template from the list. You can type a template name into the field to narrow down the list. When you select a template, a description of the template is displayed. If you choose not to use a template, select None from the list.
- To seed the member list with the members defined in the template, select Use members from template.
- Click Save to finish creating the activity. After the activity is created, the server sends an e-mail message or a notification to the Updates tab of the Home page feature to notify the people that you added as members about the activity.
You can now add entries to the activity.
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