Working with leads

A lead is an unqualified prospect. Capturing it in CRM means the prospect is tracked without cluttering your live opportunity pipeline. Once a lead is qualified you convert it into a customer and an opportunity.

Capturing a lead

1. Open CRM → Leads and choose New lead.
2. Enter the contact details: contact name, company, phone and email.
3. Pick the source: where the lead came from (see Lead sources below).
4. Set the region, the product interest (for example Pump or Valve) and the owner (the user who will work the lead).
5. Add any free-text notes.
6. Save.

If the email or phone number matches an existing lead or customer, a warning with a link to the matching record appears before you save, so you can avoid creating a duplicate.

A new lead starts in the New state. Only roles with lead-create permission can capture a lead, and every lead you create is recorded in the audit log.

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Add a screenshot here: the New lead form with contact, company, source, region and product-interest fields.

The lead lifecycle

A lead moves through a simple set of states:

New  →  Contacted  →  Qualified  →  Converted / Disqualified

• New: just captured.
• Contacted: you have reached out.
• Qualified: this is a real opportunity worth pursuing.
• Converted: turned into a customer (and usually an opportunity).
• Disqualified: not worth pursuing. Disqualifying a lead requires a reason note.

You change the state from the lead detail page using the state controls. These controls are gated by role, so only authorised users can move a lead forward.

Finding leads: the lead list

CRM → Leads shows every lead in a sortable, paginated table with columns for name company, email, phone, source, region, category (product interest), owner, state, created date and last activity.

• Filter by state, source, owner, region and date range.
• Search by a partial match across name, company, email and phone.
• Click a row to open the lead’s detail page.

Deleted leads never appear in the list. The list is visible only to roles with lead-read permission.

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Add a screenshot here: the leads list with the filter bar and search box.

The lead detail page

Opening a lead shows everything about it in one place:

• Header: contact and company information.
• Source, owner and state, with the state-transition controls.
• Notes.
• Activities: the chronological timeline (see below).
• Attachments: supporting files kept with the lead.
• Audit log: the immutable record of changes to the lead.
• Convert action, available once the lead is Qualified.

Disqualifying a lead requires a reason note before it will save.

Logging activities (calls, meetings, emails, tasks)

Activities record the work you do on a lead, and on customers and opportunities too. Supported activity types are call, meeting, email, task and note.

1. On the lead (or customer/opportunity) detail page, open the Activities timeline and choose Add activity.
2. Pick the type and enter a subject, the date and time, the duration, the outcome and any notes. You can record attendees where relevant.
3. Save. The activity appears at the top of the timeline (newest first).

You can filter the timeline by type, owner and date range, and you can edit or remove your own activities. Managers can edit any activity. Every activity is scoped to your tenant and recorded in the audit log.

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Add a short recording here: adding an activity (pick type, fill subject/outcome, save) and it appearing at the top of the timeline.

Lead sources: where your leads come from

Lead sources (web form, referral, trade show, cold outbound, partner, and so on) let you report on which channels actually convert. A set of sensible defaults is seeded for you.

Sources are maintained by a tenant admin under Settings:

1. Open Settings → Lead sources.
2. Add, edit or deactivate a source, giving each a name, a channel and an active flag.
3. Active sources then appear in the source picker when capturing or editing a lead.

Only admins can manage lead sources; other roles use them but cannot change the list.

Custom fields on leads

If your business captures data that the standard fields don’t cover, plant capacity certification level, business segment, a tenant admin can add custom fields to CRM records under Settings → Custom fields. Each field has a name, a type (text, number date, yes/no, single-select or multi-select), an optional default and a required flag. Custom fields then appear on the create and edit forms in the order they were defined. Deactivating a field hides it from new entries but keeps the values already captured.