Intake fields: what the bot asks
Adding questions, choosing types, and what "required" actually commits you to.
Intake fields are the questions your bot asks a new lead. Each one becomes a piece of structured data on the lead — which is what makes qualification rules and matching possible at all.
Edit them at Configuration → Intake fields, or as step 5 of the setup wizard. It is the same editor.
What a field has
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Label | The human name. What you see; roughly what the bot asks |
| Type | What kind of answer is acceptable — see Field and rule types |
| Required | Whether the conversation can finish without it |
| Prompt hint | One sentence telling the bot what a good answer looks like |
| Order | The order the bot prefers, not the order it is held to |
| Category group | For choice fields, which list of options applies |
"Required" is a promise the conversation has to keep
A required field is one the bot will not stop asking about. Marking every question required feels thorough and produces conversations that never end — a customer who genuinely does not know their budget yet will be asked about it until they leave.
The test is: would you refuse this lead if you never learned this? If not, it is optional, and your team can ask later.
Order is a preference
The bot works from your order, but a conversation is not a form. If a lead answers question four inside their opening message, question four is done. If two questions are naturally asked together, it will ask them together.
Order matters most for the first question, which sets the tone of the whole exchange.
Choice fields need a category group
SELECT and MULTI_SELECT fields draw their options from a category group — a named list
you manage at Configuration → Categories. The same group can serve both sides of a match,
which is what makes overlap-based matching work: a lead picking "wedding" from the same list
your records are tagged from is a comparison the platform can actually make.
Deactivating an option stops it being offered without deleting the history of leads who chose it.
Changing a field later
Adding, relabelling and reordering are safe and take effect on the next conversation.
Changing a field's type is the one to be careful with. Existing leads keep whatever they answered, in the old shape. Matching and qualification rules that read the field may not understand the old values afterwards. On a workspace with real leads, adding a new field is usually better than repurposing an old one.
What happens to the answers
They land on the lead as structured data, visible on the lead's page and used by:
- Qualification rules, which decide whether the lead is worth your time.
- Matching dimensions, which compare them against your own records.
A question nothing reads is still worth asking if your team reads it — but it will not influence a score.
Was this helpful?