Notes

Notes let you keep a running log of interactions, context, and follow-up details across your CRM. You can add notes to contacts, tasks, and appointments — and all of them appear together in a single notes feed on the Contact Detail page.

[SCREENSHOT PLACEHOLDER: Contact Detail page showing the notes feed with a mix of contact, task, and appointment notes]

Example: After a sales call, add a note to the contact with key takeaways. When you create a follow-up task, add a note to the task with the specific action items discussed. Both notes appear together on the contact's notes feed, giving your team full context.

Adding a Note

1. Navigate to a Contact Detail page, task detail view, or Appointment Detail page.
2. Click the "+ Add Note" button at the top of the notes section.
3. Write your note using the rich-text editor.
4. Click Save. The editor collapses automatically.

You can add notes from three places:

Rich-Text Editor

The note editor supports formatting with a toolbar:

• Bold, italic, and strikethrough text
• Headings (H1 and H2)
• Bullet lists and numbered lists
• Task checklists (interactive checkboxes)
• Blockquotes
• Code blocks

User Mentions (@mentions)

Gordon CRM supports active team collaboration through a rich-text @mention system. You can tag team members in notes on contacts, tasks, or appointments to grab their attention and coordinate workflows.

How to Mention a Team Member

1. When writing a note in the editor, type the @ character.
2. A floating suggestion menu will appear, listing all active workspace members.
3. Type to filter the list by name.
4. Keyboard controls: Use the Up/Down Arrow keys to navigate the list, Enter or Tab to select a member, and Escape to close the suggestion menu.
5. Mouse selection: You can also click any member's profile card in the suggestions menu.

Selecting a user inserts a styled, read-only emerald chip (e.g., @Sarah Chen) into the note.

Notification Flow

When you save a note containing mentions, the CRM automatically notifies the tagged users:

• Notification Bell: Mentioned users receive a private, high-priority alert in their in-app Notification Center containing a deep link to the source entity.
• Privacy: Unlike workspace-wide alerts, user-targeted mention notifications are visible only to the mentioned user.
• Edit-Diff Protection: If you edit a note to correct a typo, the system compares the old and new HTML content and only notifies newly added team members. Users who were already mentioned will not receive duplicate alerts.
• Self-Mention Guard: You will not receive notifications for mentioning yourself in a note.

Email Preferences

You can choose how you want to receive email alerts for @mentions under your user profile settings. See User Notification Preferences for email routing details (Immediate, Digest, or Never).

Note Templates

Note templates are reusable content scaffolds that pre-fill the editor with structured content when you create or edit a note. They help your team follow a consistent format for things like meeting notes, follow-up summaries, and intake forms.

Example: Your team agrees that every client meeting should be documented with the same structure: attendees, discussion points, key decisions, and action items. Create a "Meeting Notes" template, and anyone on your team can select it when adding a note — the editor is instantly filled with the right headings and sections to complete.

Using a Template

When adding or editing a note, click the Template dropdown (file icon) in the editor toolbar. Select a template from the list to populate the editor with its content. Note templates are supported for contact notes, task notes, and appointment notes.

[SCREENSHOT PLACEHOLDER: Rich-text editor toolbar showing the Template dropdown with available templates]

Default Templates

The first time anyone on your team opens the template list, three default templates are automatically created:

These defaults can be edited or deleted like any other template.

Managing Templates

To create, edit, or delete templates:

1. Navigate to the Notes page in the sidebar.
2. Click the Manage Templates button (gear icon, top-right).
3. A management view appears with all templates listed.

From here you can:

• Create — Click "New Template", enter a name, compose the content in the rich-text editor, and save.
• Edit — Click the edit icon on any template to update its name or content.
• Delete — Click the delete icon and confirm. Deletion is permanent.

Editing & Deleting

You can edit or delete any note:

• Edit — Click the edit icon on any note to reopen the rich-text editor inline. Make your changes and click Save, or press Escape to cancel.
• Delete — Click the delete icon and confirm. Deletion is permanent.

Edit and delete controls appear on hover (desktop) or in the note footer (mobile).

Pinning Notes

You can pin contact notes to the top of the notes feed. This is useful for surfacing important context that your team should see first — for example, a note about a contact's preferred communication method, a known issue with their account, or key details from an initial consultation.

Pinned notes display with an amber "Pinned" badge and a subtle green background, making them easy to spot.

To pin or unpin a note, click the pin icon alongside the edit and delete controls.

Pinning is available for contact notes only. Task notes and appointment notes cannot be pinned.

