Plan and log activities
Log a call or meeting on a record, plan the next step with a due date, add notes as it goes, and mark it done.
Activities are how you keep track of what happened with a customer and what has to happen next. Log the call you just made, plan the meeting for Thursday, and the record shows at a glance whether anyone is following it up.
Activities or tasks?
Both are things to do, but they are not the same:
- An activity is light: a subject, who it is for, and when it is due. Use it for calls, meetings, emails and quick to-dos on a customer.
- A task is a piece of work with a status, a priority, subtasks and time tracking. It appears in My Tasks and projects. See Tasks overview.
On a record card, the Activity tab makes an activity and the Task tab makes a task.
Log an activity on a record
- Open the lead, deal, contact or company.
- In the box at the top right, click Activity.
- Choose Call, Meeting or Note.
- Type what it is about in What happened?, for example "Called about the revised quote".
- To plan it for later, set Due (a date and time). Leave it empty for no deadline.
- Change Assigned to if a colleague should do it. It is you to start with.
- Click Log activity.
The activity appears in the record's timeline, under Open, and on the Activities page.
Work on an activity in the timeline
Each activity in a record's timeline has its own buttons:
- Mark done when it is finished. It gets a green done label. Reopen undoes this.
- Set a deadline, or Change deadline when it has one. Pick the date and time and click Save. No deadline removes the date.
- Add a note to write what happened, then click Add note. Each note is added under the earlier ones with its date and time, so the activity keeps its own short history.
A late activity shows its due date in red. To see only activities in a long timeline, click the Activities chip above it.
Add an activity from the Activities page
- Open Activities in the left menu and click New activity.
- Choose the Type: Task, Call, Meeting, Email or Note.
- Choose who it is Assigned to. Me is the default.
- Set a Due date. Add a Time (optional); without one, it is due at 5 pm that day.
- Type the Subject, and any Notes.
- Click Create.
An activity made here belongs to no record: the Activities page lists it under Not linked. To put an activity on a customer, log it from their record card instead.
How activities show on your lists and boards
Open activities tell the CRM whether a lead or deal is being looked after:
- On the leads and deals boards, a small dot on each card is red when an activity is overdue, green when the next activity is planned (point at it to see the date), and amber when nothing is planned.
- A card with open activities also shows how many, with a calendar icon: green, or red when any of them is late.
- The chips above the board, Overdue, Planned and No activity, list the cards in each state.
An open activity with no due date still counts as planned. Mark activities done when they are done, and the boards stay honest.
Calls made on a phone line
When your workspace has a phone line connected, each call made or taken on it is logged by itself as a finished call activity on the customer's record, with how long it lasted. See Make and take calls.