Follow-up and to-do reminders: when and where they fire

A follow-up reminder rings on the assignee's phone at the moment the follow-up is due. A to-do reminder is recorded and rings a set time before the to-do is due, 30 minutes by default. On the web there is no pop-up: what you see is the schedule itself, on the dashboard, the lead page and the calendar.

Follow-ups and to-dos compared

A repeating follow-up gets a reminder for each new occurrence, created when you complete the previous one. Working hours and holidays are shown on the phone for reference; see Working hours and holidays.

Follow-up reminders and the Remind me via choices

When you schedule a follow-up on the web, Remind me via offers In-app, Email, WhatsApp and SMS. In-app is ticked by default and is the one Leadnote acts on: it means a notification on the phone of the person the follow-up is assigned to.

• In-app rings on the assignee's phone. The app plans the alert itself from the follow-ups it has already synced, so it still rings with no signal. If your service has push messages switched on, the server also sends a short push ("Follow-up due") at the due time to phones that registered for it; that message never contains the lead name or the note.
• Email, WhatsApp and SMS are saved with the follow-up but Leadnote does not send follow-up reminders over them at the moment. Do not rely on them.
• The mobile follow-up editor has no Remind me via choice: the phone rings for every pending follow-up assigned to you.

The server looks for due follow-ups every minute. A follow-up that fell due more than 15 minutes earlier is not pushed afterwards, so you never get a flood of stale alerts after an outage.

To-do reminders

A to-do stores how many minutes before the due time it should remind. To-dos created on the web use 30 minutes. In the mobile form you pick No reminder, At due time, 15 minutes before, 30 minutes before, 1 hour before or 1 day before.

• Every minute, Leadnote checks to-dos that are not Done and whose reminder time has arrived. It records one reminder in the to-do's Reminders list (open the to-do, To-do Details tab), once.
• If you create a to-do that is due sooner than its reminder time, the reminder is recorded within about a minute.
• Changing the due date arms the reminder again for the new time. A Done to-do never reminds.
• The phone rings at the same time from its own copy of the to-do. Only the assignee is alerted.
• To nudge a colleague yourself, open their to-do and choose Remind User. It sends your message by email or WhatsApp. See Manage and track your to-dos.

What the phone plans

The phone plans an alert only for a pending follow-up or an open to-do that is assigned to you, whose ring time is still ahead, and, for a follow-up, whose lead is not marked Do not follow-up. It keeps the nearest 48 alerts and plans later ones as time passes. Done, cancelled, reassigned or deleted items drop out after the next sync, so open the app once after changes made on the web. Android may deliver an alert a few minutes late when the phone is in deep sleep.

Missing alerts are almost always a phone setting. The Not getting Follow-up reminder? link in the follow-up editor, and Settings, Follow-up settings, lead to the checks, which are listed in Notifications and reminders on mobile.

Where you see due work on the web

• The dashboard Follow-up schedule card lists what is due today, in the next 7 days, overdue and more. See Overdue and today's follow-ups.
• The lead page shows "Due" or "Overdue by" with the time left or passed.
• The Follow-up Calendar shows follow-ups and to-dos on their day, with overdue ones marked.

Notification preferences

The Email / WhatsApp Preference tab on your profile has no follow-up or to-do switch: those reminders follow the follow-up or to-do itself. The tab covers lead assignment, comments and product news. Likewise the app's Notification settings screen has e-mail and WhatsApp groups for those topics only.

Time zones

Follow-up and to-do times use the organisation time zone, which the account owner or a manager sets in Locale Settings. Everyone in the workspace reads the same clock time, even when team members travel. See Languages, time zone and formats.