User Guide
pds Tech CRM
A plain-English walkthrough of the sales intelligence CRM — logging in, managing your pipeline, syncing real conversations, running video meetings, and using the AI tools built into almost every screen.
A plain-English walkthrough of the sales intelligence CRM — logging in, managing your pipeline, syncing real conversations, running video meetings, and using the AI tools built into almost every screen.
Open the app at your team's CRM address and log in with the email and temporary password you were given.
Once logged in, your account controls and preferences are organized into the User Profile Menu in the top right of the navigation header (look for your name/avatar pill, e.g. 👤 Stuart ▾).
Click your profile pill at any time to open the dropdown menu, which provides quick access to:
Forgotten your password entirely? Click Forgot your password? on the sign-in screen and enter your email. If it matches an account, you'll get an emailed reset link — it's valid for one hour. The screen doesn't reveal whether the email matched anything, so don't read too much into it either way; just check your inbox.
Every time you log in, the CRM automatically opens the ⚡ Recommended Actions for Today briefing popup. It synthesizes all pipeline priorities for your day into one actionable list:
Clicking any action card immediately transports you to that deal or opens the lead triage modal. You can filter actions inside the modal by category (⚠️ Urgent, ✨ AI Strategy, 📥 New Leads, 💤 Needs Touchpoint) or re-open the briefing popup at any time during your day by clicking ⚡ Today's Actions in the top navigation header.
This is the home screen — every deal you're tracking, grouped by stage, left to right:
Click any deal card to open it and see its full detail — conversation history and AI brief included.
Quick Navigation: Clicking or tapping the pds Tech CRM logo in the top-left of the header returns you directly to your active Funnel board from any view or modal.
The CRM automatically remembers your exact viewing position and syncs it with the browser's address bar via deep-link hash routes. When you reload or refresh the browser, you stay on that exact piece of content while fetching fresh, live data from the server:
#/deals/123) — clicking any deal updates your address bar. Refreshing your browser reopens that deal and refreshes its interactions, AI brief, and linked contacts live from the server.#/leads/45 or #/leads) — opening a lead details modal deep-links to that lead. Refreshing keeps the modal open and reloads its latest message and AI enrichment notes.#/contacts/67 or #/contacts) — expanding a contact card deep-links to that contact. Refreshing restores the expanded card, scrolls it into view, and refreshes linked deals and meetings.#/companies/89 or #/companies) — expanding a company card deep-links to that company. Refreshing restores the expanded card, scrolls it into view, and refreshes linked contacts and deals.#/calendar, #/dashboard, #/admin) — refreshing while viewing analytics, the calendar, or user permissions stays in that view with freshly computed data.| Stage | Meaning | Default Prob |
|---|---|---|
| Prospecting | Early interest, not yet qualified | 10% |
| Qualified | Confirmed real need/budget/authority | 30% |
| Proposal | A formal offer or quote is out | 60% |
| Negotiation | Terms being discussed/adjusted | 80% |
| Won 🏆 | Closed successfully — contract signed | 100% |
| Lost ✖ | Closed unsuccessfully or discontinued | 0% |
You can drag any deal card across columns to move it between stages (Prospecting → Qualified → Proposal → Negotiation → Won or Lost). Moving a deal immediately updates the database, calculates the stage probability (100% for Won, 0% for Lost, and smart baseline defaults when moving back into active stages), triggers celebratory confetti if won, and recalculates the pipeline totals instantly.
The search box in the header is available on every screen — you don't need to be on a particular page to use it.
Start typing a company name, contact name or email, deal name, or lead — matching results appear underneath as you type, grouped by type. Click any result to jump straight to it, wherever it lives (even if it's sitting in a different funnel than the one you're currently viewing). Companies and Contacts are always shared, but a Deal or Lead sitting in a teammate's personal funnel won't turn up here — that's deliberately private until it's promoted or you open their funnel directly from the dropdown to review it.
