CRM Hack 18: How to ensure leads are assigned the first stage when attempting to create with an intermediate stage?

CRM Hack 18: How to ensure leads are assigned the first stage when attempting to create with an intermediate stage?




Hello everyone !

We shared a hack earlier on leveraging blueprint to restrict users from creating leads from an intermediate stage. Let's take it one step ahead. This week's hack helps assign the 'first stage' to a lead created at an intermediate stage. And this change in the lead stage is notified to the manager concerned. 

Let's consider a sales process with eight Lead Statuses - Attempted to contact, Contact in Future, Contacted, Pre-Qualified, Event scheduled, Event updates, Convert Lead and Lost Lead. The hack triggers a workflow when a user tries creating a lead from any stage other than 'Attempted to contact'.  Here, the workflow assigns the lead stage as "Attempted to contact" - and triggers an email to the manager. A one-off notification is fine. However, repeated notifications from a select set of users indicate a knowledge gap that needs addressing through training. Right here is a cue for you to take necessary corrective action and enhance your team's productivity.

Create a template with a sample content before proceeding further. More on that here

Steps:

Go to Setup -->Automation --> Workflow rules --> Create Rule --> Select the Leads module --> Update the Rule Name and Description --> Click on Next --> Select On record action --> Select Create-> Click on Next --> Select Lead status Isn't "Attempted to contact"->Click on Next --> Select Instant Actions-> Field update-> Update the rule Name --> Select Lead Status from the pick list --> Pick the first status as defined in your sales process.




To associate an email template, from the same screen Click on ACTION listed under Instant Actions --> Send Email--> Add "Lead Owner's Manager"-->Click on Select Template and select the already created Email template -->Save the workflow.

Note: Once implemented, this hack restricts you from creating leads from other stages even if there is a valid need. For example, say you get a lead who is already pre-qualified. Use this hack judiciously and make sure your team is informed about the changes in advance.

Hope you found it useful. Do try and let me know how it works. Replicate this hack across other modules and stages as required. Hope you found it useful. 

Check out the other hacks shared in this series here.

    • Sticky Posts

    • How to reach the official Zoho Support channels and avoid fake ones.

      Dear Customers, Thanks a lot for choosing Zoho! Our applications are built to help achieve your day-to-day business goals. We are committed to engaging with you, to understand and develop solutions that enhance your productivity.  We are happy and ready to help you use our services effectively. Understanding and avoiding fake support Just like using popular bank names and financial applications for phishing purposes, using Zoho and claiming to be providing Zoho Support or services with false numbers

    • Function #35: Close all tasks associated with a lead and create a new task.

      Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how to close all tasks of a deal depending upon the deal stage. This week, let's look at a custom function that lets you close all of the tasks associated with a lead while simultaneously creating a new task, like when you need to halt all progress towards a lead while the lead is not available at the moment but create a reminder task. Business scenario: The success of a company, in one way or another, is determined by the leads it gets. Each lead is just

    • Zoho CRM Webinar - Redesigning Daily User Experiences with Canvas

      <br> Your users across roles use the CRM for day-to-day tasks that are necessary. Whether they perform their tasks on time, the right way, or at all depends on a lot of factors, including User Experience. Many businesses struggle with rigid layouts,

    • Join us at the Canada ZUG Meetup: What’s New in Zoho CRM

      Hello Zoho Community! Start your year with fresh insights into Zoho CRM’s latest updates and tools. Whether you're a CRM beginner or a experienced user, this meetup is crafted to help you optimise your processes and leverage new features. Explore practical

    • CRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.

        Hello everyone! What sets you apart as a sales person is your ability to add that personal touch to your business relationship with your customers. Sending a gift on a special day, or leaving a note wishing them on their birthdays, are small, yet significant actions that show your customers that you care. And these are actions done without any expectations :) You must be engaging with a lot of customers and it is highly unlikely that they all are your friends on Facebook or some social channel,

      • Recent Topics

      • Automating Ticket Responses Using Zoho Desk's AI Features

        We’re looking to set up an automation within Zoho Desk that can analyze incoming emails or tickets and automatically respond with relevant knowledge base articles based on the content of the request. Could you please guide us on how to configure this

      • Optimising CRM-Projects workflows to manage requests, using Forms as an intermediary

        Is it possible to create a workflow between three apps with traceability between them all? We send information from Zoho CRM Deals over to Zoho Projects for project management and execution. We have used a lookup of sorts to create tasks in the past,

      • Service locations are tied to contacts?

        Trying the system out. And what I discovered is that it seems that the whole logic of the app is, I'd say, backwards. There is a Customer - a company. The company has contact persons and service locations can be associated with different contact persons.

