How to record and manage client activity

Good client relationships depend on everyone knowing what has already been said. Client Activity is where that lives. Instead of important details sitting in one person's inbox, every conversation is recorded against the client, so anyone in your agency can pick up where a colleague left off.

There are four types of activity, each with its own tab:

Notes — anything worth remembering that isn't a call or an email
Calls — a record of a phone conversation and its outcome
Emails — a record of an email you have sent or received
Tasks — work that needs doing, managed on a simple board

Every entry can be viewed, edited and archived, and every entry keeps an audit log so you can see who changed it and when.

Finding Client Activity

Select Clients in the left-hand menu.
Choose the client you want from the list on the right-hand side of the screen. You can search by the client's name or ID, use Filter by to narrow the list, or move through the pages at the bottom.
From the column of icons in the middle of the screen, select the Client Activity icon. Hover over an icon to see its name.

The panel opens on the ALL tab, showing every activity for that client in one timeline, newest first and grouped by month.

Getting to know the screen

A few controls sit above the timeline and are worth knowing before you start:

ALL, NOTES, CALLS, EMAILS, TASKS — switch between all activity and a single type.
Search by activity name — find an entry by its title.
Filter by Type, Filter by User and Filter by Date — narrow the timeline down, for example to everything a particular colleague logged last month.
Show Archived — switch this on to include archived entries in the list. The number beside it tells you how many there are.
Contact Details — open the client's contact list.

Each entry in the timeline shows who created it, the date and time, and a coloured tag telling you the type. Calls and emails also carry a second badge — Inbound or Outbound for emails, and the outcome for calls, such as Connected. Select View More or View Details to expand an entry, and Close Details to collapse it again.

Checking the client's contact details

Before logging a call or an email, it is worth checking you have the right person.

Select Contact Details above the timeline.
The Contact Information window lists each contact held for this client, with their name, email address and contact number.
The Contact Type column tells you what each person handles. A contact can have more than one type. Examples include:

Primary — your main point of contact
Billing — invoicing and payment queries
Operations — day-to-day staffing and shifts

Select the X in the corner to close the window.

Adding a note

Notes are best for anything that doesn't fit neatly into a call or an email — a change of circumstances, a preference the client has mentioned, or a summary of a meeting.

Select + Create Activity at the top of the panel, then choose Note.
Enter a Title. Keep it short and specific, so colleagues can tell at a glance what the note covers.
Write your Description. The toolbar lets you format the text as you would in a normal document, including:

Bold, italic, underline and strikethrough
Text colour
Links and images
Bulleted and numbered lists
Alignment, line spacing and indents

Select Create. Your note appears at the top of the timeline.

Tip: Write notes as if the client might one day read them. Stick to facts and agreed actions rather than opinions.

Logging a call

Log a call as soon as you put the phone down, while the details are fresh.

Select + Create Activity, then choose Call.
Complete the Recipient Name and Recipient Contact Number — the person you spoke to and the number you used.
Set the Date Sent to the date the call took place.
Choose the Call Outcome, for example Connected.
Use the Notes field to record what was discussed and anything you agreed to do next.
If you have anything to attach, such as a quote or a document you talked through, use Upload Attachments.
Save the entry.

Logging an email

Logging an email keeps important correspondence with the timeline rather than in one person's mailbox.

Select + Create Activity, then choose Email.
Complete the Recipient Name and Recipient Email Address.
Set the Date Sent.
Choose the Email Direction — Outbound if you sent it, Inbound if the client sent it to you.
Enter the Subject, then paste or type the Email Body. The same formatting toolbar is available here.
Add any files the email included under Upload Attachments.
Save the entry.

Managing tasks

The TASKS tab works as a board rather than a timeline, so you can see at a glance what is outstanding for this client. There are three columns:

To do
In Progress
Completed

Each card shows the task's priority, its name, a short description, the due date and the initials of the people it is assigned to.

Creating a task

Select the + at the top of the column you want the task to start in, or use + Create Activity and choose Task.
Enter the Task Name. Make it an instruction, such as "Call Jonathan to get feedback on the last job".
Set the Due date.
Choose one or more people under Assignee.
Set the Priority — Low, Medium or High.
Set the Status, which decides which column the task sits in.
Add a Description explaining what needs doing, and attach any supporting files.
Save the task.

Moving a task along

You cannot drag a card between columns. Instead, select the ... menu on the card, which gives you four options:

View Details — open the task and read it in full
View Audit — see who has changed the task, and when
Edit Details — change any of the task's details
The next stage, such as Completed — move the task into that column

To move a task on, simply select the name of the stage you want it to move to.

Viewing an entry in full

Select View More or View Details on any entry to expand it in place, or open it using the ⋮ menu on the entry and choose to view it. A panel slides in from the right showing everything that was recorded — for a note, the title and full description; for a call or an email, all the details plus any attachments; for a task, the priority, due date, assignees, description and attachments.

If you spot something that needs changing while you are reading, select Update at the bottom of the panel to move straight into editing.

Editing an entry

Details change, and typos happen. Any entry can be corrected.

Select the ⋮ menu on the entry you want to change, then choose the option to edit it.
Amend the fields as needed. You can also remove an attachment by selecting the X beside its name, or add another using Click to upload.
Select Save Changes.

Editing does not hide the original — every change is recorded in the entry's audit log, described below.

Archiving an entry

Archiving tidies an entry out of the timeline without deleting it, which is useful once something is no longer relevant.

Select the ⋮ menu on the entry.
Choose the option to archive it.

The entry disappears from the timeline. To see it again, switch on Show Archived above the timeline. The number in brackets tells you how many archived entries the client has.

Please note: Archiving is not the same as deleting. Archived entries remain part of the client's history and can still be opened and read.

Checking the audit log

Every activity keeps its own audit log, so you can always see how an entry reached its current state. This is particularly helpful when several people work on the same client.

Select the ⋮ menu on the entry.
Choose the audit log option.

The log lists changes newest first, grouped by date, with the time of each one. It records who made the change and what they changed — for example, that a note was created, that its description was updated, or that its title was changed, showing both the old and new wording.

You cannot edit the audit log, and nothing is ever removed from it.

Good habits worth adopting

Log it the same day. An entry written a week later is rarely as accurate.
Use titles that make sense to others. "Rate increase agreed for Bedford" is far more useful than "Update".
Turn agreements into tasks. If a call ends with you promising to do something, create a task with a due date before you move on.
Filter rather than scroll. On a long-standing client, Filter by Date or Filter by Type will find what you need much faster.