Schedule a follow-up activity

One window serves every route in, so it is worth reading once.

Four routes, one window. Which you use is a matter of where you happen to be.

From the chatter

Open the record, click Activity. The chatter's other two buttons are Message (Alt + M) and Note (Alt + Shift + M), and the difference between them and Activity is the difference between recording the past and scheduling the future.

From a kanban board

Click the clock icon on a card, then + Schedule An Activity. This is the fast way to work down a pipeline column assigning next steps.

From a list

Use the clock in the Activities column. If that column is not shown, switch it on from the column picker at the end of the header row, then click the clock on the row you want.

From the activity view

Many applications offer an activity view behind the clock icon among the view switchers. It is a grid: every record is a row, every activity type a column, and each cell shows the summary, the deadline and the owner's avatar of what is planned there.

Green cells are planned, orange are due today, red are overdue. Hover an empty cell and a + appears, tooltip Create, which schedules straight into that record and type. The column headings carry a progress bar you can click to filter the grid to just the overdue or just the planned, and a column picker at the end lets you hide types you do not use. Schedule activity at the foot adds a record that has nothing planned yet. Where a type has email templates attached, a small ⋮ menu on its heading offers to send one — the tooltip warns you plainly: “This action will send an email.”

On the record, planned activities sit above the message history under Planned Activities. Each one opens with how long you have — Today:, Tomorrow:, Due in 9 days:, Yesterday:, 3 days overdue: — coloured orange, green or red, then the summary and for whoever owns it.

The ⓘ icon expands the detail: activity type, who created it and when, who it is assigned to, and the due date. Three buttons close it out:

• Mark Done — the honest ending. See below for what it actually does.
• Edit — reopens the window to change the summary, date or owner.
• Cancel — in red, and it means it: the activity is deleted outright. Nothing is written to the chatter and there is no confirmation. Use it for an activity created by mistake, never for one that was done.

Where the type's action is Upload Document, an upload control appears beside those buttons; attaching the file closes the activity and files the attachment on the record.

What Mark Done actually does

Marking an activity done is not a delete, and knowing the difference matters when somebody asks what happened three months ago.

1. A message is posted to the record's chatter recording the activity, its type, and whatever feedback you typed.
2. Any files attached to the activity are moved onto that message so they survive.
3. If the type is chained with Trigger Next Activity, the next activity is created immediately.
4. The activity itself is archived — kept, with a Done Date and your feedback, but hidden from every list by default.

Two related buttons exist elsewhere. Done & Schedule Next closes this one and opens the window for the follow-up. And in the list of activities, the header buttons Today, Tomorrow and Next Week push the deadline without closing anything.

The clock in the top bar is your whole workload, whatever application it came from, with the count in a badge beside it.

Activities are grouped by the kind of record they sit on, and each group reports three numbers: Late, Today and Future. Click a number to open exactly those records. Work Late before Today and Today before Future; there is no other sensible order. When there is nothing left the menu says so: “Congratulations, you're done with your activities.”

At the foot of the menu, Add a To-Do — hotkey Alt + Shift + T — creates a personal to-do that belongs to no record at all. It is the right home for “ring the glass supplier back”, which no opportunity owns.

The full list

The clock menu shows counts; the list behind it shows the work. It opens filtered to My Activities plus Overdue and Today, and offers Unassigned Activities, Tomorrow, This week, Future and — separately — Done, which is how you see the archived ones. Group by Deadline, Document Model, Assigned To, Created By or Activity Type.

Its columns are Summary, Activity Type, Assigned to, Linked to and the deadline as a countdown; Done Date and Feedback are hidden columns you can switch on, and they are the two worth switching on when you are reviewing what a week actually produced.

Activity types decide which follow-ups exist, what they are called, who they land on and what happens after one is closed. They are shared settings — changing one changes it for everybody.

Chaining the next activity

The Next Activity section is what turns single tasks into a process.

• Chaining Type — Suggest Next Activity offers the follow-up when this one is closed and lets the user decline it; Trigger Next Activity creates it with no choice at all, the moment the first is marked done.
• Suggest — with Suggest chosen, this is a list: you may offer several sensible follow-ups.
• Trigger — with Trigger chosen, it is a single type, because the system has to pick one without asking.

The two are mutually exclusive: switching the chaining type clears the other field.

A plan is a whole sequence of activities scheduled in one click, with the deadlines worked out from a single date you supply. This system ships plans for opportunities, contacts, quotations, projects, project tasks and employees — onboarding a new customer, taking a lead from site survey to order, chasing drawing approval, handing over an installation.

To run one, open the Schedule Activity window on a record and click the plan's badge instead of a type badge. Set the Due Date — every step is measured from it — fill in a Responsible if the plan asks for one, check the Plan Summary that lists exactly what is about to be created, and click Schedule.

Plans live beside the types, at CRM › Configuration › Activities › Activity Plans and the equivalent menu in the other applications. Each step of a plan carries an Activity Type, a Summary, an Interval in days, weeks or months, a Trigger of Before Plan Date or After Plan Date, and an Assignment that is either Default user — a named person — or Ask at launch, which is what puts the Responsible box in the window.

An activity you scheduled reached nobody. Check Assigned to. An activity notifies its assignee, not the record's followers, and those are different lists.

The clock badge counts something you cannot find. It counts every open activity assigned to you across every application. Open the menu and read the grouping rather than hunting screen by screen — and remember activities can sit on records you cannot otherwise open.

An activity you completed is still in the list. Editing the deadline is not closing it. Only Mark Done (or Cancel, which deletes it) takes it out of the queue.

You cannot find an activity you closed last month. It was archived, not deleted. On the activity list, apply the Done filter; Done Date and Feedback are optional columns you can switch on there. The chatter of the record also holds the message that was posted when it closed.

Today, Tomorrow or Next Week does nothing. Those buttons skip archived activities entirely, so on a list filtered to Done they change nothing and say nothing. Clear the filter first.

The reschedule dropdown on a record list does nothing. That dropdown moves your own next activity on that record. If none of the record's open activities is assigned to you, it silently does nothing at all — no message, no error. And if you have two on that record, it moves only the one with the earliest deadline.

A second activity appeared by itself after you marked one done. The type is chained with Trigger Next Activity. That is the configuration working, not a bug; change the chaining if it is not what you wanted.

Mark Done is missing from the Schedule Activity window. The type you picked is chained with Trigger Next Activity, and closing an activity at the moment of creating it would fire the follow-up immediately. Pick another type, or save it and close it afterwards.

Link to is asking for a record. You opened the window with no record in context and assigned the activity to somebody else. An activity handed to a colleague has to say what it is about.

An activity type you expected is not offered. Its Model restricts it to another kind of record. WhatsApp Follow-up is offered on contacts, Certifications on employees, and neither appears on an opportunity.