Click 🤖 Assistant in the header to open an intelligent chat panel that answers two primary kinds of inquiries:
guide.html) at runtime as its knowledge base. It will never hallucinate or invent features that do not exist, and will walk you through buttons, modals, and rules step-by-step.The CRM Assistant and AI intelligence features are powered by Google's flagship cost-efficient frontier model, Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite (gemini-2.5-flash-lite):
Conversation history stays in your browser drawer for that active session. Reloading the page or clicking clear starts a fresh conversation. This is separate from the website chatbot, which serves public visitors and has no access to internal CRM data.
Four primary quick-action buttons above the funnel board let you build out your CRM records on the fly:
Click Companies in the main navigation bar to browse and manage every organization in your CRM:
Click Contacts in the main navigation bar to access the centralized address book of all customer contacts:
.ics calendar invite.Open any company or contact card and click Research with AI. It runs live, Google-grounded search research using Gemini to discover background intelligence, commercial footprint, office addresses, phone numbers, and web domains — never guessing from model memory.
The CRM intelligence engine is strictly configured with a UK-first priority for all commercial research:
1 Bedford Avenue, London, WC1B 3AU, United Kingdom).+44 or UK area codes like 020, 01..., 08...).+350...), re-running AI research or bulk enrichment automatically upgrades those fields with the newly discovered UK operational details.To quickly research and complete UK contact information across your entire database, navigate to the Companies directory and click 🇬🇧 UK AI Enrich All in the top toolbar. This batch processes every active company, searching Google Grounding for verified UK headquarters, addresses, telephone numbers, and official websites, automatically backfilling missing information and upgrading offshore records to UK operational data in one click.
Whenever you click Research with AI or Find LinkedIn & AI Intel, the CRM analyzes the live Google Search findings and compares them side-by-side against your existing company or contact record before applying any changes.
| Apply | Field | Current Value | AI Discovered Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Location / HQ Changed | Gibraltar | 1 Bedford Avenue, London, WC1B 3AU, United Kingdom | |
| Contact Phone New | Empty / Not set | +44 20 7796 4133 |
For a contact, clicking Find LinkedIn & AI Intel investigates their individual professional background, core technical skills, verified certifications, role positioning, and personal LinkedIn profile URL (linkedin.com/in/...), prioritizing UK mobile numbers (+44 / 07...) and UK locations. It assigns an objective confidence score:
Just like with companies, newly discovered contact fields (Job Title, Location, Phone, Email, and LinkedIn URL) are presented in the Review AI Discovered Details comparison modal, allowing you to select individually which contact fields you wish to overwrite or update.
Not every email comes from someone already in the CRM. When email sync finds an incoming message from a sender who doesn't match any existing Contact, it automatically creates a Lead instead of ignoring the message.
The website chatbot adds Leads the same way when it can't resolve a visitor's question and they leave an email — and you can add one yourself with + New Lead, for anything captured outside email entirely, like a call or a trade show conversation.
Click Leads above the funnel board to see everyone waiting to be triaged. Navigating to the Leads view automatically triggers a fresh email sync in the background, ensuring all new incoming messages appear without having to manually press "Sync email".
For each lead, you can:
To proactively research, qualify, and ingest target commercial accounts before they ever email you, click ✨ AI Prospect Research in the Leads toolbar. Powered by Gemini 3.8 Flash with live Google Search Grounding and structured JSON schema enforcement, the autonomous research agent performs deep commercial discovery and ingests the target directly into your primary sales funnel in seconds.
AI Enriched / New, and tags the lead with a confidence badge.hello@pds-tech.ai vs an individual sales rep's mailbox). Sales representatives strictly only see leads delivered to their own personal mailbox or the shared hello@pds-tech.ai inbox (plus any leads manually assigned to them). Leads received at other sales reps' personal inboxes (e.g. Stuart's leads for Ben, or Ben's leads for Stuart) remain completely private and inaccessible. Administrators are the only users who have permission to view, search, and triage leads across all team inboxes. The inbox filter dropdown on the Leads page automatically restricts options to only the inboxes you are permitted to see.Opening a deal shows two panels: a chronological list of every email/call/note linked to it on the left, and the AI brief tool on the right.
