Assign Leads with the "User" Custom Field type

Custom Fields store arbitrary data on your Leads. Until now, Close had 6 Custom Field types (Choices, Date, Date & Time, Number, Text, and Hidden) to help you store different types of data more effectively.

For example, storing numbers in a “Number” Custom Field type allows you to search for Leads that are more or less than a given number: custom.Employees > 2500.

We’re excited to share that we’ve added a 7th Custom Field type called “User”.

It’s common for teams to use Custom Fields to assign leads to one another. Whether you’re assigning leads to members of your sales team to go after or assigning new customers to your account managers, the “User” Custom Field type is the way to go.

With the “User” Custom Field type, you can easily assign leads to your team.

Creating a "User" Custom Field type

To create a new “User” Custom Field type, go to your Settings and select Customizations on the menu to the left. Scroll down to “Custom Fields” and click on the “Add a new Custom field” button.

On the modal that drops down, name the Custom Field and select the “User” choice from the Type dropdown.

Once setup, you’ll be able to assign Leads to users on your team via Custom Fields or Bulk Edit.

Convert an existing Custom Field type to "User"

If you already have existing Custom Fields that contain users on your team, it’s easy to convert them to a User Custom Field type.

To convert an existing Custom Field, go to your Settings and select Customizations on the menu to the left. Scroll down to “Custom Fields” and click “Edit” on the Custom Field you’d like to change. On the “Type” dropdown, select the “User” option. A disclaimer will appear alerting you how the conversion process works.

NOTE: When switching a field to a User type, you'll lose any values that don't exactly match full names or IDs of the users in your organization. Before initiating this change, please convert any existing values / User names to match the full names in their Close account.

You can visit our Help Center to learn more about renaming Custom Field choices and bulk editing existing Custom Field values on Leads.

Show your team their assigned Leads using Smart Views

Once you’re assigning leads to team members, it’s important to give them Smart Views that help them identify the leads that belong to them.

The easiest search query to add to any Smart View is "custom.Lead Owner":me. By appending this to a search query, it will only include Leads that have the User type Custom Field assigned to the user that this is viewing the search results within Close.

Here are some other common search queries you can use:

• Display the Leads that don’t have a User field value for the “Lead Owner” Custom Field: "custom.Lead Owner":""
• Display the Leads that have Gob Bluth, Michael Bluth, or Buster Bluth assigned: "custom.Lead Owner" in (Gob Bluth, Michael Bluth, Buster Bluth)
• Display the Leads that are assigned to Gob Bluth that have not been communicated with in the last 30 days that don’t have any Active opportunities on them: "custom.Lead Owner":"Gob Bluth" last_communication_date > "30 days ago" active_opportunities:0

What happens if I remove a user from my organization and they were assigned to some leads via a User type custom field?

The leads remain assigned to that user. You can search for them using "custom.Field Name":"Removed User Name".

Automate lead assignment via Zapier

If you’d like to randomly assign new Leads to your team, you can automate it via Zapier. Just follow this step-by-step guide on how to set it up.