Published
A meeting is now a record of its own on the lead card
Meetings are set from the same call form, belong to a member of staff on the caller's language line, can be moved or cancelled with a reason, and every step is written to the log.
Until now a meeting did not exist in the system as a record. When somebody marked the outcome of a call as “meeting set” and entered a time, the system knew two things about it: when, and which lead it belonged to. The meeting was not assigned to anyone, it had no duration, and whether it took place was nowhere to be found. Two meetings for the same person at the same hour bothered nobody, because nobody saw them side by side.
A meeting is now a record with a life of its own. It is set where it has always been set, in the form after a call: choose “meeting set”, enter the time, and the meeting is created on its own. There is no second form, and there is no need for one.
What a meeting carries: a start and an end, the member of staff it belongs to, a place (at the office, by phone, a video call) and a note. The time has to be in the future.
The member of staff is chosen within the caller's language line, not outside it. A meeting written down for someone who does not cover that line would vanish from that person's own view, because the access layer hides the lead itself from them. The meeting would then be invisible to everyone, including the person meant to hold it. The system therefore does not allow it at all.
Two overlapping meetings for the same person produce a warning, not a block. An office may deliberately book two at once: one by phone, the other handed to a colleague. A block here would mean a meeting written down outside the system, and an incomplete calendar is of no use.
Moving, cancelling and the outcome. Moving changes the time, a cancellation is recorded with a reason, and at the end you mark whether the meeting took place, which is what moves the lead along the funnel. Cancelling and moving do not wind the funnel back: the lead did reach that stage, and what was sent on account of it has already been sent.
All four steps are written to the access log: set, moved, cancelled, outcome recorded. The log holds the names of the fields that changed, not their values, as with every other entry there: the log does not become a second copy of people's data. A meeting is visible to whoever can see the lead, under the same division by lines.
- The default duration is an office setting: for one office a consultation is an hour, for another twenty minutes. In the product itself the default is an hour.
- The meeting time remains the lead's next step in the list, and the “call back”, “for today” and “overdue” views work exactly as before.
- A cancelled meeting is frozen: it cannot be moved and cannot be marked as held.
- Cancelled meetings and meetings that did not happen take up no time and are not counted in overlaps.
- Correcting a call entry does not touch the meeting: cancelling one has an action of its own.
A calendar screen, showing the day and the week by member of staff and by language line, is the next step. What has been laid down now are the rules it will be built on.
Want to see this on your own office's inquiries?