Planning the next touch
A touch is a planned client contact stored on the contact or company itself — a lightweight reminder of when to reach out next, not an assigned task.
Not every follow-up deserves a full task. When all you need is "get back to this client on Thursday", Ikigai has a lighter tool: the touch. A touch is the record's own next-contact date — it lives on the contact or company itself rather than in anyone's task queue. As the scheduling dialog puts it: it is a planned contact, not an assigned to-do.
Scheduling a touch
Open a contact or company card and press the Touch quick action. The "Schedule a touch" dialog asks for three things:
- When — pick a date, or use one of the presets: Today, Tomorrow, In 2 days, In a week.
- Time — a rough time of day: morning, afternoon, or evening.
- Reminder note (optional) — a short line about what the touch is for, e.g. "call about the contract".
Once scheduled, the date is written straight onto the record. Deals surface it too: a deal card shows a "NEXT TOUCH" chip counting down the days, so the plan is visible right on the kanban board.
Touch vs task
| Touch | Task | |
|---|---|---|
| Lives on | The contact / company record itself | The task queue, with an assignee |
| Weight | One date plus an optional note | Title, description, status, priority, files |
| Best for | "Ping the client next week" | Concrete work that must be tracked to done |
If the follow-up grows into real work — preparing documents, coordinating several people — create a task from the deal instead; see Creating tasks from a deal.
Staying on top of silence
Touches feed several visibility mechanisms:
- Contact and company lists have a Last touch column, and companies can be filtered by how long they have been silent.
- Records that have gone quiet get warning chips such as "NO CONTACT" with the number of silent days.
Note that the dashboard's weekly touches KPI is a separate mechanism: it counts touch-kind tasks you personally complete against the workspace target — the record-level touch dates described in this article don't feed it.
A good habit: never close a client card without a next touch scheduled. An empty next-touch date is how deals go cold unnoticed.
For approvals on deals — a different kind of "waiting on someone" — see Requesting and granting approvals.
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