Every lead thread reads as a timeline
A lead’s thread was a stack of bubbles. Your emails, their emails, the automated sends, the call you logged, all roughly the same shape, and the only way to tell them apart was to read them.
It is now a timeline. Every entry spans the same width and hangs off one line down the left, with an icon on that line saying what it is.
- Emails get a paper plane for what you sent and an inbox for what came in.
- Automated sends carry their own icon: the confirmation, the invoice, the receipt, the appointment.
- Logged touchpoints get the phone, SMS, meeting or pencil icon you chose when you logged them.
Older entries fold to one line each so the newest message and the reply box stay in view. Click a folded line or its icon to open it, and click the icon, the header line or Collapse to fold it again. Each entry folds on its own.
What the client did, said plainly
The useful change is what happens to portal activity. Accepting a quote, signing an agreement and paying used to arrive as an anonymous inbound email you had to open and read.
They are now milestones: one bold line with the client’s name on it.
Chris Jack accepted this quote
Chris Jack signed the confirmation
Chris Jack paid $500 by card
Accepting, signing and paying carry a solid green tick, pencil and dollar sign, the same marks that light up on the lead’s progress steps, so the thread and the steps agree at a glance. A request for changes is amber. Anything the client typed with it, a note on the acceptance or the changes they are asking for, sits underneath the line. Milestones never fold, because they are already one line.
Scrolling a thread now tells you the shape of the sale without reading a word of it.
An unread flag that stays put
Unread had a quiet fault: a thread you had opened earlier stayed loaded in the background, and its refresh marked itself read. A reply that came in while you were elsewhere was read on arrival and its badge never appeared.
The flag is now cleared only when the thread is open and you are looking at the tab. Alongside that:
- New leads land unread, so a lead that has just come in carries the same flag as a reply.
- An unread row gets a red left edge as well as its badge, so a busy list still shows you where to look.
- Mark as unread in the row’s ⋯ menu puts the flag back when you open something you are not ready to deal with.
- Read is shared by the account, which is what makes a team inbox honest: the flag answers “has anyone looked at this yet?”. When a teammate got there first, the top of the thread says so, for example “Read by Sarah, Mon 21 Sep, 2:14 PM”.
Unread is separate from Awaiting reply. Opening a thread clears the new flag, but the lead stays on the Awaiting reply tab until you actually answer it.
Replying to leads and working the leads inbox cover both in full.