Feature Overview

Here you’ll learn to trigger lead actions through automation.
Define criteria and then set up lead actions to automatically execute when that criteria is met –

• Add Activity
• Add Lead to List
• Add Opportunity
• Remove Lead from List
• Star Lead
• Tag Lead
• Unstar Lead
• Update Lead

Add Activity

Click Add Activity and the Add Activity pop-up box appears. On this pop-up, you can add custom activities:

Select the required custom activity from the drop-down list.

Note: If your custom activity has any associated custom fields, click Add an Additional Field to add these fields.  You can additionally add mail merge field to the selected activity type.

Once you’re done, click Save. For more information on custom activities, please refer to How to Add a Custom Activity.

Use Dynamic Responses –

You can use dynamic responses from webhooks and Lapps to update lead fields. For more information, see Dynamic Responses in Automation.

Add Lead to List

Click Add Lead to List to add leads to a list, based on the previous set of criteria you’ve chosen.

Once you’ve selected the list to which you’ll be adding the leads, click Save.

Add Opportunity

Click Add Opportunity to add an opportunity on the lead.

• Opportunity Type – The opportunity type you want to add to the lead.
• Enquiry – The enquiry under the opportunity type. By default, the first name, last name, and program (opportunity type name) are merged to create the enquiry name. You can also add additional mail merge fields.
• Owner – The opportunity owner.
• Status – The opportunity status.
• Stage – The opportunity stage.

Remove Lead from List

Click Remove Lead from List to remove leads from an existing list, based on the previous set of criteria you’ve chosen.

Once you’re done selecting a list, click Save.

Star Lead

Star Lead allows you to highlight and discover leads seamlessly. For more information, refer to ‘Star’ your Leads.

Tag Lead

Tagging is a quick way to add a label to a lead for easy identification of leads. To automate adding tags to your leads, click Tag Lead, and on the pop-up, add relevant tags. For more information on Tags, refer to Tag your Leads.

Unstar Lead

Allows you to unstar or unmark a lead as important. For more information on this, refer to ‘Star’ your Leads.

Update Lead

Allows you to update an existing lead, by changing the lead field values, if required. To do this, click Update Lead, and update the required lead fields in the pop-up.

In the above image, the ‘City’ lead field is updated to Bangalore, and the ‘Notes’ field is also updated. These lead fields are updated with these specific values if the lead satisfies the criteria you have specified.

Set Activity Owner as Lead Owner – 

You can set the activity owner as the lead owner. This is only possible when the trigger is New Activity on a Lead or Activity Update on a Lead. To do this all you have to do is select the Lead Field as Owner, click the Mail Merge checkbox and then select Activity Owner as under Value.

Use Dynamic Responses –

You can use dynamic responses from webhooks and Lapps to update lead fields. For more information, see Dynamic Responses in Automation.

Update Activity

If you have selected an activity-based trigger (New activity on lead or Activity update on lead), you an additional lead action, Update Activity, will appear under the lead actions menu.

This functionality lets you automatically update any field created under that activity. Let’s say you triggered your automation with a ‘New Activity on Lead’ and set that new activity as a ‘Meeting’. You can now use the Update Activity option to automatically update any fields created under the meeting activity. Say you want to update the ‘Notes’ field of the meeting to say ‘Done with Meeting’, just click the Update Activity option, select the ‘Notes’ field and add the value ‘Done with Meeting’. You can also add additional activity fields using the Add Activity Fields link highlighted below.

Click Save. Every time there is a meeting with a lead, the notes field of the meeting will automatically be populated with the value ‘Done with Meeting’.

Use Dynamic Responses –

You can use dynamic responses from webhooks and Lapps to update lead fields. For more information, see Dynamic Responses in Automation.

Updating Dependent Fields –

The update activity action also supports dependent fields. So if you’ve created dependent fields through the Custom Scores and Activities page they’ll show up in the Update Activity action card. Here’s how you do it –

1. Select the parent field from the Activity Field drop-down and select its value.
2. Click the Add Activity Fields link.
3. Select the child field and its value. The child field will only show values based on what you’ve chosen for the parent field due to the dependency.
4. Click Save.

