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CRMs/Contact Sources

The CRMs section connects Thirdlane to your existing CRM or help desk (such as Salesforce, Zoho, Freshdesk, or Zendesk) so that phone activity and your customer system of record stay in sync. When a call comes in or goes out, Thirdlane looks the number up in the connected system, shows the matching record to the agent, and can automatically create leads, contacts, or tasks - turning every call into tracked, actionable data without manual entry.

This is distinct from the built-in Mini CRM. Use these integrations when your team already lives in an external CRM; use the Mini CRM when you want contact management inside Thirdlane itself.

Add an integration by clicking the Add CRM Integration button.

Create/Edit CRM Integration

When adding a CRM, you need to first select one of the supported CRM types. Once the type is selected, the appropriate fields for that CRM will be displayed.

CRM / Help Desk Type. Select the type of CRM you are integrating.

Access

Here you can specify settings required for using your CRM or Help Desk API. Note that the way to get Client ID and Client Secret varies for different CRMs, please refer to your CRM’s documentation for details.

Client ID. Client ID as per CRM documentation.

Client Secret. Client Secret as per CRM documentation.

Redirect URL. Redirect URL generated by Thirdlane that will have to be entered in your CRM as per CRM documentation.

Domain. Your company subdomain if required for authentication by your CRM provider.

Call Processing

Here you can specify how the different types of calls will be reflected in the CRM or Help Desk. Both the inbound and outbound external calls will be matched to the phone numbers of the records in CRM and then the corresponding action will be performed, as per the options below.

Translate phone numbers. Specify whether phone numbers should be translated using specified rules before the CRM lookup.

For inbound call processing:

Create Leads for unknown numbers. Specify whether to create Leads or Contacts for calls from phone numbers not found in CRM.

Create Tasks for missed calls. Specify whether to create Tasks for missed calls from known and unknown numbers.

Time to Complete Tasks (hours). Time to Complete created Task in hours. Use decimal point to specify fraction of an hour.

For outbound calls processing:

Create Leads for unknown numbers. Specify whether to create Leads or Contacts for calls to phone numbers not found in CRM.

Create Tasks for unanswered calls. Specify whether to create Tasks for unanswered calls.

How call matching works

Both inbound and outbound external calls are matched to records in your CRM by phone number. Because phone numbers are stored in many formats (with or without country code, dashes, or parentheses), enable Translate phone numbers and define translation rules so the number Thirdlane sees is normalized to the format your CRM stores - otherwise lookups will miss records that are actually present.

Best practices

  • Enable phone number translation first. Mismatched formats are the most common reason a known caller isn’t recognized; normalize numbers to your CRM’s format before relying on lookup.
  • Be deliberate about auto-creating records. Creating leads for every unknown number keeps your CRM complete but can add noise - decide whether unknown callers should become leads or contacts based on how your team qualifies them.
  • Use missed/unanswered-call tasks for follow-up. Auto-creating a task on a missed call ensures someone calls the customer back, with a due time set by Time to Complete Tasks.
  • Keep the Redirect URL exact. OAuth-based CRMs require the Thirdlane-generated Redirect URL to be entered verbatim in the CRM app; a mismatch will block authentication.