Whenever a video meeting or call is scheduled for a deal (or linked to its contacts), a high-visibility meeting card is embedded directly above the interaction timeline:
pending, accepted, or declined).The deal profile card at the top displays the linked company, amount, win probability, expected close date, owner, and timestamps. It features an interactive Stage Selector dropdown alongside a colored stage pill badge (Prospecting, Qualified, Proposal, Negotiation, Won 🏆, Lost ✖):
When any team member adds a note, logs a call, or records an interaction on an open deal, it synchronizes immediately for everyone viewing that deal in real time — no browser refresh or manual reloading required.
/interactions/ws/{deal_id}). As soon as a note is saved, the server broadcasts the event and pushes it to every open screen within milliseconds. A resilient background poll (every 8 seconds) runs alongside to ensure notes sync seamlessly even behind restrictive corporate proxies or temporary network blips.Opening any deal's page automatically generates its AI Deal Intelligence brief — you don't need to click anything the first time. The AI reads everything logged against that deal — contacts, past emails, calls, notes — and produces a structured summary:
Every brief you generate is saved. Reopen the deal later (even after a full page reload) and the most recent brief is shown automatically — nothing is lost. A small dropdown next to the ↻ Refresh Brief button lets you flip back through up to the last 100 briefs generated across the whole CRM, so you can compare how the picture changed over time.
Auto-refresh only fires when something's actually new. After that first automatic run, simply reopening a deal won't silently re-run the AI every time and burn tokens for no reason — it only auto-regenerates if a new interaction (email, call, note), a new contact, or a new deal has been added for that account since the last brief. If nothing's changed, the last saved brief is shown as-is. Click ↻ Refresh Brief at any time to force a fresh regeneration regardless of whether anything new has come in.
Every deal and contact has two ways to get on a video call:
.ics) with the join link.Once a meeting is scheduled, it is immediately visible across three key locations in the CRM:
Calls open in an embedded video window inside the CRM, with a full set of resilience controls along the top:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| 🔄 Restart Camera | Instantly re-initializes the webcam stream and cycles video tracks if your camera feed freezes, stalls, or drops |
| 🛠️ Test Devices | Opens the built-in hardware diagnostic tool with a live video mirror, microphone volume visualizer, device list, and permission troubleshooting |
| 📋 Copy Guest Link | Copies the guest join link so you can share it directly in chat or calendar invites |
| ⛶ Fullscreen | Expands the video call to fill 100% of your PC viewport and triggers browser fullscreen mode, or toggles back to windowed mode |
| ↗ Pop Out | Transfers the call to a separate browser tab while automatically releasing the window's webcam lock to prevent device conflicts. That tab closes itself automatically once you leave the call. |
| 📝 CRM Brief | Slides open a sidebar showing the deal's latest AI brief and quick call notepad — notes saved here attach directly to the deal's timeline |
| ✕ Leave | Ends the call and cleanly releases all camera and microphone tracks |
To invite prospects or clients to a meeting:
https://crm.pds-tech.ai/meet/pds-... that can be pasted straight into WhatsApp, Slack, SMS, or email.vpaas-magic-cookie-... or meet/...), the CRM server automatically intercepts the request, generates an authorized guest token, and redirects them into the video room.https://crm.pds-tech.ai (your CRM server) rather than the root domain (which hosts your marketing site on Hostinger). If an invite link was copied with the root domain, adding a redirect in Hostinger from vpaas-magic-cookie-* to https://crm.pds-tech.ai/$1 ensures even older shared links work immediately.Click Calendar in the top navigation for a unified schedule of every meeting that matters to you — video meetings scheduled through the CRM scheduler, plus calendar invites and meeting summaries synced from your connected mailbox.
The Calendar tabs bar allows you to slice your view instantly:
.ics), meeting acceptances, cancellations, and meeting summaries automatically detected and synced from connected email inboxes.Every meeting scheduled through the CRM displays a status badge — pending, accepted, or declined — so you can see at a glance who's confirmed. You have full control to view and delete both CRM-scheduled meetings and mailbox-synced calendar records:
🗑️ button on the right for instant, one-click removal.If someone sends a meeting invite to your connected email address (e.g. ben@pes-tech.ai, ben@pds-tech.ai, or any team member's mailbox), the CRM automatically detects and parses the invitation and adds it directly to your CRM calendar:
.ics files, text/calendar, or application/ics MIME parts) as well as embedded video conference invitations. The parser automatically extracts the meeting title, start time, end time, duration, organizer, attendees, and one-click join URLs (supporting Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex).METHOD:CANCEL or STATUS:CANCELLED), the CRM updates the calendar entry or marks the status as cancelled automatically without creating duplicate entries.Click Sync email to pull in new emails from the connected mailbox(es) and automatically attach them to the right deal. Here's exactly how it decides where an email goes:
Sync frequency: Sync runs automatically in the background every 15 minutes, triggers instantaneously anytime you click the Leads tab, and can also be run manually on demand using the Sync email button.
