# Follow-ups in Connect

A follow-up is a dated commitment on a channel, carrying a reason. There are six channels — `email`, `whatsapp`, `sms`, `phone`, `any` and `task` — and a drain executes the ones it owns when they fall due. The `task` channel is the exception: it is work for a person, and no drain ever sends it. Almost every rule in this section follows from those two facts.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/follow-ups, #/needs-you
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/follow-ups/

## What a follow-up is made of

**A person** — Who the commitment is to. A follow-up hangs off the canonical Person, which is why it survives a merge and why the duplicate rule can be about a person rather than about an address.
**A when** — The due time, in the timezone the promise was made in. It is not a reminder date for you — it is the moment the drain becomes willing to act.
**A channel** — One of six. It decides who executes: a drain, or a human being.
**A reason** — Why this exists. Not optional in any useful sense — a commitment with no reason is worthless to whoever inherits it, and that includes you in three weeks.

There is deliberately no free-form status field. What a follow-up has instead is a small vocabulary of things that can happen to it — it can be scheduled, become due, be attempted, be completed, be cancelled, be snoozed, or be stopped along with every other follow-up for a thread or a person. Each of those is a recorded event rather than a word somebody typed.

## The six channels and who executes them

| Channel | Executed by | What that means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| `email` | The email drain | A reply or a fresh message under the mailbox's autonomy mode |
| `whatsapp` | The WhatsApp drain | A message on the handle the person is known by |
| `sms` | The SMS drain, where a provider carries SMS | Outbound SMS is provider-dependent; the live carrier carries none, so this is not a channel to promise a customer on that account |
| `phone` | `runner.chase_phone` | Two rows per tick through `voice_engine.place_call`, with the same gates as any outbound call |
| `any` | Whichever channel fits when it comes due | Useful when the promise was about content rather than about a medium |
| `task` | **A person. No drain ever sends it.** | It appears as "For a person to do" and stays there until somebody does it |

> **Note** The `task` channel is the one most often misread as broken. Nothing sends it because nothing is supposed to: "send the quotation" and "review the recording" are human work that Connect is tracking, not messages it is holding back. [Follow-ups for a person to do](/docs/follow-ups/task-channel/) is the page for that.

## Everything in this section

- [Creating a follow-up](/docs/follow-ups/creating/) — by hand, from a conversation, or from a call, and what each route records.
- [The reason on a follow-up](/docs/follow-ups/reason/) — what a good one contains, and why a bare 'follow up' is a defect.
- [Due dates and times](/docs/follow-ups/due-time/) — how spoken and written times become a due time, the timezone rule, and the fallback.
- [Choosing the channel](/docs/follow-ups/channel-choice/) — which channel a commitment lands on, and how it is decided.
- [Follow-ups for a person to do](/docs/follow-ups/task-channel/) — the `task` channel and where it appears.
- [Changing a follow-up](/docs/follow-ups/editing/) — what can change, what cannot, and what a change records.
- [Approval on a follow-up](/docs/follow-ups/approval/) — when one is required and what a rejection does.
- [Executing a follow-up](/docs/follow-ups/execution/) — the drain, the gates, and the result written back.
- [Completing a follow-up](/docs/follow-ups/completion/) — manual and automatic completion.
- [Duplicate follow-ups](/docs/follow-ups/duplicates/) — what counts as the same commitment.
- [A follow-up that is too late](/docs/follow-ups/stale/) — the twenty-four-hour cut-off on a call-back.
- [Overdue follow-ups](/docs/follow-ups/overdue/) — where they surface and what clears them.
- [Follow-ups for the Owner and for a customer](/docs/follow-ups/followups-owner-tenant/) — one queue, one drain, two doors.

## Where follow-ups show up

The follow-ups screen is the full list, with the `task` rows grouped under their own heading because they need a different kind of attention. `due` and `upcoming` are the two queries that matter day to day: what is actionable now, and what is about to be. `summary` is the count you see on a person's record — the number of open commitments to them, which is the honest measure of how much you owe that relationship.

Anything that needs a decision rather than an action appears in Needs You alongside held replies and approvals, ranked with them rather than in a separate queue. A follow-up that has been attempted and refused is the usual reason one turns up there.

## Questions

### Is a follow-up the same as a reminder?

No, and the difference is who acts. A reminder tells a person to do something at a time. A follow-up on `email`, `whatsapp`, `sms`, `phone` or `any` is executed by a drain unless a gate stops it. Only the `task` channel behaves like a reminder, and it says so on the screen.

### Can Connect create a follow-up without being asked?

It creates one when a conversation contains a commitment — a promise to ring back, to send something, to check and confirm. That is the point: the promise already exists, and the row is what stops it evaporating when the call ends.

### What stops a follow-up going out to somebody who asked not to be contacted?

The same suppression and do-not-contact rules that stop any outbound message. A follow-up is not a privileged path around them; execution runs through the channel's ordinary gates.

## Related

- [Creating a follow-up](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/follow-ups/creating/)
- [Executing a follow-up](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/follow-ups/execution/)
- [Follow-ups for a person to do](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/follow-ups/task-channel/)
- [Needs You](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/autonomy/needs-you/)
- [Customer 360](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/relationships/customer-360/)
- [Creating a follow-up, end to end](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/workflows/create-follow-up/)

## What this page is based on

- `docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md` §7 — follow-ups and the channel list
- `docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md` §7 — follow-ups and support
- Connect capability registry (docs-source/facts.py)