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Find stale Copper deals and create follow-up tasks

Every Friday someone opens the Copper pipeline, looks for deals that went quiet and types a follow-up task for each, and the ones in the last column get missed.

Cotlet does it in your own Copper CRM account with list_opportunities, get_opportunity and create_task, called by your AI agent, an n8n workflow or a script.

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Hosted · nothing to install or maintain

Can Copper CRM do this on its own?

Copper has no built-in list of stale deals with their notes, and no MCP server for an agent (checked 20 Oct 2026). Workflow Automation can create a task from a rule with a daily check, and Copper keeps Inactive Days and Days in Stage fields for that. A rule is created by an admin, fires on field values only and cannot weigh what the last note said.

How you do it in Copper CRM today

  1. Open Opportunities in pipeline view and scan each stage for cards that have not moved.
  2. Open a card and read the Activity Log in the center of the record to see when anyone last touched it.
  3. In the Related section on the right, click Add Task (or the + under Tasks) and pick an Activity Type such as Phone Call.
  4. Fill in the task name and due date and save. A task indicator light on the opportunity then shows it has an outstanding task.
  5. Repeat for every quiet deal. Copper has no saved filter that hands you the quiet deals with their last note next to them.

How to find stale Copper deals and create follow-up tasks

Prompt

List open Sales opportunities in Copper that sat 14 or more days with no activity, read their last notes and create a follow-up task for each owner.
  1. 01

    Pull the open deals

    Your agent calls list_opportunities with status Open and the pipeline you named. It follows next_cursor to the end, so a long pipeline is judged as one batch. Each row carries days_in_stage and inactive_days as Copper calculates them.

  2. 02

    Keep the quiet ones

    The agent keeps deals whose inactive_days passes your threshold, 14 in the prompt above, and drops the ones that already have an open task, so nobody gets a second reminder for the same deal.

  3. 03

    Read before writing

    get_opportunity returns the latest activity-log entries and open tasks of each quiet deal. A deal whose last note says the customer asked to wait until January is listed for you as a candidate for Abandoned, not nudged.

  4. 04

    Create one task per deal

    create_task adds a task on the opportunity with an Activity Type, a due date three days out and the owner as assignee. The task name quotes the last note, so the owner sees why it exists. Each task waits for your OK by default.

  5. 05

    Report what it did

    The agent lists the deals it tasked, the deals it skipped and why, and the deals it flagged for a status change.

What you get back

Example data

Open Sales deals: 31
Quiet 14+ days: 6
Tasks created: 4
- Harbor Dental proposal, owner Sam, due Oct 23
- Northwind renewal, owner Priya, due Oct 23
Skipped: 1 already has an open task
Flagged for Abandoned: Lakeview Clinic ("asked to wait until January")

Other ways to ask

  • Every Monday, list open deals above 10000 that have been in the same stage for 3 weeks and show them without creating tasks.
  • Create the follow-up tasks for stale Renewals deals only, due the Friday after next.
  • For deals stuck in Negotiation, create a Meeting task instead of a Phone Call.
  • Tell me which owners have the most stale deals, and create nothing.

What Copper CRM allows, and what to know first

  • Copper creates tasks from Workflow Automation rules, but a rule runs on field values and cannot send emails.
  • Copper tasks are visible to every user in the account by default, and each user can make their own tasks private in My Preferences.
  • Only admins create Workflow Automation rules, and only in the web app. A saved rule stays off until someone turns it on.
  • Workflow Automation's daily check runs about every 24 hours at varying times, and one rule cannot trigger another.
  • A task needs an Activity Type, which defaults to Phone Call, Meeting or To-do (To-do is off until it is turned on under Settings > Manage Activity Types).

create_task asks for your OK by default. To run it weekly without you, switch confirmation off for that tool in your dashboard.

Sources: Copper Help: Working with Tasks · Copper Help: Automating your account with Workflow Automation · Copper Help: Create and edit Activity Types · Copper Help: Working with Opportunities

Call create_task from a script

curl

curl -X POST https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/copper-crm/tasks \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"Follow up on Harbor Dental proposal: asked for revised pricing on Oct 6","related_to_type":"opportunity","related_to_id":"31844120","due_date":"2026-10-23","activity_type":"Phone Call"}'

Example response

{
  "task_id": "9061877",
  "name": "Follow up on Harbor Dental proposal: asked for revised pricing on Oct 6",
  "activity_type": "Phone Call",
  "due_date": "2026-10-23",
  "assignee": "Sam Ortiz",
  "related_to": {
    "type": "opportunity",
    "id": "31844120",
    "name": "Harbor Dental proposal"
  }
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the call is copper_crm_write → create_task. Example data.

Schedule it in n8n, Make, Zapier or cron

Copper CRM tools this automation uses

Cotlet Copper CRM tools used to find stale Copper deals and create follow-up tasks
Tool Parameters
list_opportunities pipeline, stage, status, limit, cursor
get_opportunity opportunity_id
create_task name, related_to_type, related_to_id, due_date, activity_type, assignee
All 12 Copper CRM tools with descriptions

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to connect Copper CRM to Cotlet?

Yes. You sign in to Copper CRM yourself, in your own Cloud Browser in the EU, and we never save your password. Your agents only get Copper CRM once you enable it, every background request is listed, and the browser profile is stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM, the cipher 1Password uses for its vaults. The AI model never sees a login, posts and messages wait for your OK, and Disable for agents cuts access in one click. Independent scanners grade cotlet.dev A+ on Qualys SSL Labs, securityheaders.com and Mozilla Observatory; live results are on https://cotlet.dev/security.

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