If you own an alternate or legacy domain (such as pds-tech.io) and want emails sent to it to automatically flow into your CRM mailbox (e.g. ben@pds-tech.ai or hello@pds-tech.ai), you can configure an Email Forwarder or Domain Email Catch-All / Alias in your DNS / registrar panel (e.g. Hostinger, Cloudflare, Google Workspace, or Namecheap):
.io domain (e.g. *@pds-tech.io → *@pds-tech.ai or *@pds-tech.io → hello@pds-tech.ai). Any email sent to any address at the .io domain will automatically deliver to the target .ai inbox.ben@pds-tech.io → ben@pds-tech.ai and stuart@pds-tech.io → stuart@pds-tech.ai).To: and original recipient headers (such as Delivered-To or X-Forwarded-To). If it was addressed to your personal address, it syncs into your personal schedule and funnel; if it was forwarded to hello@pds-tech.ai, it ingests directly into the Primary Funnel.There isn't just one funnel — there are two kinds:
Use the dropdown next to the Funnel heading to switch between them. Whichever one is selected is where new deals you create will land.
Click My Mailbox in the header to connect your own inbox (Hostinger, Gmail, or any IMAP mailbox) directly — your credentials are entered by you, encrypted, and never seen by an admin or anyone else. Once connected, your mailbox syncs automatically into your personal funnel only.
Open a deal that's sitting in a personal (non-Primary) funnel and click Promote to Primary Funnel. It immediately becomes visible to the whole team in the shared funnel — this can't be undone from the UI, so only promote deals that are genuinely ready to be shared.
Administrators have access to a dedicated Users & Permissions management page to invite team members, configure granular access boundaries, deactivate accounts, and safely manage departures.
To open the admin page, click ⚙️ Users & Permissions in the profile dropdown (top-right of the header) or click the ⚙️ Admin view button in the main navigation toolbar. This interface is only accessible to users with administrator privileges.
Click + Add Team Member at the top of the admin page. You will enter their full name, email address, an initial temporary password (which they can change anytime via the profile menu), and assign their role and granular permissions.
ben@pds-tech.ai) or the shared hello@pds-tech.ai inbox. Reps can never see leads received at another rep's mailbox (e.g. Ben cannot see Stuart's leads). The Administrator is the only role permitted to view, search, and triage leads across all team mailboxes.By default, sales reps are focused on their own pipeline. Administrators configure team member roles and permissions using the following settings:
| Permission / Setting | When Enabled | When Disabled (Restricted) |
|---|---|---|
| Administrator (is_admin) | Full access to all CRM data, analytics, settings, team user management, and All Mailboxes for incoming leads. | Standard sales representative role without access to admin settings or other reps' mailboxes. |
| Lead Mailbox Access | 👑 All Mailboxes (Admin only): Full visibility to triage leads across all team inboxes. | 🔒 Own Mailbox & hello@ Only: The rep is strictly scoped to leads sent to their personal inbox, the shared hello@pds-tech.ai inbox, or leads explicitly assigned to them. |
| Can View All Deals / Pipeline | The rep can view deals and stage columns across all team members' personal funnels. | The rep only sees deals they personally own, plus deals in the shared Primary Funnel. |
| Active Status | Account is active and can sign in normally. | Account is deactivated — login is immediately blocked, but historical logs, notes, and records remain intact. |
When an employee departs, you can either deactivate their account or click Delete:
Deleting a Company, Contact, or Deal doesn't erase it right away — it moves to that section's Trash, recoverable for 30 days before it's permanently purged.
