Website inquiries

A firm's website already asks visitors to get in touch. Settings → Capture is where that ask becomes part of the practice rather than an email someone has to re-key: an inquiry from the site opens a matter like any other, and the person who sent it can be invited straight into the firm's own contact form, with what they already gave filled in for them.

Nothing here replaces the public contact form. That link keeps working for callers and referrals, and both doors end in the same place: a submitted contact form, reviewed the usual way, followed by the firm's usual follow-up.

Setting it up

A step rail across the top of the tab says how far you've got: Source live, Destination set, Invitation sent. Where the destination hasn't been chosen, or invitations are off firm-wide, a line beneath the rail says so and links to where it's fixed; once everything is in place, that line reports how many invitations have gone recently instead. A source you haven't added yet is answered by the Sources section further down rather than by a line here.

Setup holds the firm-wide choices.

• Destination form is the contact form every inquiry continues on. You pick one of the firm's existing forms; nothing is created or copied, and the choice applies to new inquiries rather than rewriting work already under way.
• Client-facing form shows the web address that form lives at, with Open to see what the client sees.
• Automatic invitation says whether the invitation is switched on firm-wide, and Edit takes you to client communications, where the message's words, its sender, and that switch all live.

Choosing the destination and changing a source are attorney and admin work. Other staff see the tab, read the activity, and can put a stalled invitation back in the queue.

Sources

A source is one place inquiries arrive from. Each has a staff-facing name, a connection, and its own two switches.

There are two kinds of connection.

• A hosted website form is a short form the platform serves and the firm embeds. Copy embed code gives you the snippet to paste into the site, and Preview form opens it as a visitor sees it. Because the form itself stays on the platform, published changes reach the site without anyone touching the installed code again.
• An external webhook is for a form the firm already has. The site keeps its own form, and sends what it collects through to the platform; the source card carries the details your connector needs, ready to copy.

The hosted form asks for name, email, and phone, and nothing else. Name and email are always required; Phone is an explicit choice per source, Required or Optional, made when the source is set up. An inquiry that doesn't meet the rule is refused rather than landing without a number. Longer questions belong on the contact form the invitation leads to, which is the form the firm already authors.

A hosted form also needs its Website origins: the sites the form is allowed to be embedded on, so the firm's form can't be lifted onto somebody else's. Give each one as its bare address, https:// and the host and nothing after it, like https://www.example.com; a page path is refused. An external webhook can leave the field blank.

Create source and Publish changes save immediately. What they can't do is confirm the firm's website was actually updated, so the tab says as much rather than implying it checked.

The two switches

Connecting a source and inviting the people who come through it are separate decisions, and both start off.

• Accept inquiries, on the source, is whether it receives at all.
• Automatically invite to the contact form, also on the source, is whether the people it captures are emailed the invitation.
• The firm-wide Send this switch on the Contact form continuation row, in client communications, has to be on as well.

So connecting a source never starts sending mail on its own, which is the point: setting up the plumbing and deciding to write to prospects are different acts, often on different days. A source that's capturing but not inviting says Capturing without invitations; one held by the firm-wide switch says Invitation paused by Communications, and the inquiries keep landing meanwhile.

Turning either invitation switch off also closes links already sent. It's an access switch as much as a send switch, so a firm that pauses invitations isn't leaving live doors open behind it.

What the person receives

The invitation is an email in the firm's name, carrying a secure button through to the contact form. What the firm already knows is filled in, and their work saves as they go, the same as any other questionnaire. Once they submit, the submission lands in the review queue exactly as a walk-up contact-form submission would, and the firm's usual follow-up runs.

Two protections are worth knowing, because they explain rows you'll see on the tab.

The invitation is fixed to the address the person typed. If staff later correct that email on the person's record, the invitation doesn't quietly redirect to the new one; it stops, and the row asks you to confirm who the address belongs to and send from that person's record instead. An email is a way into someone's file, so the platform never guesses whose.

A second inquiry from the same person doesn't start them over. If their contact form is still unfinished, they get a fresh link to carry on where they left off. If they've already submitted it, the firm hears about the new inquiry and the person is not asked to fill the same form again.

Recent activity

The list at the bottom is the most recent inquiries through these sources, filterable by All, Needs attention, and Sent. Each row names the person, the source they came through, how far they've got, and when it arrived. The status reads in plain words:

Where the reason is something you can fix, the row says what to do, and Retry puts the invitation back in the queue once you've fixed it. Temporary delivery trouble is retried on its own without anyone watching; what reaches the attention filter is what genuinely needs a person. A row that reached a matter carries an arrow through to it.

One row deliberately doesn't offer Retry: the fixed-address case above, where no amount of retrying can make the recipient safe.

Where this shows up elsewhere

• The matter opens on the funnel board at Contact, with the origin reading Website inquiry. See the lifecycle.
• The invitation's words, its sender, and the firm-wide switch are on the Communications tab. See client communications.
• The form the invitation leads to is an ordinary intake form, authored and published like the rest. See intake.