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Record First Contact

You just called, texted, or emailed a lead for the first time. Log it. The act of logging is what moves the lead from NEW to CONTACTING and stops the SLA clock.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”
  1. Open the lead’s detail page (click the card on the board).
  2. Find Log activity in the lead actions panel.
  3. Pick the channel: Phone call, Email, or Text.
  4. Add a short note describing what happened — voicemail left, answered live, sent property link, etc.
  5. Save.

Lawrence Pickett detail page in NEW state. The Quick Actions panel on the right (Mark as Contacted, Mark as Qualified, View Client Profile) is where state transitions are fired. The shipped admin uses generic action buttons rather than a separate channel-picker panel; activity channel (call, email, text) is captured when you record the outcome.

What changes when you save

Section titled “What changes when you save”
  • The card moves from the NEW column to CONTACTING on the board.
  • The SLA timer stops; on the next page render the SLA card shows met (if you logged inside the 5-minute window) or breached (if you didn’t).
  • The timeline gets two new entries: your activity row, attributed to your name, and a Scribe row recording the NEW → CONTACTING state transition.

A worked example

Section titled “A worked example”

Lawrence Pickett in the demo dataset sits in NEW with a breached SLA border. Opening his card and logging “Left voicemail — mentioned the West End inquiry” does three things at once:

  • Moves him to CONTACTING on the board
  • Records the attempt against the SLA (already breached — the metric stays breached; logging doesn’t retroactively clear it)
  • Adds a row to the timeline so the next agent who opens the card sees what you did

Voicemails and no-answers still count

Section titled “Voicemails and no-answers still count”

The trigger is contact_attempted, not contact_succeeded. A logged voicemail is a valid contact attempt. The state machine doesn’t distinguish “they picked up” from “I left a message” — both are first contact and both stop the SLA clock. Whether the lead actually responds determines the next state change (qualifying them), not this one.

What doesn’t move the state

Section titled “What doesn’t move the state”
  • Reading the lead’s details without logging anything.
  • An automated drip email going out. System-generated outreach is not an agent contact attempt.
  • An undelivered email bounce.
Section titled “Related”