Automating Sales Follow-Ups with Activity Plans in Odoo CRM
How Hong Kong SMEs use Odoo CRM activity plans to turn a repetitive follow-up sequence into a one-click template — consistent process, nothing forgotten, less data entry.
When Every Deal Follows the Same Steps
At APAA, most of the Hong Kong SMEs we work with run their sales the same way without realising it. For almost every new opportunity, the team goes through an identical sequence: send an introductory email, book a call, prepare a proposal, then chase a follow-up a few days later. The steps rarely change — yet a salesperson recreates each one by hand, every single time, on every single deal.
That manual repetition is exactly what Odoo CRM's activity plans are designed to remove. An activity plan is a reusable list of activities that you define once and apply to any opportunity in a few clicks. There is nothing to install or configure first — activity plans ship with the CRM app by default.
Why This Matters for a Small Sales Team
The cost of building each follow-up task by hand is not just the minutes it takes. When every rep sets their own deadlines and assigns their own colleagues, three problems creep in:
- The process drifts. Two salespeople handle the same kind of deal in two different ways, so quality depends on who happens to own the opportunity.
- Steps get dropped. Under pressure, the "prepare the demo" or "second follow-up" task is the one that quietly never gets created.
- Time leaks into data entry. Re-typing the same five tasks for every deal is pure overhead that adds nothing for the customer.
An activity plan fixes all three at once by turning your standard workflow into a template the whole team shares.
Building Your First Activity Plan
Open the activity plans screen
In the CRM app, go to Configuration > Activity Plans. Click New to start a plan from scratch, or open an existing one to refine it.
Understand the fields on each line
Every activity inside a plan is described by a handful of fields. Knowing what each one controls makes the rest of the setup obvious:
| Field | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Activity Type | The kind of task — email, call, meeting, or any custom type you have created |
| Summary | A description that overrides the default summary, but only within this plan |
| Assignment | Who the task goes to. "Ask at launch" keeps it with the opportunity's current owner; "Default user" always assigns the same named person |
| Interval & Unit | How many days, weeks, or months the task sits before or after the plan date |
| Trigger | Whether the task fires before or after the plan date |
Add the activities
Click Add a line at the bottom of the list and pick the activity type you want. If it is not in the dropdown, click Search more to browse every available activity, including any custom ones your business has set up. Use the drag handle to reorder the lines so they run in the sequence your workflow actually follows.
Set the timing for each step
For every activity, decide when it is due relative to the plan date. For example:
- "Create a pitch deck" — 3 days before the plan date, because the prep needs to happen ahead of the main engagement.
- "Send follow-up email" — 2 days after the plan date.
- "Schedule a product demo" — 1 week after the plan date.
The "before the plan date" trigger is what makes activity plans genuinely useful for preparation work, not just chasing. It lets you schedule the groundwork that has to be finished before you ever meet the client.
Applying a Plan to an Opportunity
Once a plan exists, dropping it onto a deal takes seconds:
- Open any opportunity in your pipeline.
- Click the Activity button.
- In the schedule-activity form, you will see a section listing your activity plans.
- Choose the plan you want — say, "Custom Furniture Production Flow."
- Set the due date. This becomes the plan date that every activity's timing references.
- Click Schedule.
Every activity in the plan is created instantly, each with its own deadline and owner already worked out. A coloured letter on each one shows the assigned user, so at a glance you can see exactly who owns what.
How We Advise Clients to Use Activity Plans
After setting these up for HK teams across different industries, a few habits separate the plans that stick from the ones that get ignored:
Keep each plan narrow. Build a separate plan for each sales scenario rather than one sprawling plan that tries to cover everything. A focused plan is easier to trust and easier to maintain.
Lean on custom activities. If your business has steps that Odoo does not ship by default — "Create a pitch deck," "Prepare the production line" — create those as custom activity types first, then slot them into your plans.
Assign with intent. Use "Default user" for tasks that always belong to the same specialist, and "Ask at launch" for tasks that should stay with whoever owns the deal.
Revisit the timing. After a few weeks of real use, check whether the intervals you chose actually match how your team works. Adjust until the plan reflects reality, not your first guess.
The Takeaway
Activity plans turn the most repetitive part of selling — recreating the same follow-up tasks deal after deal — into a single click. You describe your standard workflow once, complete with timing and ownership, and from then on every opportunity inherits it instantly. Your team stays consistent, no step gets forgotten, and everyone reclaims time that used to go into data entry.
Head to Configuration > Activity Plans in your CRM app and build your first one today. If you would like help mapping your real sales process into Odoo, talk to the APAA team and we will help you set it up properly the first time.