Send website enquiries to Salesforce
Every enquiry from your site can arrive in Salesforce as a Lead, within seconds, without anybody copying anything across. Setting it up takes one value from Salesforce and one setting switched on.
Read Send your website enquiries to your CRM first if you want the general picture: what is sent, what is never sent, and what this does not do. This page is the Salesforce half.
Before you start
You need a Salesforce edition that includes Web-to-Lead (Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Performance and Developer all do) and permission to open Setup. You also need a Growth Business or Agency plan on Webkio.
Step 1: switch on Web-to-Lead in Salesforce
In Salesforce, open Setup and search for Web-to-Lead. Make sure it is enabled. If it is off, nothing you send will be accepted, and Salesforce will not tell us why.
While you are there, note the Default Lead Creator. Some Salesforce configurations email that person when the daily limit is passed, so it should be somebody who will notice.
Step 2: copy your organisation id
In Setup, search for Company Information. The field is Salesforce.com Organization ID, and
it looks like 00D000000000000: fifteen characters, sometimes eighteen.
Copy the id itself, not the page address. Webkio checks the format before saving, so a pasted URL is refused rather than quietly accepted, which matters here more than usual: Salesforce accepts any well-formed id and answers cheerfully, so a wrong one would look like it was working for ever.
Step 3: add the destination in Webkio
- Open Project settings → CRM.
- Choose Salesforce.
- Paste the organisation id.
- Tick which enquiries to send.
- If your org uses custom fields, set them in Where each field goes - see below.
- Add destination.
Step 4: check it
Press Send test on the destination. It files a lead called "Webkio Test" and tells you what Salesforce said. Then look under Leads in Salesforce, and delete it.
This check is not optional busywork. Salesforce answers every submission the same way whether or not it created the Lead, so Webkio cannot confirm receipt for you, and the destination card says as much. Your own eyes on the Leads list is the only real confirmation available.
What arrives in Salesforce
| Salesforce field | What we put in it |
|---|---|
| Last Name | The last word of the name they gave. If they gave no name at all, (not provided) |
| First Name | Everything before that, when there is any |
| Company | The company, if your form collected one. Otherwise (not provided) |
| Email, Phone | As typed |
| Lead Source | Web |
| Website | The page they were on |
| Description | Their message, any extra fields your form collected, which of your sites it came from, and what they did |
Last Name and Company are always filled because Salesforce refuses a Lead without them. Where we were given neither, you get a visible placeholder rather than an invented name, and rather than losing the enquiry entirely.
Fields we were not given are left out rather than sent empty, so a blank on the Lead means the visitor left it blank, not that we overwrote it.
Limits worth knowing before you rely on it
- 500 leads per day. That is a Salesforce limit on Web-to-Lead, not ours. You can ask Salesforce to raise it. What happens past the limit depends on your configuration: some orgs queue the overflow, some email the Default Lead Creator, some reject it. If you are anywhere near 500 enquiries a day, check with Salesforce rather than with us.
- Leads only. No Contacts, no Accounts, no Opportunities, no custom objects.
- New records only. An enquiry from somebody already in Salesforce creates a second Lead. There is no matching or merging, and your own duplicate rules apply as they would to any Web-to-Lead submission.
- Record types and assignment rules are not set. Custom FIELDS are fine: Web-to-Lead takes a
custom field's internal id (the
00N...value Setup shows you) as the field name, so put that in Where each field goes and it will be filled in. - No confirmation. Covered above, and it is the one that surprises people.
When it is not working
| What you see | What it usually is |
|---|---|
| Leads never appear, no error on the card | Web-to-Lead is off in Salesforce, or the organisation id belongs to a different org. Salesforce accepts both silently |
Check these: Salesforce organisation id when saving |
The value is not fifteen or eighteen characters. A pasted page address does this |
| Leads stopped arriving today | Check the daily limit first, especially after a campaign |
| Card says the attempt failed | The message shown is Salesforce's own. A network or server error is retried automatically |
| Card says switched off after repeated failures | Ten consecutive failures. Fix the cause, then press Resume, which clears the count |
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a Salesforce API licence or a connected app?
No. This uses Web-to-Lead, the same mechanism a hand-built HTML form on your own site would use. There is no OAuth app to create and no API credential to store.
Why does the Lead say "(not provided)" for the company?
Because your form did not collect one and Salesforce will not accept a Lead without that field. It is a visible placeholder rather than a guess, so you can see at a glance which enquiries came without one.
Can I send enquiries into a Salesforce sandbox?
Only if you use that sandbox's own organisation id. There is no separate sandbox switch here.
Can I map enquiries to custom fields?
Yes. In Salesforce Setup, open the Web-to-Lead HTML generator and find the custom field: the name
it gives the input is an internal id beginning 00N. Put that id into Where each field goes on
the destination, against whichever of our fields should fill it.
Will my Salesforce assignment rules run?
Web-to-Lead submissions follow your org's own rules for lead creation. How they are assigned, scored and routed afterwards is a question for your Salesforce administrator rather than for us.