A popback is a timed follow-up step for referrals that haven't been resolved yet — it automatically brings a referral back to your attention after a set number of days, instead of it silently sitting unanswered.
You configure your organization's popback sequence under Organization → Manage → Popbacks.
Each popback step has:
A background check runs hourly. For every active (non-archived) referral that's still moving through its sequence, it checks whether the next step is due yet. If it is, the referral is flagged as a priority again (so it surfaces back on the dashboard) and, if that step is configured to, gets archived or deleted. If you have the dashboard open, referrals coming back for follow-up appear there straight away — no reload needed.
Steps run in the order you add them — put your earliest (shortest Time) follow-up first.
A referral only starts moving through the sequence once you've triaged it at least once (Save notes and dismiss on the referral). Before that it sits in New.
Each step's due date is anchored to when the previous step was due, not to when the check happened to run. So the schedule doesn't drift, and if the server is offline for a while, referrals catch up to where they should be as soon as it's back rather than crawling forward one step per hour.
Separately from the popback sequence, Default Message for New Referrals sets the copyable text shown the moment a referral first arrives, before it's reached any popback step.
See also: Copyable Text & Markdown, The Referrals Dashboard.