      • Enhancements to Zoho Maps integration tasks

        Hello everyone, We're excited to announce enhancements to the Zoho Maps integration tasks in Deluge, which will boost its performance. This post will walk you through the upcoming changes, explain why we're making them, and detail the steps you need to

      • Bug in Total Hour Calculation in Regularization for past dates

        There is a bug in Zoho People Regularization For example today is the date is 10 if I choose a previous Date like 9 and add the Check in and Check out time The total hours aren't calculated properly, in the example the check in time is 10:40 AM check

      • Cliq iOS can't see shared screen

        Hello, I had this morning a video call with a colleague. She is using Cliq Desktop MacOS and wanted to share her screen with me. I'm on iPad. I noticed, while she shared her screen, I could only see her video, but not the shared screen... Does Cliq iOS is able to display shared screen, or is it somewhere else to be found ? Regards

      • UPS Label size when generated via Zoho

        We've integrated UPS with Zoho inventory. When creating and downloading the shipping labels they are created in a larger paper size. I'd like them to be generated to print on a 4x6 printer. Zoho have told me I need to do this within our UPS portal. UPS

      • Narrative 12: Sandbox - Testing without the risk

        Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series Narrative 12: Sandbox - Testing without the risk What is a sandbox environment? A sandbox environment is a virtual playground that allows you to test freely and experiment with various elements

      • Dynamically catching new file creations

        I have a team folder with many subfolders, and in those folders we add new documents all the time. I'd like to have a workflow or script to notify me (and then take other actions) when a file is added anywhere in that structure that ends in "summary.txt".

      • Announcing new features in Trident for Mac (1.27.0)

        Hello everyone! Trident for macOS (v1.27.0) is here with new features and enhancements to improve scheduling and managing your calendar events. Let's take a quick look at them. Stay aligned across time zones. Both the scheduled and original time zones

      • Branding of native system emails

        Make system emails adjustable in terms of branding. We want our system to be completely white label, because it is not a CRM anymore, it's way more than that. We are following the strategy of "CRM for everyone" to use the CRM in all departments, not only

      • Slow uploads of large files

        I'm wanting to use Workdrive for transferring large images and video (we're talking things from 100MB-5GB). I'm running solo on a 500MBit/sec fiber connection. I'm getting upload speeds to Workdrive of no more than about 1-3Mbytes/sec when going through

      • Notes of Tasks in Zoho CRM

        Hello, Is there a way to filter the Notes that appear on a Task to only show the notes related to that specific Task and not display all the Notes of the objects related to that Task (Accounts, Contacts, Deal, etc). In essence, our team struggles to understand

      • Migrate Your Notes from OneNote to Zoho Notebook Today

        Greetings Notebook Users, We’re excited to introduce a powerful new feature that lets you migrate your notes from Microsoft OneNote to Zoho Notebook—making your transition faster and more seamless than ever. ✨ What’s New One-click migration: Easily import

      • need to upload from airtable to google drive

        I have a zapier zap that automates between airtable and google drive. When a customer uploads a new file into airtable via a client portal interface, zapier uploads that file into a folder linked to that customer's project record. I need to replicate

      • Can't delete functions that are associated with deleted workflow rules

        We have a handful of functions that were once associated with a workflow rule, but the rule has been deleted. The function still thinks it is associated so I can't assign it to a new rule. It is starting to get really messy because we have a list of functions

      • Default Sorting on Related Lists

        Is it possible to set the default sorting options on the related lists. For example on the Contact Details view I have related lists for activities, emails, products cases, notes etc... currently: Activities 'created date' newest first Emails - 'created

      • Credit Management: #1 Credit You Owe vs Credits Owed to the Business

        Think about the last time you ordered food online. You might have paid in advance through your card, but you received a $20 refund because your order got delayed or cancelled. In most apps, refunds don't go into the bank account directly; instead, they're

      • Tip #46- Turn Every Session into an Insight with Zoho Assist survey report- 'Insider Insights'

        Delivering exceptional remote support isn’t just about resolving issues, it’s about understanding how both customers and technicians experience each session. That’s where Survey Report in Zoho Assist come in. You can configure and customize survey questions

      • Enhancing Zia's service with better contextual responses and article generation

        Hello everyone, We are enhancing Zia's Generative AI service to make your support experience smarter. Here's how: Increased accuracy with Qwen One of the key challenges in AI is delivering responses that are both contextually accurate and empathetic while

      • Allow the usage of Multi-Select fields as the primary field on "Layout Rules"

        We want to force our users to enter some explanation strings when a multi-select field has been utilized. I can't understand the reason for the usage restriction of Multi-Select fields as a primary field. This is a simple "Display hidden mandatory field

      • CRM/Bookings integration edits Contact names

        Hi there, I've installed the extension that connects Zoho CRM and Zoho Bookings. When we get a new appointment from Bookings from an existing Contact, that Contact's record shows this: First Name was updated from asd to blank value Last Name was updated

      • Domain Change

        “Please update my Email-in domain from @biginmail.biginmail.in to @biginmail.zoho.com. Messages to the .in domain are bouncing.”

