People, companies and notes

The account map

The company is read out of the headline your connections already carry, which arrives free with the connection sweep and costs no profile views. It is only ever as good as what people write about themselves: somebody whose headline is a job title with no employer in it will not be placed, and somebody who has moved on without updating their profile will still show under their old employer.

It is deliberately cautious. A company it declines to guess is better than a wrong one, because a wrong one puts somebody on an account they have nothing to do with. People it could not place are listed too, rather than quietly left out of the totals.

Where something has happened

Knowing five people at a company is a fact that does not change from one month to the next, so a list showing only that is a list you read once. What changes is whether one of them just posted, changed role or accepted your request, and that is what decides who to write to this week.

So the companies list leads with the accounts where something happened in the last thirty days, most recent first, and each of those rows says what it was. Everything else keeps the order it had, which is the companies where you know the most people, so turning this on only ever lifts rows rather than reshuffling the quiet ones.

Where several things happened at one company, the row names the most significant rather than the most recent, and highlights it when it is the kind of thing worth acting on this week. A month of one job change and four posts is a month in which somebody changed job, and calling it four posts buries the only part worth acting on.

Seeing where something has happened in the help centre

When somebody moves

A person who changes employer takes their history with them, so the account they left does not keep looking busy on the strength of somebody who no longer works there, and the account they joined shows what you already know about them.

Notes

Everything else on a person's page was observed or generated. A note is the thing you actually know: that they are re-tendering in the new year, that the real decision maker is somebody else, that they asked to be called back in March. None of it can be worked out from anywhere, and all of it is lost the moment it is not written down.

Notes are dated and carry the name of whoever wrote them, so on a shared workspace it is clear who learned what and when. Anybody in the workspace can edit any note, because a note is a shared record of an account rather than private correspondence.

Where notes appear

On the person's page, and in the panel beside a conversation in the inbox. The second is where they earn their keep: the moment a note matters is the moment you are about to write to somebody.

Notes on a person in the help centre