The Lead Form Knows More Than Your Lead Card

Your web form already asks the right questions. The answers just land as one long message. Here is how to turn them into fields you can sort, filter and automate on — without touching the website.

A new lead arrives at 7:40 in the morning. The form asked eight questions, and the visitor answered all of them: what happened, which vehicle, whether it is still roadworthy, which insurer, when they can talk. All eight answers are in the lead. They are just stacked in one block of text under the name and phone number.

So the first person to open it reads the block, works out what kind of job it is, and decides who should get it. The second lead gets the same treatment. And the fortieth. The form did its job. The CRM is making a human do the rest.

A message is not data

The problem is not the form. Most agencies and service businesses have spent real effort on their forms — the questions are good, the order is right, the answers are exactly what the team needs to qualify a job. The problem is that once the answers arrive, they are text. You cannot sort leads by insurer. You cannot filter for "not roadworthy". You cannot start an automation when the answer to question four is "yes".

The usual fix is to rebuild the form so every question maps to a field. That means touching the website, coordinating with whoever built it, and redoing the mapping every time a question changes. Most teams never get around to it, so the answers stay as text forever.

Let the lead tell you its fields

Detect fields on the Leads page works the other way round. Sentinel reads the newest lead — or one you pick — and proposes a lead field for each answer the form sent. It looks at the answers it has already seen across your recent leads, so a question that always gets one of four answers becomes a dropdown with those four options. A yes/no question becomes a switch. Numbers become numbers, dates become dates, and everything else becomes text. For answers about where — which panel, which room — a diagram field does better than any dropdown.

It also leaves things out. Lines that are identical on every lead, or that are just notes, do not get a field. Answers that already have a field linked are matched to it instead of duplicated. You review the list, rename what needs a clearer name, untick what you do not want, and create them in one click.

The website never changes

This is the part that matters most in practice. The field remembers which form label feeds it, so the next submission fills it on arrival. Nobody edits the form. Nobody touches the site. If you would rather set it up yourself, any lead field can be given its form labels by hand under Filled from form labels. The original message is never changed, so the full context is still there when someone wants to read it.

The form already asked the right questions. The CRM just has to stop treating the answers as one paragraph.

What the fields unlock

Once the answers are fields, the rest of the CRM can use them. That is the real payoff, and it shows up in three places almost immediately:

  • The list view. Switch Leads to List and every field marked Show in lists becomes a sortable column. The morning triage becomes a sort, not a read.
  • Filters and saved views. "Insurer is X and not roadworthy" is a filter you can save and share with the team, instead of a search through message text.
  • Automations. A flow can branch on a field value — route one kind of job to one person, another kind to someone else, and send a different confirmation for each.

Who decides

Detect fields is a Sentinel feature, and AI features are the owner's call. By default only the workspace owner sees and uses them. Under Settings → Team, the AI features (Sentinel) switch opens them to the rest of the team according to their section permissions — or keeps them owner-only. Either way, nothing is created without someone reviewing it first. The same switch covers Snap to CRM.

Your form has been collecting structured data the whole time. It is worth letting the CRM see it that way.

See where those answers start: the Leads scene on our features page puts a form on a website and lets you send yourself an enquiry.