      • Webhooks Limit Exceeded

        Today, I received an error message saying, 'Total number of Webhook call exceeded', but when I look at Manage > Billing, it doesn't look like any of my invokeURL calls are being logged. Following the advice from this thread: https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/webhooks-daily-limits-in-zoho-creator

      • Auto select option in CRM after Zoho Form merge

        Hi, I have a dropdown field in Zoho CRM that is filled with a Zoho Form. The data is filled but not automatically shown. After selecting the right value in the dropdown the information a second field is shown. So the question is; how can I make the dropdown

      • Bring your CRM data straight into your presentations in Zoho Show

        Let's say you are working on a presentation about your team's sales pipeline for an upcoming strategy meeting. All the information you need about clients and leads is in Zoho CRM, but you end up copying details from the CRM into your slides, adjusting

      • Improved RingCentral Integration

        We’d like to request an enhancement to the current RingCentral integration with Zoho. RingCentral now automatically generates call transcripts and AI-based call summaries (AI Notes) for each call, which are extremely helpful for support and sales teams.

      • Introducing New APIs in Zoho Contracts

        We are excited to announce the release of new APIs in Zoho Contracts to help you automate and manage every stage of your contract lifecycle more efficiently. Here’s a quick overview of what’s new: 1. Complete Contract Draft You can use this API to complete

      • Vimeo

        For me Vimeo is the most important video social channel for media and filmmakers. Would others agree and like it added to Zoho Social.

      • Delete a department or category

        How do I delete a Department? Also, how do I delete a Category? This is pretty basic stuff here and it's impossible to find.

      • Organization Emails in Email History

        How can I make received Org Emails to show up here?

      • Editing the Ticket Properties column

        This is going to sound like a dumb question, but I cannot figure out how to configure/edit the sections (and their fields) in this column: For example, we have a custom "Resolution" field, which parked itself in the "Ticket Information" section of this

      • Deleting Fields in CRM Deletes Views in Analytics

        Hey friends! I'm having some issues when we modify some fields within ZohoCRM. There are times where we need to sunset a field and eventually completely remove it. In these instances, it seems like a lot of views are removed in Analytics. This ranges

      • Zoho Analytics Automatically Deletes Queries and Reports When a Synced CRM Field Is Removed

        We’ve encountered a serious and recurring issue that poses a massive data integrity risk for any Zoho Analytics customer using Zoho CRM integration. When a field is deleted in Zoho CRM — even an unused one — Zoho Analytics automatically deletes every

      • How to setup pricing in Zoho

        Hi everyone, I am relatively new here and have just moved from my old inventory system to the Zoho one. I am trying to get my head around how it all works. I am mostly setup connected to a shopify store, but I do manual sales also For manual invoicing,

      • Prefilled Date fields auto-changed and then locked when using “Edit as new”

        If a document out for signature has date fields (not SignedDate fields) that were pre-filled before sending, and then you use “Edit as new” to create a new version of the same document, the value of those date fields gets automatically changed to today

      • Is there a way to update all the start and end dates of tasks of a project after a calendar change?

        Hi! Here's my situation. I've built a complete project planning. All its tasks have start dates and due dates. After completing the planning, I've realized that the project calendar was not the right one. So I changed the project calendar. I now have

      • Access Phone Field Components (Country Code) Directly

        Hello everyone, I'd like to propose an enhancement for the Phone field in Zoho Creator. The Problem: The Phone field captures the country code and local number separately, but stores them as a single string (e.g., +1234567890). To get the country code,

      • Send mass messages through WhatsApp from the Tickets module

        Hi Everyone! Effective communication is key to delivering prompt and reliable customer support. Because WhatsApp is one of the most widely used and familiar messaging platforms, it's an effective channel for agents to reach customers who have submitted

      • The difference between Zoho Marketing Automation and Zoho Campaigns

        Greetings Marketers! This post aims to differentiate between Zoho Marketing Automation and Zoho Campaigns. By the time you get to the end of the post, you will be able to choose a product that objectively suits you. What is Zoho Marketing Automation?

      • Next Page