Activities are how work-about-a-record stays on the record. A follow-up task on an account, a note on an order, a meeting with a contact, the log of a phone call — each is an activity, attached to the record it concerns, and every record of every entity can carry them. Because the layer is one shared mechanism rather than per-module bolt-ons, the question "what has happened with this customer?" has one answer in one place.
What an activity is
An activity has a subject (required — it is also the display name), a free-text description, and three classifying fields with sensible defaults:
| Field | Values | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Task, Call, Meeting, Email, Note, Visit, Document — plus system-written types | Task |
| Status | Open, In Progress, Waiting, Completed, Cancelled, Deferred | Open |
| Priority | Low, Normal, High, Urgent | Normal |
Time fields cover the usual shapes of work: a start and end for meetings, a due date for tasks, a duration, a location. Marking an activity Completed stamps its completion time automatically. An activity can also carry a reminder time, and the list shows whether the reminder has been sent. Call-type activities carry call specifics — direction and a call disposition; meeting-type activities carry availability shown to others.
Every activity points at its parent record as an entity-plus-record pair, and the parent's display label is copied onto the activity — so activity lists read "Invoice INV-1042", not a bare identifier. Both halves of the link are validated together, and the parent entity must be a real entity in your organization's model — which includes custom entities. Activities can additionally reference a contact and an account, so person-centric views work even when the parent is something else.
Where you work with activities
Record pages carry an Activities panel listing the record's activities — subject, type, status, priority, due date, reminder state — with create, edit and delete in place. Creating from the panel pre-links the new activity to the record you are on. Activities support attachments and participants, so the meeting's agenda file and its attendees live on the meeting.
Recurrence
An activity with a recurrence rule becomes a series: daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, at an interval (every 2 weeks), ending after a count of occurrences or by an end date — or never. The chaining is completion-driven: when you complete the current occurrence, the next one is created, with its due, start, end and reminder times shifted forward by the recurrence step so each keeps its relative offsets. A lapsed series doesn't pile up unfinished copies — there is always exactly one open occurrence, and the series advances only when work actually happens. Each completed occurrence chains exactly once, so re-saving an old one never spawns duplicates.
Activities the system writes
Not every activity is typed by hand. Modules write timeline entries through the same layer — most visibly, a finished phone call linked to a record writes one Call activity onto it with the direction, counterpart number, duration and disposition (see Calls, dispositions and recordings). System-written entries render in the same lists with proper labels; they are the reason a record's timeline is complete rather than only as complete as people's discipline.
Common questions
Which records can have activities?
Any record of any entity — standard or custom. The layer is deliberately entity-agnostic: the parent link is validated against your organization's entity model rather than a fixed list, so an entity you created last week carries activities exactly like accounts and orders do.
How is an activity different from the call record itself?
The call register entry is the full telephony record — timings, queue, recording, transcript. The Call activity is the compact timeline entry written onto the business record the call was about. One call, linked to a case, produces both: the register row for call reporting, the activity for the case's story. Editing one does not rewrite the other.
What happens to a recurring series if I cancel an occurrence instead of completing it?
Nothing is scheduled next — the chain advances only on completion. That makes cancelling the natural way to end a series early: cancel the open occurrence and the series stops, no cleanup required.
Common problems
An activity won't save. The subject is required, and a parent link must be complete — entity and record together, or neither. A parent entity name that isn't a known entity is rejected outright.