Over the years, I’ve seen Tap Forms used to track and organize more kinds of projects than I ever imagined. Users of all backgrounds and skill levels have asked for help when building my any kinds of forms. I’ve helped where I can, of course, and now I want to take that one step further here on the blog.
Today I’m launching a new series called Tap Forms Projects. With these posts, I’ll explore step-by-step how to create forms for various uses and industries. Your requests and feedback will help guide the topics and use cases I cover, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on Twitter @TapForms and directly at support@tapforms.com.
Relationship management
To kick off this series, I’ll start with a common request I’ve heard recently: how to build a CRM tool—as in, ‘Customer Relationship Management’—with Tap Forms. Perhaps contrary to the name, CRMs can be quite useful to nearly everyone. Business owners, sure, but also salespeople, hobbyists, students, researchers, and even just regular folks who want a separate place for business contacts.
CRMs are immensely useful to organize people and businesses you interact with, and (optionally) keep a log of those interactions. One advantage is that they offer features beyond a simple contacts app, and Tap Forms is no exception.
Over the next few posts in this series, I’ll work through the process of creating a CRM in Tap Forms. This will include determining a goal and criteria, how to customize a CRM for your needs, and ultimately using it in the real world.
A head start
A great way to hit the ground running with a Tap Forms CRM is to start with one of my built-in form templates, called Clients. It contains many popular CRM fields and is even pre-populated with a few contacts for tinkering.
To get your own copy of my Clients template on the Mac version:
- Open Tap Forms, then select the Sample Forms document (if you don't see it in the document picker, download it here)
- At the top of the left sidebar, make sure All Forms is selected
- Click the Clients form under the Business heading
- Export this form as a Tap Forms Archive and save it for later
Next, let’s import that template into one of your documents.
- Either open one of your existing Tap Forms documents or create a new one
- Import the Tap Forms Archive you saved earlier
Now you have the beginnings of your very own CRM. You may notice that another form was also imported, called Client Call Log. I recommend leaving it alone for the time being; we’ll get to it in a later post.
What matters
The next step is to think about your needs for a CRM—who and what do you want to track? Do you work with customers or clients? Maybe you’re researching a project that involves a lot of people, interviews, and details. Or perhaps you want a private place to store sensitive contacts like doctors, a therapist, and so on.
The template we’re starting with has fields for many common details like personal and company names, location, and contact details, as well as notes, storing documents, and the call log previously mentioned.
Feel free to explore customizing your CRM fields to organize the details that are important to you. Moving forward in this series, we'll still use a good number of the fields already present, so keep that in mind.
Sample template
You can download a sample template from the Template Exchange forum here: https://www.tapforms.com/forums/topic/introducing-tap-forms-projects/
Next time
This is a good start on our CRM for now. In the next part of this series, we’ll explore how track things like notes, calls with other people, and ongoing research. You’ll also learn how to link forms together to see these ongoing entries alongside contact details.
Click here to Read Part Two.
If you have thoughts or requests for this series, or similar series down the road, reach out on Twitter @TapForms or via support@tapforms.com.
Tags: Tap Forms Projects