Organizations, contacts, and follow-ups

A CRM should feel less like a filing cabinet and more like a well-briefed producer. When Maya opens Northwind Studio’s next prospect, she should see who the people are, where the deal stands, what was promised, and who needs to act next.

Organizations: the companies you work with

Open Sales → Organizations, then select New organization. An organization is the account — a prospect, customer, partner, vendor or anything else — and it carries its current deal: stage, priority, deal value, win probability, expected close date, owner and wider team. It also holds industry, company size, website, source, address, tags, a description and your team’s custom fields.

Relationship says what the organization is to you, separately from where the deal stands. Winning a prospect’s deal makes them a customer automatically. Big groups can be modelled too: set a Parent company and the parent lists its subsidiaries, branches or franchises.

Zoabase starts with these deal stages: New, Contacted, Qualified, Proposal, Negotiation, Won, and Lost. Switch the list to Pipeline to drag deals between customizable columns; a move updates the underlying stage, so totals and reports stay consistent.

The numbers along the top always describe what’s on screen — organizations, open deals, open pipeline, a weighted forecast (deal value × win probability, or the stage’s typical odds), won value, win rate and customers — so filtering to “Retail in the south” turns them into that segment’s numbers.

Tip: Maya can tag a prospect video, set a deal value, and assign Priya as a teammate before the first call. That creates useful context without pretending the deal is further along than New.

Contacts: people, with or without an organization

Open Sales → Contacts to see everyone you deal with. A contact usually works at an organization, but doesn’t have to — freelancers, referrers and advisors can stand alone and join an organization later. Moving someone to another organization takes their email, phone and socials along; removing them from an organization keeps them as a standalone contact. Deleting an organization also keeps its people.

Every contact has a job title, lifecycle (lead, opportunity, customer, partner or inactive), owner, team, location, tags, notes and custom fields. Lifecycles follow the deal: when an organization’s deal is qualified its leads become opportunities, and when it’s won they become customers. Manual choices such as partner are left alone.

Open a contact for their own page: one-click email, call, WhatsApp and LinkedIn; their organization and colleagues; the timeline messages logged about them; their todos, reminders and activity; and every property, editable in place. Each organization can have one primary contact, starred everywhere they appear.

An organization or contact can have unlimited channels:

• Email, phone, and WhatsApp.
• LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Telegram.
• Skype, GitHub, YouTube, and website.
• Other, for details that do not fit the named types.

Organization-level channels work too, such as a general inbox or reception number that does not belong to one person. Most channels are clickable: email opens mailto:, phone opens tel:, WhatsApp uses wa.me, and social handles open the relevant profile.

Inside an organization, the People tab adds new people, brings in existing contacts (moving them from another organization if needed), sets the primary contact, and removes people.

Make the lists work your way

Both lists are built from the same parts:

• Views. Tabs along the top — All, My organizations, Pipeline, Open deals, Customers; All, My contacts, Customers, No organization, Recently added — plus any you save. Change the filters, sort, columns or layout and select Save view or Save as new. Views are shared with the team unless you make them private.
• Filters. Filter on any field, including custom ones: text contains, numbers above or below, dates in the last or next N days, options that are or aren’t, people (including “me”), tags with any or all of. Combine them with and or or.
• Sort. Click a column header, or sort by up to three fields. Empty values always go last.
• Fields. Show, hide and reorder columns. Click a cell — stage, owner, deal value, tags, lifecycle, organization, custom fields — to change it in place.
• Layouts. Table, Pipeline (organizations) and Cards.
• Bulk actions. Tick rows to change stage, relationship, lifecycle, owner, priority or organization together, add or remove tags, export or delete.
• Search checks names, people, email addresses, phone numbers, handles, industries and tags.

Custom fields

From the ⋯ menu, choose Custom fields to add what your team tracks: text, number, currency, date, dropdown, multi-select, checkbox, link, email or phone. Fields can have a description, be required when creating, and — for organizations — show on pipeline cards. Organization fields are the same fields as the pipeline’s card fields, so board automations can set them too.

Import and export

Choose Import from CSV to upload or paste a spreadsheet. Zoabase guesses which column is which (Company, E-mail, Job title…) and lets you adjust the mapping. Rows that already exist — the same organization name, or the same contact email — can be skipped. When importing contacts, an Organization column links people to existing organizations by name and creates the missing ones.

Export this view downloads exactly what’s on screen — the filtered rows and the visible columns — as CSV. Ticked rows can be exported on their own from the bulk bar.

Keep the working conversation beside the customer

The organization’s Timeline is an internal, realtime team conversation. Post text, switch a message to an internal note, attach a link, upload or drag in documents and images, or record a voice note. Type @ to notify a teammate, and optionally associate a message with a specific contact.

Messages can be pinned. The Notes & files tab gathers notes, documents, images, links, and voice notes so the useful artifacts do not disappear into chronology. A separate Activity tab records changes around the organization.

For example, Maya can log “Client prefers the documentary direction” as a note, attach the written brief, and mention Arjun. Arjun sees the update live, while the file remains easy to find later.

Heads up: Organization chat is for the signed-in team. It does not send messages to the customer or connect to email, WhatsApp, or social inboxes. Contact channels are links and stored details, not provider integrations.

Assign todos

Use the organization’s Todos tab to create work linked to that lead. A todo has a title, status, priority, due date, assignee, and optional organization context. Assignees receive activity notifications.

Sales todos without a project can also appear on the shared Sales board and in sprints. The default task flow is Backlog → To do → In progress → Review → Done, though the board can split those statuses into custom lists.

Keep todos concrete. “Follow up” is fog; “Send revised three-video proposal” tells Maya what done looks like.

Set reminders that come back on time

Create a reminder from the organization, a contact, or the global Reminders page. Give it a title, scheduled time, owner, optional notes, and relevant lead or contact. When it becomes due, Zoabase creates an in-app activity item and a live toast. If browser notifications are enabled from Activity, it can also raise a desktop notification.

Hover an open reminder to snooze it for one hour or until 10:00 tomorrow. Mark it done when complete, or edit its exact time. The Reminders page can show Mine or Everyone and filter All open, Overdue, Upcoming, and Done.

Tip: Use a task when work must move through a workflow; use a reminder when the important thing is the moment. “Prepare renewal deck” is a task. “Call after procurement meets Friday” is a reminder.

Read the dashboard and activity

The dashboard turns scattered signals into a morning scan. It shows pipeline stages and open pipeline value, open and overdue tasks, active-sprint progress, recently completed work, your reminders, leads quiet for more than a week, and a live activity feed.

The organization detail page adds its own focused view: timeline, people, projects, todos, support tickets, reminders, notes and files, and activity, with the deal’s value, win probability and expected close editable in the header. Projects created from the organization arrive pre-linked, and enabled service desks appear alongside them.

When Priya asks, “What is happening with this client?” Maya does not have to reconstruct the answer from browser history. She can open one organization and read the commercial stage, people, internal conversation, delivery projects, open work, scheduled follow-ups, and support history in context.

Move faster from the keyboard

On an organization detail page, use J and K to move to the next or previous organization in the list beside it. These shortcuts do nothing while you are typing in an input, textarea, select, or editable area. Use ⌘K/Ctrl+K anywhere outside an editor to jump directly to an organization or contact by name.