Quick reference The Inbox is a frictionless capture queue for ad-hoc learning — articles, links, conference notes, conversations — captured before you have time to categorise them. Items in the Inbox do not count towards your CPD record until you review them and promote them to an Activity. Think of it as a staging area: capture now, decide later.
6.1 What the Inbox is for
CPD doesn’t only happen in planned courses and scheduled learning sessions. Much of the most valuable professional development is informal and opportunistic — an article that changed how you think about something, a conversation at a professional event, a presentation you watched on a lunch break.
The challenge is that this kind of learning disappears unless captured at the moment it happens. By the time you sit down to update your CPD record, you have forgotten the details.
The Inbox solves this by separating capture from classification. You capture an item in seconds — a URL, a title, a few notes — without needing to decide which objective it belongs to, what category it is, or whether it belongs in this cycle at all. That decision comes later, when you have time.
The Inbox vs the Activity log: Items in the Inbox are not part of your CPD record yet. They do not count towards your hours total, competency coverage or compliance metrics. They only count once you have reviewed them and promoted them to an Activity.
6.2 What you can capture
Each inbox item can contain:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| URL | A link to a web page, article, report or video |
| Title | Auto-populated from the URL where possible; editable |
| Notes | Your own observations, key takeaways, why it’s relevant |
| Selected text | A passage copied from the source — saved as an excerpt |
| Time already spent | If you have already spent time reading or watching, record it here so it can be logged as a timer session when promoted |
| Activity date | The date you consumed the content — defaults to today |
6.3 Capturing an item
From the Inbox page
Go to Inbox in the sidebar and select + Capture.
The capture panel opens. You can:
Paste a URL — CPDFlow will attempt to automatically fetch the page title and description. If successful, the Title field is pre-filled. You can edit this if the auto-fetched title is not useful.
Enter manually — type a title and any notes. No URL is required.
Fill in the fields you have time for and save. A minimal capture — just a title — takes under 30 seconds.
Time already spent: If you read an article before capturing it, use the Time already spent panel (hours and minutes) to record how long you spent. This time will be available to log as a timer session when you promote the item to an Activity.
From the browser (web paste)
Open the Inbox from any browser session, paste the URL of a page you are currently reading, and capture. The page title and description are fetched automatically.
6.4 Reviewing your Inbox
Your Inbox shows all captured items that have not yet been promoted or dismissed.
Each item shows:
- Title and source URL (if captured)
- Date captured
- Time spent (if recorded at capture)
- Action buttons: View, Promote, Dismiss
6.5 Promoting an item to your CPD record
When you are ready to classify an item, open it and choose how to promote it.
You have two options:
Option A — Create a new Activity
Choose New Activity when this item represents a standalone learning event that should have its own activity record.
CPDFlow pre-fills the new activity form with:
- The item’s title as the activity title
- The captured URL added as a linked Resource on the activity
- Start and end dates from the inbox item’s activity date
- Activity type defaulting to Reading & Research (when a URL is present)
- Status defaulting to In Progress
You can edit any of these fields before saving. The activity is created in your current cycle and linked to whichever development objective you choose.
Time already spent: If you recorded time in the Inbox item, the amber Time already spent panel appears on the new activity form. Confirm the hours and minutes and add an optional note — this time will be logged as a timer session attached to the new activity.
Option B — Add to an existing Activity
Choose Add to Existing Activity when this item is additional material for something you are already working on — a second article on the same topic, a follow-up resource.
Search for and select the target activity. CPDFlow adds the captured URL as a linked Resource on that activity.
Time already spent: The same amber panel appears here. Time is logged as a timer session on the existing activity.
6.6 Dismissing an item
If a captured item turns out to be irrelevant or not worth adding to your CPD record, select Dismiss. The item is removed from your active Inbox.
Dismissed items are retained in the background so that your capture history is preserved, but they will not appear in your active Inbox or count towards any metrics.
6.7 Editing a captured item
You can edit any inbox item before promoting or dismissing it. Open the item and select Edit. All fields — including time spent — are editable.
6.8 Inbox and cycle boundaries
The Inbox is not tied to a specific CPD cycle. Items you capture today can be promoted into any cycle — current or future. This is intentional: you may capture something now that you realise belongs to a course you took last month, or that you plan to action next quarter.
When you promote an item, you choose which cycle and objective it belongs to at that point.
6.9 Tips for using the Inbox well
Capture first, classify later. Do not let uncertainty about where something belongs stop you from capturing it. A rough capture is infinitely more valuable than a forgotten piece of learning.
Keep a regular Inbox review session. Set aside 10–15 minutes every one to two weeks to work through your inbox. Promoting items while the context is still fresh makes the reflection step much easier.
Use the time field. Recording time at capture is easy to forget, but it means that when you promote the item, your CPD hours are already accounted for.
The Inbox is not a permanent archive. It is a staging area. An item that has been sitting uncategorised for three months is probably either worth promoting or dismissing — leaving it creates noise that makes your Inbox harder to process.
What’s next?
Once items are promoted from the Inbox, they become Activities in your CPD log. See Chapter 5 — Activities for how to manage activities, add reflective statements and link to objectives.