Threaded Note Replies

Gordon CRM supports one-level deep threaded replies on all notes. This allows your team to discuss notes directly, ask questions, or provide updates without cluttering the main notes timeline feed.

• Nesting Constraint: Threads are strictly capped at one level deep (replies to replies are not supported).
• Collapsible Threads: Thread replies are grouped under their parent note in a collapsible section showing a reply count badge (e.g. 2 replies). Click the toggle to expand or collapse the replies list.
• Inline Reply Composer: Click the Reply button on any note to open the composer. The composer is indented with an emerald left border (active state) and supports rich-text formatting, note templates, and team member @mentions.
• Activity-Based Sorting: To keep active conversations visible, notes timeline feeds are sorted by recent activity — any note that receives a new reply dynamically bubbles up to the top of the feed.
• Unified Counts: Note counter badges on detail sections reflect the number of parent notes only, keeping replies from inflating your metrics.
• Participant Notifications: When you reply to a note, email alerts are dispatched to the thread's creator, any previous reply authors, and any @mentioned users in the thread.

The Notes Feed on Contacts

The Contact Detail page shows a single notes feed that combines all three note types in chronological order (newest first). Each note shows the author name, timestamp, and formatted content.

Notes from tasks and appointments are visually distinguished:

[SCREENSHOT PLACEHOLDER: Notes feed showing a contact note, a task note with green badge, and an appointment note with blue badge]

Searching Notes

The /notes Page

The /notes page provides a centralized search, filter, and sortable table view across all notes in your workspace.

• Layout & Structure — Notes are displayed in a standard 6-column sortable table:
  • Chevron Toggle (▸/▾): Click a row to expand or collapse its content inline.
  • Type: Displays a color-coded entity category badge: Slate for Contact, Emerald for Task, and Blue for Appointment (normalized from "Appt" for clarity).
  • Content: A plain-text content preview that expands into full rich text.
    • Reply Indicator: A subtle ↳ arrow icon is prepended inline before the text for reply notes. The reply indicator is mutually exclusive with the pin icon (as replies cannot be pinned).
  • Contact: The name of the contact the note is linked to.
  • Author: The name of the team member who created the note (or "⚡ System" for system-generated logs).
  • Created: The date and time the note was created.
• Expand/Collapse Accordion UX:
  • Parent Context Box: When a reply note is expanded, a dedicated box labeled "A reply to {Author Name}" is shown, featuring a 2-line clamped preview of the parent note text.
  • Clean Headers: Expanding a row automatically collapses other rows. When expanded, the row's truncated preview text, inline reply/pin icons, and action headers are hidden for a clean reading layout. A Collapse ▲ button is available at the bottom of the expanded area.
• Sorting — Click the Created column header to sort notes chronologically (ascending or descending) using the date-aware stacked-bar sort icon.
• Full-text search — Search across all note text at once.
• Type Filter — Filter the list using compact text tabs: All (default), Contact, Task, or Appointment.
• Contact Filtering — When you click "View All Notes" from a contact's detail page, the notes page pre-filters to show only that contact's notes.
• Clear Filters — If filters or search terms deviate from defaults, a ✕ Clear filters button appears next to the search bar to reset the view.
• Standard Pagination — Use standard page-based pagination controls at the bottom of the table to navigate results page-by-page.
• Inline Task Editing — Clicking a task note opens the full task detail view directly over the notes list, preserving your filters, sorting, and pagination state. Any task note updates performed inline instantly refresh the notes table.
• Mobile Responsive Design:
  • On small viewports (< 640px), the Contact, Author, and Date columns are hidden from the table headers and automatically rendered inside the expanded row metadata section.
  • The Type badge text is replaced by compact icons (User for Contact, CheckSquare for Task, Calendar for Appointment) inside a narrowed 32px column to conserve screen space.
  • Horizontally-expanded task notes automatically wrap actions and clamp titles to prevent layout overflow.

The Notes page is accessible from the sidebar and from Global Search.

Notes in Global Search

Notes are searchable via the Global Search palette (⌘K / Ctrl+K). When you search, matching note text appears as a result with the linked contact's name. Selecting a note result takes you to the parent record:

• Contact notes → Contact Detail page
• Task notes → Task detail view
• Appointment notes → Appointment Detail page

Appointment notes are module-gated — they only appear in search results when the Appointments module is enabled in Workspace Settings.

Permissions

All workspace members can view, create, edit, and delete notes.

Related

• Task Notes — How notes work on tasks
• Appointment Notes — How notes work on appointments
• Technical Reference: Notes — Data models, schemas, and architecture