F4 — Collaborating on a record

The half of a record that is not fields at all. A log note is internal and notifies nobody, which is where the why goes; a message reaches the followers by email and names them before a word is typed, and choosing the wrong one is how a customer receives an internal opinion about their credit limit. Followers are who is told and not who may look — access is a separate matter — and tagging somebody adds one. Attachments file beside the conversation, so the chatter is the audit trail and the story of a document outlives it.

An activity is the other half: work with a date and an owner, and the owner is not always you, so a handover becomes a line on the right person's list rather than a tap on the shoulder. A note records what already happened; an activity is what still has to, which is why work put in a note gets lost. The date passing does nothing on its own — somebody marks it done. Odoo schedules some of them itself, from an equipment's maintenance frequency to a lot's expiry date.