A task is the CRM's version of a sticky note that actually knows what it is. It has a type (call, SMS, email, or to-do), an owner, a due date, and it is tied to a specific lead. Once it exists, it shows up in the assignee's task list, on the lead's profile, and, when the day comes, in the little run-my-tasks player at the top of the Tasks page.
If your team keeps missing follow-ups, the problem is almost never memory. It is that the follow-ups live in the wrong place: a text thread, a Post-it, someone's head. Tasks are the place they are supposed to live.
There are three ways a task gets created: you make one by hand, a meeting outcome creates one for you (the "post-tour follow-up" that shows up every time a tour is marked Completed), or an automation drops one on somebody's queue (a topic that leads directly into the next chapter). This chapter walks through all three.
The Tasks page: Today, This week, Overdue, Completed
Open Tasks in the left sidebar and you land on a filtered inbox of everything you personally need to do. The four tabs across the top are just date filters, but they are the ones you will use ninety percent of the time. Flip between them.
Creating a task by hand
Click + Create task in the top right. The modal is short on purpose. Pick the lead first, choose the action type, assign the owner, then set the due date, time, and timezone. The action type is the one people skip past, and it is the one that changes what happens when the task actually runs.
Action type is not decorative. When you press Start on a task later, the CRM opens the matching tool: Call pops the dialer, SMS opens the text thread, Email opens a compose window pre-addressed to the lead, and To-do just gives you a "mark complete" button. Pick wrong and you are copy-pasting a phone number a minute later.
Filtering: assigned to, status, date
A director does not want to look at every task the front desk owns. A front desk person does not want to look at the director's list either. The filter panel in the top right is how you narrow the view down to just yours (or just someone else's, when you are checking in on the team).
Pressing Start: the task runner
The Start button at the top of the Tasks page is the whole point of this system. It takes the tasks you can see (whatever the current tab and filter show) and walks you through them one at a time. Each task opens the lead's profile in the background, pops up the matching tool (dialer, SMS thread, email compose), and puts a little runner strip at the bottom with Skip and Complete & continue.
The runner is the difference between "I have twelve calls to make today" and "I have twelve clicks to make today." Everything (the lead's history, their guardians, the right dialer number) is already loaded when you land on the task. You are not context switching between calls; the CRM is doing it for you.
Where completed tasks live
When you mark a task complete, it does two things. It leaves your list, and it appears on the lead's profile under the Tasks tab, struck through, with a timestamp. That second half is the paper trail: three months later, when a parent asks "did anyone ever follow up with us?" the answer is right there on their profile.
Tasks from meetings (the post-booking pattern)
Manually creating a "call Aisha back after her tour" task every single time a tour is booked is exactly the kind of thing this system is supposed to prevent. Meeting types have a post-booking communications section for this reason. Add a task there once, and every future tour of that type creates the same task automatically the moment it is booked.
What's next
Next is Chapter 8: Availability and Meetings. Tours are the tasks that need a time on the calendar, so that chapter is where you tell the CRM when you're free and what kinds of meetings you offer. Manual task creation (this chapter) is the base. Automated task creation, where the CRM generates tasks without anyone clicking, comes in Chapter 9, Automations.