When any Federation Starship gets in trouble they often resort to using a predefined set of evasive maneuvers. This always struck me as odd since I always thought the whole point of evasion was to be spontaneous. One of the first things I did on the new job was create Engagement Templates for Major Giving. This seemed to be a better use of a predefined plan of engagement.
There are two challenges as I see it for passing the NPSP consulting exam:
No legitimate practice exams, i.e., nothing from Focus On Force. I won’t use exam dumps.
The wrong hands on experience. NPSP has a base functionality which the exam will test. Working for a consulting partner, I will be part of building custom functionality and I will need to distinguish between what is on the test and what is stuff we built.
To address both of these, I am going to blog about stuff I build and try to focus on the base functionality and avoid talking about the custom stuff. In the case of Engagement plans we did not build anything so this will be easy. Blogging will help reinforce my understanding.
To address the first item I am going to think about practice exam questions. Note at the time of this writing I have not taken the exam so any potential questions are my own and I will try to not structure my questions similar to the exam questions. Specifically, I won’t create scenario based questions and will focus on content only. I’ll list the questions at the end and create a Quizlet which I will also share at the end.
For my purposes I am going to break the engagement plan into two portions, header and line. I don’t think they are called that but it will help me understand what I am doing. For more detail check out this link; I’ve taken my material straight from here. The header section is the name/description of the engagement plan and has three key components:
Default assignee - The engagement plan is a series of tasks. If a Task doesn't have a named Assignee (owner), this setting determines who is assigned the Task by default (Salesforce requires that all Tasks be assigned to a user). You can select either the User Creating Engagement Plan or the Owner of the Record that the Engagement Plan is associated with.
Skip weekends - If checked, due dates are automatically adjusted for weekends. For example, a Task completed on a Friday has a follow up Task two days later. Instead of having a due date of Sunday, that Task would be due the following Tuesday.
Reschedule to - Should Tasks with Due Dates on a weekend day be scheduled for the Friday before the weekend or the Monday after? This applies only if Skip Weekend is selected. Interestingly, the documentation says - This is used only in conjunction with Skip Weekends. This would be typically be set to Monday, but if your organization is closed on Mondays, you could select Tuesday. However, there doesn’t appear to be an option to select anything other than Monday or Friday.
Automatically update child tasks - If selected, dependent tasks will start based on their parent task completion.
The line portion of the engagement plan is pretty straightforward. This is where you set up the tasks and dependent tasks. Pro-tip: Save often. If you make a mistake you can’t delete the task until you save it and if there is a blank task it won’t let you save. Additionally, you can’t really rearrange the tasks once they are complete.
As far as questions go here’s what I am thinking (taken from the above link and here:
(Also this is the Quizlet I am creating)
Q: What day can you reschedule a task to?
A: Friday before the weekend or the Monday after.
Q: What happens to a task that doesn’t have an owner?
A: It gets assigned to the default owner.
Q: Who are the default owners?
A: User Creating Engagement Plan or the Owner of the Record that the Engagement Plan is associated with.
Q: How do you create a dependent task?
A: Click the add a dependent task.
Q: What’s the difference between a reminder and an email
A: A reminder is a typical task reminder while an email is an email. You can both or one
Q: What happens if you try to connect an Engagement Plan to multiple records at the same time, such as Opportunity and Contact
A: You'll get an error message.
Q: How are engagement plans kicked off?
A: Engagement plans can be kicked-off manually by a development officer or automatically when used in conjunction with Levels.
Q: How is the reminder time stored?
A: The reminder time is stored as a number representing "minutes after midnight." For example, a reminder time of "600" translates to 10 am.
Q: What happens to changes in Engagement Plans created from templates when the templates are changed?
A:Changes to the Template are not reflected in Engagement Plans created from the Template that are already assigned to records.
Q: What happens when you delete an engagement plan?
A: When you delete an Engagement Plan, the underlying tasks still exist, but task automation is not enforced for dependent tasks (dependent tasks won't be updated or assigned based on parent task completion).
Q: What happens when you complete a dependent task?
A: When you complete a Task with a dependent Task, the dependent Task's status is automatically updated from Waiting on Dependent Task to Not Started.
Q: What happens when you complete a single Task?
A: The Status on the Engagement Plan updates from Not Started to In Progress.
Q What happens when the last task is completed?
A: When the last Task is completed, the Status on the Engagement Plan is updated to Complete.
Q: The NPSP Engagement Plans uses what objects?
A: Engagement Plan Template, Engagement Plan, and Engagement Plan Task
Q What does the Engagement Plan Template object do?
A: Defines the process and associated set of tasks required to complete an Engagement Plan.
Q: What does the Engagement Plan object do?
A: It is a set of tasks that helps you engage with your constituents.
Q: What does the Engagement Plan Task object do?
A: Defines the details of each task that is created when applying an Engagement Plan to a record.
