How can I show contacts that DO NOT have an activity of type X in last Y months?

Question

I'd like to be able to track which contacts details have been confirmed every so often. Every so often, we'll go through our contacts and confirm that their address, email address, phone numbers, etc are still accurate.

I'm thinking about using an activity type to accomplish this. I'd call it "Confirm contact details" or something and when I confirm that a contact's information is correct, I could create an activity on that contact. This would have let me know when the contact's information was last checked, and by who.

This would be ideal, except that I can't figure out how to generate a report showing only those contacts whose information hasn't been confirmed in so many months.

Is there a way to find contacts that do not have an activity of type "Confirm contact details" in the last Y months?

Answer 1

The process is slightly roundabout:

• Create a smart group that captures all contacts called "All Contacts".
• Create a second smart group consisting of people who have the activity type "Confirm Contact Details".
• Use the "Include/Exclude Search" (Search menu > Custom Searches) to include the first smart group and exclude the second smart group.

Once you've done this, you can save it as a smart group for one-step searches moving forward.

Answer 2

If you are using Drupal you could do this by sending out a checksum link to the webform, and in the webform settings have an Activity that will set to Completed when they submit the form. Then you can simply check in CiviCRM which contacts have an Activity that is Scheduled v Completed.

Otherwise, you could set up a custom CiviCRM profile and send out a checksum link to that profile, and in the Adv Settings of the Profile add anyone who submits the Profile to a specific Group. And then do as Jon suggests above.