Click View Trash at the top of the Companies, Contacts, or Deals list to see what's been deleted, and hit Restore on anything you want back.
Click Dashboard above the funnel board for the numbers behind the pipeline:
| Tile / chart | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Pipeline Total | Combined value of every open deal |
| Won Total | Combined value of closed-won deals |
| Win Rate | Share of closed deals that were won, not lost |
| Chatbot Deflection Rate | Share of website chatbot conversations the AI resolved on its own, without escalating to a human — see the next section |
| Sales Funnel chart | How many open deals sit at each stage |
| Activity by Rep chart | Logged interactions per team member |
Below the charts, Partner Attribution ROI breaks down deals and leads by the named event, introducer, or referrer they came from — useful for seeing which channels and partners are actually converting. Tag a deal from its New/Edit Deal form, a new lead from the New Lead form, or an existing lead directly from the Source dropdown on its card in the Leads list. Picking + Add new source… in any of those lets you create one on the spot — give it a name and pick whether it's an event, introducer, or referrer.
A small chat widget on the pds-tech.ai website answers visitor questions automatically using AI. You won't interact with the widget itself from inside the CRM, but two things from it show up here:
via chatbot in the Leads list — triage it exactly like any other Lead.| Situation | What it means |
|---|---|
| Brief looks thin/generic | The deal doesn't have much real interaction history logged yet — add contacts, and let email sync populate real conversations |
| A real email did not show up after sync | Check the sender's exact email address matches a Contact, and that contact's company has an open deal — otherwise it will show up under Leads instead |
| Someone emailed in but is not showing as a Contact | Check the Leads page — they are probably sitting there waiting to be converted |
| A deal I expected is not on the board | Check the funnel selector — it might be sitting in a different funnel (yours vs. Primary vs. a teammate's) |
| Forgot your password | Use Forgot your password? on the sign-in screen — a reset link is emailed to you if the address matches an account |
| Need a new teammate added | An admin can add them immediately from ⚙️ Users & Permissions using the + Add Team Member button |
| Can't see a teammate's leads | By policy, sales representatives are strictly scoped to their own personal mailbox and the shared hello@pds-tech.ai inbox to guarantee lead privacy. Only users with the Administrator role can view and triage leads across all team member mailboxes. |
| AI Prepayment Depleted ($0.00 / 402) & Dual-Key Failover | If your primary Gemini prepaid credit balance in Google AI Studio reaches $0.00, the CRM automatically switches to your secondary free-tier API key (GEMINI_FALLBACK_FREE_API_KEY). Chat, briefs, and drafts continue running seamlessly for free. Deep search research runs direct model inference when on the free key until your paid credits are topped up. |
| AI Prospect Research says "Quota Exceeded" or rate limit | The pipeline utilizes Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (with fallbacks to 3.6/3.8 Flash). If search grounding quota limits are reached on your Google AI Studio plan, the pipeline automatically falls back to ungrounded direct model inference with structured JSON formatting so research never fails. |
| Can't see a teammate's deals | Your account may have scoped pipeline permissions. An admin can grant Can View All Deals from the Users & Permissions page. |
| Discarded a lead by mistake | On the Leads page, filter by Discarded status, open the lead, and click Restore Lead to return it to active |
| Error "You don't have access to modify this record" when discarding or updating a lead | Leads are managed by mailbox permission rather than pipeline funnel ownership. Users can freely discard, restore, enrich, or convert any lead that arrived at their personal inbox or the shared hello@pds-tech.ai inbox. |
| A company, contact, or deal has disappeared | Check that section's View Trash — it may have been deleted (deliberately or by mistake) and can be restored within 30 days |
| An embedded video call is stuck on "Connecting…" or camera is loading | Click 🔄 Restart Camera to re-acquire the feed. If another program (Zoom, Teams, or another tab) is locking the webcam, close it, or click 🛠️ Test Devices to diagnose browser permissions and hardware access. |
| Video call camera works in a tab but not in the window (or vice-versa) | Physical webcams can only be accessed by one app/tab at a time on desktop OSes. When using ↗ Pop Out, the CRM modal releases your camera hardware so the tab can connect cleanly; when returning, click ↩ Return Video to Window. |
