Am I able to create a view for my Sales team that "summarizes" task activities?  Preferably by Date, Person, so that they can easily see the notes left by the previous person that called?

This is the main reason why many of our salespeople do not use tasks, and they want to see the task history summarized easily by account, and by the contact.  Here's how they are logging tasks now in Description.

The other thing they say is there's too much "noise" in the activity history since many emails and other email marketing emails get logged as tasks.  

Any advice on how to achieve this?