A calendar and a telephone, on the row that owes them

A list says who somebody is and what stage they reached. It does not say that two of them have a call promised for Thursday and one has a task that was due last week, which is the thing anybody scanning the list is actually looking for, and until now the only way to find out was to open every record in turn.

So: a calendar where a task is open, and a telephone where a call is promised, on leads, customers, deals and tasks, in the list and on the board. Both are links: the calendar opens the record’s Tasks tab and the telephone opens its Activity tab, because saying something is late and then dropping you on the overview to go and find it is half an answer. Each takes the colour of the earliest one still outstanding: dark red once the day has passed, dark orange on the day, plain grey while it is still ahead. Where more than one is waiting the count sits beside it, and hovering says which day, because a red icon says late and only words say late since when.

Nothing outstanding, nothing shown. A row with no mark has nothing owed on it, and that is the point: the eye should be drawn to the few rather than filtered through the many.

On a board the card also carries the date it is judged by, in the colour it has earned, and keeps its white background. A board of forty cards washed red and orange is a board where colour has stopped saying anything, and the column a card sits in is already doing the work a background would do. Projects and project tasks get the date colour on their boards too.