WHAT WE SEE IN THE FIELD
The opportunity is in the CRM. The follow up is somewhere else.
The salesperson had a good meeting.
The opportunity was updated. The expected revenue is there. The proposal has been sent.
And then nothing happens for twelve days.
Not because the opportunity was lost. Not because the customer said no.
Someone simply forgot to follow up.
This is one of the most common gaps we see in CRM usage. Companies focus on recording opportunities but pay much less attention to what should happen between one pipeline stage and the next.
A healthy sales pipeline should not only tell you where an opportunity is.
It should also tell you:
- What happens next?
- Who is responsible for it?
- When should it happen?
That is where Odoo CRM Activities become useful.
ODOO CRM ACTIVITIES IN PRACTICE
Every active opportunity should have a next action
In Odoo CRM, activities are follow up tasks linked directly to leads and opportunities.
They can be used to schedule actions such as calls, emails, meetings, tasks and document requests. Companies can also configure their own activity types when the standard options do not reflect the way their sales team works.
This means that instead of writing:
Follow up with customer
in a personal notebook or calendar, the salesperson can schedule the next action directly on the opportunity.
For example:
- Call procurement on Thursday
- Send revised proposal on 22 September
- Schedule technical validation meeting
- Request signed NDA
- Review proposal with Sales Director
The difference may seem small.
Operationally, it is significant.
The next action becomes part of the CRM record and therefore part of the information available to the rest of the organisation.
HOW WE WOULD CONFIGURE ODOO CRM ACTIVITIES
Start by defining what should happen after each important sales event
Activities work best when they are connected to the sales process rather than used as generic reminders.
For example:
After the first discovery meeting
- Schedule: Prepare solution proposal
- Responsible: Opportunity owner
- Deadline: Within 3 working days
After sending a proposal
- Schedule: Customer follow up
- Responsible: Opportunity owner
- Deadline: 3 to 5 days after submission
After a technical validation
- Schedule: Confirm commercial decision process
- Responsible: Account manager
- Deadline: Within 2 days
Before the expected closing date
- Schedule: Review opportunity status
- Responsible: Salesperson
- Deadline: Based on the expected close date
The exact rules will depend on the business - the important point is consistency.
Two salespeople handling the same type of opportunity should not have completely different follow up processes simply because one is more organised than the other.
ACTIVITY PLANS
When the follow up process repeats, do not rebuild it every time
Some sales processes have a predictable sequence of actions.
This is where Odoo Activity Plans become particularly useful.
An Activity Plan is a predefined sequence of activities that can be launched on a CRM opportunity. Odoo then schedules the activities contained in that plan according to the configured timing.
For example, imagine a new qualified opportunity enters a structured B2B sales process.
An Activity Plan could include:
Day 0: Prepare discovery meeting
Day 2: Hold discovery meeting
Day 3: Prepare commercial proposal
Day 6: Follow up on proposal
Day 12: Review opportunity status
Instead of relying on every salesperson to remember the complete sequence, the process is already defined.
This is particularly useful for repeatable commercial scenarios such as inbound leads, tenders, partner referrals, product demonstrations or specific sales campaigns.
AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION
Scheduling an activity is not the same as automating the action
This distinction matters when designing the process.
An Odoo Activity can tell a salesperson: Send the follow up email today.
That does not necessarily mean Odoo sends the email automatically.
Likewise, an Activity Plan can schedule a sequence of actions without turning the entire sales process into an automated workflow.
That is often exactly what you want.
Some actions can be automated. Others require judgement, context or personal interaction.
The objective should not be to automate every touchpoint.
It should be to make sure the right action happens at the right moment.
SALES MANAGEMENT
Activities change the questions asked during pipeline reviews
Without structured activities, sales meetings often become information collection exercises:
- What happened with this opportunity?
- Did we contact them?
- When are you following up?
- Are they still interested?
Once next activities are consistently maintained in Odoo, management can focus on exceptions instead:
- Which opportunities have overdue activities?
- Which active opportunities have no next activity?
- Which deals have been sitting at the same stage without meaningful interaction?
- Which actions are due this week?
Activities can be viewed from the opportunity itself and across Odoo views, including Kanban, list and dedicated activity views. Odoo also distinguishes between future, due today and overdue activities.
That gives the sales manager a much clearer picture of whether the pipeline is actually moving.
THE MOST COMMON MISTAKE
Using activities as a personal to do list
When every salesperson creates activities differently, the CRM quickly loses managerial value.
- One salesperson writes: Call
- Another writes: Follow up
- Another schedules nothing and relies on Outlook.
Technically, everyone may still be using the CRM but there is no common commercial process.
We normally recommend defining a small number of meaningful activity types and agreeing when they should be used.
The objective is not to create dozens of rules, but to make the next commercial action visible and understandable.
ANOTHER COMMON MISTAKE
Leaving completed activities open
An activity that has happened should be marked as completed.
This sounds trivial, but it matters- if old activities remain overdue in the CRM, managers can no longer distinguish between genuine delays and poor CRM maintenance.
Odoo itself recommends marking activities as done once the interaction has taken place so that the activity status continues to represent what is actually happening in the pipeline.
CRM discipline therefore matters just as much as CRM configuration.
OXALYO'S TAKE
Your pipeline shows position. Activities show movement.
Pipeline stages tell management where an opportunity currently sits.
Activities provide another dimension: what is supposed to happen next.
You need both.
A beautifully configured pipeline with no consistent follow up process will still contain opportunities that quietly stop moving.
When we configure Odoo CRM, we therefore look beyond stages. We define what each stage means, what actions normally follow important commercial events, which activities should be standardised and where automation actually adds value.
The result is a sales process that is easier to manage, easier to coach and less dependent on individual memory.
FAQ: ODOO CRM ACTIVITIES
What are Activities in Odoo CRM?
Activities are follow up tasks linked to CRM leads or opportunities. They can represent actions such as calls, emails, meetings, tasks or document requests and include information such as a due date and responsible user.
What is an Odoo Activity Plan?
An Activity Plan is a predefined sequence of activities. When a plan is launched on an opportunity, the activities included in the plan are scheduled according to their configured timing.
Can Odoo CRM Activities be customised?
Yes. Odoo provides predefined activity types, and additional activity types can be configured to reflect specific business processes.
Can Odoo automatically schedule the next activity?
Odoo supports activity sequencing. Depending on the configuration, a next activity can be suggested or triggered following another activity. Activity Plans can also schedule predefined sequences of activities.
Should every CRM opportunity have a next activity?
For an active opportunity, we generally recommend having a clear next action unless there is a deliberate reason not to. This makes stalled opportunities easier to identify and reduces reliance on the salesperson's memory.
Are Odoo Activities the same as automated emails?
No. An activity represents an action to perform. Scheduling an email activity does not, by itself, mean that an email is automatically sent. Automation should be designed separately when appropriate
Do you know what should happen next on every active opportunity?
If your sales team uses Odoo CRM but follow ups still depend on personal calendars, spreadsheets or memory, the CRM is only supporting part of the sales process.