A note is what you want to remember about a family. A follow-up is a note with a date on it, so the thing you promised to do comes back to you instead of relying on your memory.
Notes live on the family. Follow-ups live everywhere you look — your calendar, your dashboard, and your morning email — which is the whole point of putting a date on one.
Writing a Note
Open the family and go to the Notes tab, then + Add Note.
| Field | What it is for |
|---|
| Attach to | The family as a whole, or one member of it. A conversation with the father belongs on the father |
| Type | What kind of note this is — a phone call, a visit, a donation conversation |
| Note Date | When it happened. Today by default |
| Subject | Required, and worth care — this is the line that shows up on the calendar, the dashboard and the email. "Call about Pesach seats" beats "call" |
| Note | The detail, as long as you like |
| Private | Only you can see it. For the sensitive things that still need recording |
Turning It Into a Follow-up
Tick Follow-up at the bottom of the note and two things appear:
- Follow-up Date and Time — when you want this back in front of you. Not when you wrote it; when you want to act on it.
- Broadcast to everyone — off, it is yours alone. On, the whole team gets it on their calendar and in their email.
Complete is how you tick it off. Until then it keeps coming back, which is exactly what you asked it to do.
The follow-up date is kept as the time you typed, in your organization's timezone. Three o'clock means three o'clock in the office, whoever enters it and wherever they are.
The Notes Tab
Everything recorded about that family, newest first. Click a row to open the note underneath it.
- Search finds a note by what is in it.
- Show notes from all users — off, you see your own notes, anything broadcast to everyone, and anything assigned to you. On, you see the office's whole record of that family.
- Filters & Columns narrows by note date or follow-up date and chooses which columns to show — owner, type, private, broadcast, member.
- The checkbox in the first column marks a follow-up complete without opening it.
Where Follow-ups Turn Up
A note with no date stays on the family, waiting for someone to look. A note with a date finds you in three places.
The Calendar
Your follow-ups laid out by date — Month, Week, Day or List, a year at a time. Hover one to read it; click to open and edit it. This is the view for "what does next week look like".
The Dashboard
The My Tasks panel lists the follow-ups that are yours, due by today, and not yet complete — family, date, subject, the note itself, who created it and its type. Tick one off and it goes. Nothing in the panel means nothing is owed today.
The CMS Today Email
The daily summary email includes "You have the following notes to follow up on" with a table of the family, the follow-up date and the subject. The family name is a link straight into their record.
It is the same list as My Tasks — yours, due, not complete — and it arrives whether or not you open CMS that day. Turn it on under Settings → Scheduler → Notifications, where you also set what time it goes out.
Making It Work
- Write the subject for someone skimming. It is what all three views show at a glance.
- Date it for when you want to act, not for today. A follow-up dated three weeks out is the only reliable way to remember something three weeks out.
- Mark things complete. A list nobody clears stops being read.
- Broadcast sparingly. If everyone gets everything, nobody acts on anything.
- Use Private for what shouldn't be shared, and plain notes for everything else — the record of a family is worth more when the whole office can see it.