What Is an Activity Log?
TL;DR
An activity log is the time-ordered record of every interaction on a CRM contact or deal: emails sent and received, calls, meetings, notes, and changes of stage or owner. It is what lets anyone picking up the record see what already happened without asking the person who did it.
What belongs in an activity log?
Anything that changed the relationship or the record: each email sent and received, calls and their outcomes, meetings booked, held or missed, notes a person typed, and every stage or owner change with a timestamp against it.
What does not belong is a summary. An entry reading followed up is not something anybody can act on, and a log made mostly of summaries costs the time it took to write while carrying none of what was actually said.
Why does the activity log matter most at handover?
Because it is the only thing a new owner has. Every other field states what is true now, and the log states what has already been tried, which is what stops a second owner sending the first email again.
It is also what makes a claim about a deal checkable. A prospect who went quiet and a proposal that was never sent look identical in a stage field, and they are easy to tell apart in the log.
Frequently asked questions
Automatic for anything a system can observe: sends, replies, bookings, form submissions, stage changes. Manual only for what a human knows and no tool saw, which in practice means call notes and context from a live conversation.