| Meeting invite link shows "404 This Page Does Not Exist" on mobile / WhatsApp | The link points to pds-tech.ai (marketing site on Hostinger) instead of crm.pds-tech.ai (the CRM server). Fix: In your 8x8 JaaS Console under Branding, set the custom invite URL to https://crm.pds-tech.ai, or set up a redirect in Hostinger from vpaas-magic-cookie-* and pds-* to https://crm.pds-tech.ai/$1. |
| Guest joining on mobile phone (iOS Safari / Android Chrome) | Guests do not need to install an app. Tapping the link opens the video call directly in their mobile browser; they just need to tap "Allow" when the browser requests camera and microphone access. |
| A meeting won't show as "accepted" | Its invite status is set manually from the meeting's detail view on the Calendar — it doesn't update itself when a guest opens the join link |
| Stale meeting card still visible on contact or deal | Click the meeting to open it — the CRM immediately detects if it has already been deleted on the server, closes the modal, and automatically cleans the stale card from your view. Alternatively, collapsing and re-expanding the contact card always fetches the latest active meetings. |
| Someone emailed me a meeting invite (Google Meet / Zoom / Teams) — where does it appear? | Meeting invites sent to your email (e.g. ben@pes-tech.ai, ben@pds-tech.ai, or any user inbox) are automatically parsed and booked onto your CRM Calendar under 👤 My Schedule. If the sender is linked to an open deal, it also logs directly to the deal's timeline. |
| Do I need to refresh the deal page to see notes my teammate added? | No. Deal timelines update in real time via WebSockets and live polling. When a colleague saves a note, it appears instantly with an accent pulse highlight and toast notification. |
| Company shows UK London office instead of its registered holding (e.g. Gibraltar) | The CRM deliberately prioritizes UK commercial operations, London headquarters, and UK phone numbers (+44...) over offshore tax/license registries for active sales outreach. |
| How do I enrich all companies with UK details at once? | Go to Companies and click 🇬🇧 UK AI Enrich All in the top toolbar to research all active companies simultaneously. |
| How do I delete old mailbox-synced meetings or call summaries from the calendar? | On the Calendar page, every entry has a 🗑️ quick delete button and a checkbox. You can delete items individually or tick the "Select All" box on the ✉️ Mailbox Synced tab and click Delete Selected to purge all old entries at once. |
Can I forward email from my .io domain to my .ai mailbox? | Yes. Set up a wildcard or alias forwarder (e.g. *@pds-tech.io → *@pds-tech.ai) in your DNS/registrar (Hostinger, Cloudflare, etc.). The CRM email sync parses forwarded recipient headers automatically and ingests them into the appropriate funnel. |
| Why does repeated AI enrichment load instantly without charging search queries? | To prevent burning paid Google Search Grounding credits, company enrichment and contact LinkedIn lookups are intelligently cached for 7 to 14 days. If new live search data is needed, clicking with force or updating after the cache window automatically refreshes from Google. |
| Gemini API balance or "Prepayment balance depleted ($0.00) / 402" error | Google AI Studio operates on prepaid pay-as-you-go credits. To prevent interruptions, set up Auto-reload in your Google AI Studio Quota & Billing dashboard (e.g. reload £5 when balance drops below £1). The CRM copilot also automatically strips redundant context to conserve tokens. |
| Which low-cost Gemini models are used across the CRM? | The CRM defaults to the latest cost-efficient Flash models (such as gemini-2.5-flash and gemini-3.5-flash-lite) with automatic resilience fallback. Furthermore, Google Search Grounding can be skipped when web search is not needed to avoid search tool charges. |
| Will AI research overwrite contact or company details I manually typed or updated? | Never without your explicit approval. Whenever AI research discovers new or updated fields, the CRM opens a Review AI Discovered Details side-by-side comparison modal. This displays your current values alongside the AI discovered values, equipped with individual checkboxes for each field and a Select All toggle so you choose precisely which fields to overwrite or apply. You can also click Keep AI Notes Only to save the research notes while keeping all existing fields unchanged. |
| Page refreshed or browser back/forward used | The CRM automatically preserves your exact active deal, lead, contact, company, or section, and reloads its latest content live from the server. |