Numerical Calculations on Lead and Activity Fields

Update Lead, Add Activity and Update Activity actions now supports Numeric Calculations.
For example, if you maintain some numeric field like a custom score outside LeadSquared and you want to update that score based on LeadSquared attributes then here’s how you can do it –

1. In the Update Lead, Add Activity or Update Activity action cards select the lead field (e.g., custom score) you want to update through a numeric calculation.
2. Click the checkbox under the Add Mail Merge column.
3. Type @ and select the lead and activity fields you want to perform numeric calculations on. Click the ? icon to see the possible numerical operators you can use.
4. Click Save.

Note: The automation trigger must be New Activity on a Lead or Activity Update on a Lead. If you want to perform a numerical calculation involving an activity field,

• The activity must be part of the automation trigger.
• The activity field you want to perform numerical operations on must be of numerical type.

In the example, we’re updating the value of the lead field ‘Custom Score’ to @{Activity:mx_Custom_3,}  + @{Lead:EngagementScore,}

Troubleshooting

1. Lead Field Displays UTC Time Instead of Default Time Zone

• Issue: When using Mail Merge on Lead fields (Date Type) via the Automation Update Lead card, the displayed time in the Lead field is shown in UTC instead of the Default time zone set in the user profile.
• Cause: The automation process passes all date and time values in UTC by default, and then converts them based on the Default time zone set up in the user profile. However, if the lead field is not configured as “Date Time” in the “Show as” field, the time zone is not converted from UTC to the user’s time zone.
• Solution:
  To resolve this issue, change the Lead field’s configuration from “Date” to “Date Time” in the “Show as” field. Save the changes to ensure proper time-zone conversion.

This adjustment will ensure that the displayed times align with the user’s Default time zone settings.

Any Questions?

Did you find this article helpful? Please let us know any feedback you may have in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you and help you out!

1. Feature Overview

Here you’ll learn about sales related automation actions. These actions are all directed towards your sales users. Use this feature to –

• Notify users when certain criteria are met.
• Create tasks for users.
• Automate lead and activity distribution among your users.

2. Notify Users

Allows you to send a notification email to a LeadSquared user. Click Notify User. 

By default, the notification is directed to the lead owner. You can add more LeadSquared users to the ‘To‘ field. You can also direct the notification to the activity owner or include the activity owner in the ‘Cc‘ or ‘Bcc‘ fields
You can also mail merge lead fields, owner fields, sender fields and activity fields into your email content using the mail merge option highlighted below.

Here’s a sample automation to notify a user when a task is overdue.

3. Create Tasks

Allows you to create both appointment and to-do type tasks (see Managing Task Types). Click Create Task and enter the task details.

When creating appointment type tasks, you can also set it up as a recurring task. To do this, click Make Recurring.

Note: You can mail merge lead and activity fields in the subject and description of the task. You can also schedule the task to be created using date-time fields from an activity (only for automations with activity triggers).

4. Distribute Leads

The distribute lead action allows you to set conditions to distribute leads among your users. To know more, please refer to Lead Distribution Automation in LeadSquared.

5. Distribute Opportunities

The distribute opportunity action allows you to set conditions to distribute opportunities among your users. To know more, please refer to Opportunity Distribution Automation.

6. Distribute Activities

Activity distribution works largely the same way as lead distribution. However, there are a few pre-conditions that must be met –

• The distribute activity action will only appear for lead activity-based triggers –
  • New Activity on a Lead
  • Activity Update on a Lead
• The activity type specified in the trigger must be either a custom or a sales activity.

6.1 Example Use Cases

You can use this feature to distribute activities amongst users, sales groups or teams, to complete different phases of a process or steps in an implementation cycle. For example, you can distribute –

• A ‘Document collection’ activity to a field sales team to collect identification documents.
• An ‘Account Creation’ activity to a supervisor or manager for approval.
• A ‘Loan Application’ activity to a risk assessment team to determine eligibility.

