Referrer Portal User Setup

[crmman]

Hello EspoCRM users!

Hoping you guys and gals have a suggestion for me.

Objective: Allow people who refer leads to us (I am thinking portal user right now) to create leads and assign them to users (employees).

I have people who refer business to my employees (accountants for example) and I would like for them to create leads and assign them to a user (employee). I created a portal user for the accountant and only allow them to create leads. I also created a portal role as referrer. But when I tested it, the portal user cannot assign the lead to a user (employee). I suspect since the users (employees) are not portal users and I cannot assign them portal user roles, this would not work.

Do you all have any suggestions as to how to set this up.

I guess I could create a user for the accountant, create team (say referrals) and assign the accountant and the employee to the referrals team so that the accountant (not an employee) can refer/create leads and assign them to the employee. Is this the only way or has any of you been able to create a portal user that assigns leads to an employee (user)? I would restrict the accountant to only create leads and assign them to the team only.


Thanks!

[victor]

The simplest option in this case is to create a Role for Regular User (people who refer leads), which will have a minimum number of permissions.

The Portal option is more complex and requires the creation of additional fields, formulas/workflows/bmpns, which will allow Portal Users to set Assigned Users for your leads through a workaround.

[rabii]

Hello EspoCRM users!

Hoping you guys and gals have a suggestion for me.

Objective: Allow people who refer leads to us (I am thinking portal user right now) to create leads and assign them to users (employees).

I have people who refer business to my employees (accountants for example) and I would like for them to create leads and assign them to a user (employee). I created a portal user for the accountant and only allow them to create leads. I also created a portal role as referrer. But when I tested it, the portal user cannot assign the lead to a user (employee). I suspect since the users (employees) are not portal users and I cannot assign them portal user roles, this would not work.

Do you all have any suggestions as to how to set this up.

I guess I could create a user for the accountant, create team (say referrals) and assign the accountant and the employee to the referrals team so that the accountant (not an employee) can refer/create leads and assign them to the employee. Is this the only way or has any of you been able to create a portal user that assigns leads to an employee (user)? I would restrict the accountant to only create leads and assign them to the team only.


Thanks!

if you have done already the work. i would suggest to create a workflow so that when a lead is created by the referral then auto-assign using one of the options available. You need advanced pack for this. benefit of this is that you can even add further actions in your workflow like notify someone in your team via email etc

[emillod]

You can also consider Web-to-Lead solution with additional field which would contain code of assigned user, something like referral code, and upon creation of lead with the code filled you can automatically assign lead to a proper user even via formula

[Rafael03]

I’ve seen people struggle with this before. You're right - portal users can't 'see' internal users by default for security reasons. Instead of making them full users, have you tried using a Workflow or BPM? You could have the portal user just select the 'Department' or a specific tag, and then let a Workflow automatically assign the lead to the right employee. It keeps your internal user list hidden but gets the job done!

[crmman]

Thanks victor, rabii, emillod and Rafael03 for the suggestions. Those are great suggestions. I like the workflow option.

Per victor's suggestion, I created a Role for the referrer Regular User and assigned them to "Referrals" Team. I have two roles: Referrer and Producer. The Referrer is the person sending us referrals and the Producer the employee. I added the Producer to the Referrals Team and the Sales Team. The Referrer is only on the Referrals Team. I also only allow Referrers to see and create Leads only. The producers can see the leads since they are in the Referrals Team. But Referrer cannot see leads on the Sales Team. The only challenge with this model is that I have to create different Teams for different entities sending us leads because if they are on the same team then they can see all the leads regardless who is sending them (I don't want that). I could perhaps restrict the referrer to see/edit/create only their "own" leads. ...much work to do here with regards to testing the system.

So many ways to skin a cat. I may go the workflow model. I am doing much testing right now on a dummy EspoCRM instance. Working on moving data (new fields for our industry) in lead to go to the contact/account once it is converted. Again, workflow may be the way to go here. Rabbi is right I could create other actions like lead notification email or perhaps a thank you email to the referrer and creating a tasks for the employee to complete (i.e., contact lead, set appointment, etc.).

Again, thanks to those who took the time to respond to my post.