Automations for the CRM

The actions builder and workflows can start on what happens in the CRM, and act on it. Every event below is announced by the server path that performed the write, so a record written straight into the database — by hand, by an import, or over the REST API — announces nothing; what each event carries is in CRM events.

The events

In the trigger picker	Fires when	Read more
Contact created	A capture on your site made a new contact. A repeat visit by somebody already on the list is an interaction, not a new contact. The event carries the lifecycleStage the capture set — lead for a form or a booking request, subscriber for a sign-up or a newsletter opt-in, customer for an order — so a filter can pick the form captures out of the sign-ups — and formId when the capture came through a form, so a condition can pick one form's people out of every other door's.	CRM events
Contact changed stage	A contact's lifecycle stage was moved — from the contact's page, or by another automation. Setting the stage a contact already has fires nothing.	Lifecycle stages
Deal moved	A deal moved between open stages, or was reopened.	Moving, winning and losing
Deal won	A deal was marked won.	Moving, winning and losing
Deal lost	A deal was marked lost; the reason given travels with the event.	Moving, winning and losing
CRM task completed	A task was ticked done. Reopening a task fires nothing.	Completing and reopening

Pick one and the Filter field's helper text lists the keys the event puts in scope, so a filter such as lifecycleStage == "customer" or a condition such as stageId equals negotiation can be written without leaving the editor.

The steps

Plan availability

The five CRM steps are part of the CRM suite, included from Starter. On a workspace whose plan does not include it, a step that reaches the CRM does nothing and the run history records why — the plan that carries the steps is named — the same way a webhook step reports the plan it needs. See The CRM suite.

Five server steps act on the CRM: Set the contact's lifecycle stage, Tag the contact, Assign the contact an owner, Create a CRM task and Log a CRM activity. Each acts on the contact the triggering event names — by contactId when the event carries one, otherwise by the email in the event's data — and does nothing, with the reason in the run history, when the event names nobody this site can see. Fields and behavior are in CRM steps.

Assigning an owner, or rotating one

Assign the contact an owner has two modes. A team member names one person by email address, matched against the workspace roster when the automation runs. Round robin hands the contact to the next member of the pool kept under CRM → Settings, moving the rotation on — the same pool an assignment rule's round robin draws from, so a rule and an automation share one rotation.

Either mode reassigns: an automation that assigns an owner means to, so a contact that already has one is handed over, and the site's lead for the same person follows. Naming the owner the contact already has changes nothing. The new owner gets a console notification, Contact assigned to you, linking to the contact.

This is the deliberate counterpart of the assignment rules, which run on capture and only for a contact with no owner. Use a rule to decide who gets a new contact; use this step to move a contact when something happens to them — a stage change, a won deal.

An automated email on the timeline

The Send an email step is not a CRM step — it mails whichever address the event carries — but when that address is the contact the event is about, the message is logged on the contact's timeline as a sent email, exactly as a teammate's Send email is: with its subject, the address it went to, and a delivery state that follows the message. So a welcome sequence shows on the person's history beside the calls a rep made.

Nothing is logged when the step writes to somebody else — an internal alert sent to your own address through the To field — or when the address belongs to nobody this site can see. The row needs the CRM suite like the five steps above, and a record already at the activity ceiling gets the email without the entry. Automated email is metered as usage and is not counted against the one-to-one email allowance, which is for what people send by hand.

Recipes

The common CRM automations do not have to be built from scratch. Beside Add action on Automation → Actions, the Recipes menu lists four ready-to-edit actions. Choosing one opens the action editor already filled in — name, trigger, conditions and steps — with a line saying which recipe it started from. Change anything, then save; nothing is saved until you do, and a recipe closed without saving leaves no trace.

Recipe	Starts on	What it builds
Welcome a new lead	Contact created, with the condition source equals form	Assign the contact an owner on Round robin (the pool under CRM → Settings; with no pool the step fails, the run carries on, and the run history says so), then Create a CRM task — a call, due in 1 day, assignee blank so it goes to the owner just chosen — then Send an email thanking them (sent from your workspace's identity to the address the event carries, as an immediate reply rather than marketing, and logged on the contact's timeline), then Tag the contact website.
Follow up a won deal	Deal won	Create a CRM task — a call, due in 7 days, to the contact's owner. No stage step: a won deal makes its contact a customer on its own before the event fires, and a step that set the stage here would move an evangelist back.
Re-engage a stale lead	Contact changed stage, with the condition lifecycleStage equals lead	Wait for something to happen — the next Contact changed stage for this person, giving up after a week — then Create a CRM task (a call, due in 1 day) with the step condition _waitTimedOut is not empty, so the call is booked only when the week ran out. A lead whose stage moved on in the meantime skips it.
Tag by form	Contact created, with the condition formId equals the form you pick	Tag the contact with the form's name. This recipe asks for one of the site's forms first — the picker offers the site's live forms, not archived ones — because the form is what the trigger is keyed on. Change the tag in the editor if the form's name is not the tag you want.

Recipes are definitions, the same on every site; only the form picker is the site's own. A recipe that reaches the CRM needs the plan the CRM steps need, and choosing one on a plan without the actions builder is refused the way Add action is.

Installing a recipe on a site from the organization

An organization running several sites does not have to open each site's editor. The organization-level CRM has a Recipes card under Settings: every recipe, the sites that already carry it, and an Install button that writes the action the recipe builds straight into the site you pick — enabled, as the table above defines it, and stamped with the recipe it came from. There is no editor step; the card links to the site's Automation → Actions page, where the installed action is edited like any other. A recipe already installed on a site is refused rather than duplicated, and a site whose actions predate the stamp is shown as one that may already have it.

Example: tag every new contact from a form

1. Open Automation → Actions and choose Add action.
2. Trigger event: Contact created. To narrow it to forms, add the condition source equals form.
3. Do: Tag the contact, with the tag website.
4. Save. Submit a form on your site from an address the workspace has not seen before, then open the contact under CRM → Contacts: the tag is on it.

A stage set by an automation is a stage change like any other, so a second action on Contact changed stage with the condition lifecycleStage equals customer can create the follow-up task.

Example: spread qualified leads across the team

1. Trigger event: Contact changed stage, with the condition lifecycleStage equals sales-qualified.
2. Do: Assign the contact an owner, set to Round robin.
3. Under CRM → Settings → Round robin, tick the members who work qualified leads.
4. Save. Each contact that reaches Sales qualified goes to the next member in turn, who is notified, and the rotation shows who is next up.

Example: follow up on a won deal

1. Trigger event: Deal won.
2. Do: Set the contact's lifecycle stage to Customer, then Create a CRM task — kind Call, due in 7 days, assignee left blank so it goes to the contact's owner.
3. Save. Mark a deal won from its page or the board: the contact it names moves to Customer, and a call is owed to them a week out.

Related

• Actions builder
• Build a workflow
• CRM settings — the default owner, assignment rules and the round-robin pool
• CRM overview
• Deals pipeline · Tasks & follow-ups · Activities & the timeline