6.2 Distribute Activity Configurations

The Distribute Activity action appears under Sales Execution following a lead activity-based trigger.

When you click the Distribute Activity action, the configuration pop-up will appear. You can create multiple distribution rules consisting of various conditions.

1. Enter the Rule Name in the space provided (Use the New Rule option to create multiple rules).
2. Click the Choose Condition(s) link.

Select the appropriate conditions, click Add Condition (you may add multiple conditions), then click Set Criteria. For more information on setting conditions, see How to Use Advanced Search.

Now assign the activity to/based on users, groups or user properties. For more information on each of these, see the ‘Distribute Leads to Users’, ‘Distribute Leads to Groups’ and ‘Distribute Leads Based on User Properties’ sections above. The process is exactly the same for activity distribution. Click Save when you’re done.

Note: You must set a default rule that will execute when no other rules match the set criteria. The default rule will automatically distribute the activity to a user you select.

You can now continue to add actions or conditions to the automation.

If you distribute an activity to a user who doesn’t have permission to view a particular lead, you can use the Add Share Lead link (only for ESS tenants) to temporarily give the user lead access. For more information, see How to Share Leads for a Limited Duration.

7. Distribute Tasks

Like with leads and activities, you can also distribute tasks amongst your users. The distribute task action will appear only if the automation trigger is set to ‘Task Create’ and ‘Task Reminder’.

7.1 Distribute Task Configurations

The Distribute Task action appears under Sales Execution following any of the task-based triggers mentioned above.

The distribute task card works exactly the same way as the distribute lead card (Section 4. Distribute Leads). You can set rules with multiple conditions, assign them directly to users and sales groups, or on the basis of user properties.

Any Questions?

Did you find this article helpful? If you have any doubts or feedback, please leave us a comment below.

1. Feature Overview

This article explores the ‘Send to Sub-Automation’ action. Use it to –

• Keep your main automation brief and simple by sending additional steps to a sub-automation.
• Re-use a standard sequence of steps across different automations.
• Build a large network of automations without running out of automation cards/nodes (Only 50 nodes are allowed in a single automation).

It is available in the Marketing>Automation section as a new action in the automation condition and action card.

Example Use Case

Let’s take a simple example –

You’re sending out an email to all new leads.

You want to follow one long course of action (Flow A) for leads that open your email and another (Flow B) for those that don’t.
Before you branch out into Flow A or B, your automation may look something like the screenshot on your left.

The green + icon under the If/Else automation card will branch out into Flow A, your positive flow for the leads who opened your email.

The red + icon will branch out into Flow B, the negative flow for leads who didn’t open the email.

The sub-automation feature now lets you send both flows (A and B) to separate sub-automations and keep your parent automation clean. What’s more, you can re-use Flow A and B across any new automations you create.

2. Using Sub-Automations

To access the sub-automation option –

1. Click the + icon under an automation card. (the green + icon or the red + icon in our example).
2. Under Actions, click Send to Sub-Automation.
3. The Send to Sub-Automation pop-up will appear. Any sub-automation you save will be displayed here. For now, click the Create a New Sub-Automation link.
4. A new tab will open. Click the icon (+) under the Sub-Automation node to create a sub-automation. From this point in, the process for creating the sub-automation is exactly the same as creating the main automation.
   If you’re unfamiliar with creating automations, see How to Create an Automation.
5. Use the pencil icon in the top left corner to change the name and description of the sub-automation (Flows A and B in our example).
6. Once you’ve laid out the steps in your sub-automation Save it if you’re going to edit it later. If you want to use it right away then Publish it. Once published, you’ll be directed back to your main automation.

Points to Remember

• Only published sub-automations will show up in the Send to Sub-Automation pop-up. You can send your main automation to any sub-automation you published previously.
• You can create sub-automations to a maximum of three levels (Main Automation>Sub 1>Sub 2>Sub 3).
• You can create up to 500 sub-automations.