You can see your entire relationship with a contact using the Timeline. Also in the timeline screen you have the ability to add notes, schedule calls and meetings, review orders and track time.

To view your company timeline

Click "Contacts" then "Timeline" from the ribbon menu. This shows you all notes, orders and financial updates across the company, which you can filter in the usual way by clicking a black link to view all actions by a certain staff member, or perhaps all actions for a particular event or order.

To view a contact's timeline

There are a number of ways to visit the timeline for a contact:

1. View the company timeline then click a contact name
2. Search for a contact using the quick search box at the top of the screen then click the timeline icon
3. Click the timeline icon wherever you see it in orders, accounts etc

Changing the timeline view

The timeline loads with everything visible. You can restrict the view so that you're only looking at one type of entry (just orders, perhaps) using the tickboxes at the top of the screen. You can change the timescale that's shown using the drop down menu at the top right of the screen.

Each of the actions in the timeline are colour coded so that you can clearly see what's going on.

What else shows in the timeline?

On the right of the screen you'll see the contact details - their phone number, email address and so on.

Activities

This box will appear on the right if there are any open activities that include this contact. You can view the activity detail in a new window by clicking the "open in new window" link. To create a new activity, click the "add activity" link just underneath the contact name.

Orders

All open orders for this contact will be shown in a box underneath the Activities box. If an order has been invoiced then it won't show in here.

Tags

You can check to see what tags have been assigned to this contact - and soon you'll be able to add and remove tags from within the timeline too.

Other information

This box contains contact details that you might wish to change during a conversation with the contact. Typically you'd want to define a lead source and perhaps a manager for the contact, or visit their website to do a bit of background reading.

Company

This is a useful box that shows all the other people in this contact's company. Click "view all" to see everyone's notes, emails and so on all in the same timeline. If you're in company view, then any notes you add will be added to the primary contact at that company.

Time spent

If you've switched time billing on for your account, you'll see the total time spent with this contact during the time span chosen at the top right of the screen.

Adding and editing notes

Pearl will add some notes automatically; for example when an invoice is sent by email to a contact, a note will be added to the contact's notes trail. Waiting for payment is an example of a bad note; the information is stored elsewhere in the system, and another note will need to be manually added when payment is made to prevent misunderstandings. “Customer visited office to talk about progress. See minutes file” would be an example of a good note. Notes are automatically tagged with the current date and the administrator name.

Using QuickNotes

Wherever you see a box for entering notes in Pearl, you'll see a drop-down menu underneath it (not in Pearl Express) which allows you to have some "canned response" notes for quickly dropping in, saving time. Using QuickNotes is a great way to speed up your day to day workflows.

Editing notes

If you are the person that added a note, then you can edit the note text by clicking on it in the timeline. Note changes save automatically when you click "OK" - you don't need to save the page.

Managing time spent with a contact

If you've got time billing switched on then you'll see a timer underneath the notes. This is always counting when you have the timeline open, and is a great way to track the effort involved with clients, leads and customers. If you want to manually edit the time, then pause the timer and just type in the time box. It's HH:MM:SS. You can choose to tag the time to a job or activity too if you like, so if you're working on a project then the time can also appear in that project's reports.

Email integration

You can send an email to the contact by clicking the red email link on the right hand side (and also anywhere else in Pearl that you see a red email link). This will open a new window where you can drop in any pre-defined email templates, attach files and add other CC or BCC contacts.

If you leave the "Add email as note on timeline" box ticked, then the whole email will be added to the timeline - there's no need to copy the email to your dropbox.

You can see incoming emails in the timeline if you're using a dropbox - read more about the dropbox here.

You can edit the content of an email by clicking on the text - this is typically used to clean up large signatures and irrelevant content. The changes are saved as soon as you click OK - there's no need to save the timeline screen. You can also delete an email by clicking on the trach can that appears when you hover over the email. Once it's gone, it's gone, so be careful. You can of course forward the email back to your dropbox to get it to appear in the timeline again.