Disclosure: I work at Skyfall Labs, an official Zoho Partner, so I have a commercial interest. The facts below are from Zoho's own help pages, linked at the end; advice is labelled as advice. Originally published on skyfallhq.net.
A web form that quietly drops leads, or floods the CRM with spam, is one of the most common reasons teams feel Zoho is not working for them. This post sets out what Zoho's help pages say about web forms, assignment, spam and troubleshooting.
What web forms support
Per Zoho, web forms are supported for Leads, Contacts, Cases and any other custom modules in your account. Zoho says to test the form before publishing it on your website, and that changes take effect only once you host the newly generated code on your site. Zoho adds that removing or deleting a web form does not delete the data it already captured.
Zoho does not state in these pages which editions include web forms or specific features of them; check feature availability for your edition.
Spam: what Zoho recommends
Zoho's FAQ recommends three defences together: enabling CAPTCHA, creating a record approval process, and creating a validation rule. Zoho says that even if a bot bypasses CAPTCHA, it cannot get past the validation rule in CRM, and that spam records are moved to Invalid entries on the Leads Approval page.
Approval of captured leads
A form can require manual approval. If it does, Zoho says the leads from the form appear under the Leads tab only once a user with the Approve Records permission approves them. To check whether a form has this on, go to Setup, Channels, Webforms, open the form, click Next Step and look for Request for Approval on the Form Details page. Pending records are approved from the module's tools menu.
Who gets the lead
Zoho's FAQ says that by default incoming records are assigned to the administrator, and that you can create an assignment rule to assign records to specific users or by round robin. The leads-management FAQ likewise points to an assignment rule with the round robin option to distribute web form leads equally among salespeople.
Duplicates
Zoho's suggestion for stopping duplicate leads is to make the Email field unique: Setup, Customization, Modules and Fields, select Leads, open the Email field's settings, choose Do not allow duplicate values, and save the layout. Existing duplicates can be merged.
Why leads do not appear: Zoho's checklist
- The form's HTML uses HTTP; Zoho says to change it to HTTPS.
- The default Zoho hidden fields were removed; Zoho says the form then will not work.
- The domain name in the form settings does not match the URL where the form is hosted; Zoho says the information is then not captured, and that entering an asterisk in square brackets allows capture from other or multiple domains.
- The form is not active.
- Records are waiting in the approval queue.
- You do not have permission to view the lead records.
- The hosting site converts some special characters.
- Several web forms on one page: Zoho says leads captured this way cannot be viewed.
- If visitors land on the wrong page after submitting, Zoho says to check the Landing Page URL under Setup, Channels, Webforms.
Setting up forms that work (practical advice)
This section is advice from experience, not vendor documentation.
- Decide before building who owns each lead source and set the assignment rule first, so nothing sits with the administrator by default.
- Submit a test entry from the live page, not just the preview, and confirm it lands where you expect.
- Turn on spam defences before the form goes public, not after the first spam wave.
- Re-test after any website redesign or hosting change, since the form code lives on your site.
- Put a named person in charge of the approval queue if you use one, otherwise real leads wait unseen.
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