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GuideCRM

Get started with the CRM

Set up the whole CRM — people, companies and customers, your own kinds of record with links and calculated fields, tasks, automations, roles, dashboards and connections to your other tools — by telling Claude what your business keeps, or click by click in the app. Real prompts, the real screens, and what to check at every step.

AAssistantLabs Team
Academy 14 min read Updated Oct 2026

What you need first

The CRM is the system of record for your business. It starts from the people your agent talks to and grows into everything you keep about them: companies and customers, your own kinds of record (treatments, properties, contracts) with links, calculated fields and status lifecycles, meetings, tasks, rules that act on their own, roles, dashboards, and connections to your other tools. This guide is the hands-on part; for how it fits with your other apps, read CRM: what it does.

  • People and businesses: contacts (filled by your agent, imports or by hand), companies, and customers — a company is a prospect, customer, partner or reseller.
  • Your own model: record types with fields, links between them, rollups, formulas, statuses with allowed moves, and pages you design.
  • Work: tasks, meetings, an activity timeline per person, rules, roles and dashboards.
  • Connected: to your agent and its conversations, to Sales leads and Booking, to broadcasts, to Claude or ChatGPT, and out to other systems through webhooks and a developer API.
  • A workspace with the CRM switched on. Access is per workspace, not per person. Without it, signing in lands you on a request-access screen.
  • An agent in the same workspace. The CRM has no contacts of its own to start with; it reads them from the agent you connect. No agent yet? Create one in the Agents app first.
  • Workspace admin rights. Connecting the agent, designing pages, roles and rules are admin actions. A member sees them but cannot change them.
Setting this up for a client? Work inside the client’s own workspace: each one has its own connected agent, record types and roles. If a client of an agency lands on the request-access screen, the answer there is to ask the agency.

Pick how you want to work. The choice below follows you down the whole page.

  1. In Claude open Customize → Plugins → Discover, search AssistantLabs and click Add.
  2. In a new chat type the command below. It starts the sign-in; the CRM comes with the plugin.
/al
Say this to Claude
Which kinds of record does my CRM have so far, and what is in each of them?
What Claude doesCalls list_record_types and tells you what it found.
What you'll seeA short list. On a new workspace there is nothing of your own yet — that is the right answer.
What to checkIf Claude says it has no CRM tools, the plugin is not installed or you are not signed in yet. Walk through Connect Claude again, then run /al.
Using ChatGPT? Same tools, same prompts — connect it with Connect ChatGPT. Note that on a Plus or Pro account a custom connector is read-only, so the prompts that build or change things need a Business, Enterprise or Edu workspace.
  1. Open crm.assistantlabs.io, or pick CRM in the app switcher, and sign in with your AssistantLabs account.
  2. If you land on the request-access screen, the CRM is not on for this workspace yet. Signed in, you get your identity card and a one-click request.
  3. Once you are in, the navbar is your map. Left to right it runs Home, Contacts, Companies, Customers, your own record types, Tasks, Dashboard, Automations and Settings.
Your own record types get a tab between Customers and Tasks.

Your first 10 minutes

Two things make the CRM yours: it reads the contacts of your agent, and it knows the things your business keeps that are not people — treatments, properties, contracts.

1. Connect your agent

Say this to Claude
Connect my Bright Smile assistant to the CRM. Bring in everyone it has talked to, or only contacts tagged Patient or Lead — whichever I choose. Then tell me how many people came in.
What Claude doesConnects the agent to this workspace and sets the intake you chose: all contacts and conversations, or only those with the labels or sources you name.
What you'll seeThe agent connected under Settings → Connections, and the people who match your choice in Contacts.
What to checkSay the intake in words you can verify: “only people tagged Patient”. You can widen it later without reconnecting.
Say this to Claude
List the people in my CRM and tell me how many there are.
What Claude doesCalls list_crm_contacts.
What you'll seeA list of the people your agent has spoken to, with a count. On a big list the answer is truncated and Claude says so.
What to checkAn empty list means the agent is not connected yet, or has not talked to anyone.
  1. On Home you see Connect your agent. Click Connect.
  2. That opens Settings → Connections. Under Connect, open Select an agent… and pick your agent.
  3. Click Connect. The card turns to Connected.
  4. Choose what comes in: all contacts and conversations, or only those with the labels or sources you pick. You can change the choice later.
A workspace with no agent connected opens on this screen.
Only a workspace admin sees the picker.

Open Contacts: everyone the agent has spoken to — on WhatsApp, Instagram, email or the web — is already there. The CRM only reads your conversations; it never edits or deletes them.

2. Create your first record type

People, companies and customers already exist — do not make a record type for them. A record type is a thing the business keeps: a treatment, a property, a contract, a unit with a serial number.

Say this to Claude
Set up my CRM for a dental clinic. Patients are already contacts, so don’t make a type for them. Create one record type, Treatments, with: treatment name (the title), price, planned date, and a status — Offered, Quoted, Accepted, Done. Put the Treatments tab right after Customers, set the currency to ILS, and tell me in plain words what you built.
What Claude doeslist_record_types, describe_crm_field_types, create_record_type, set_crm_navbar, set_crm_currency. It creates the type with its fields in one go and puts it in the bar.
What you'll seeA new Treatments tab in the navbar — for everyone in the workspace, immediately — and a summary in your words of the fields, the statuses and where the tab sits.
What to checkOpen the tab and add one treatment by hand. Is the status list right? Is the price shown in shekels? If not, say so — Claude changes one field at a time.

Now make it readable. Statuses get colours, and the type gets an icon:

Say this to Claude
In Treatments, colour the statuses: Offered gray, Quoted amber, Accepted green, Done gray. Give the type a stethoscope icon and a teal colour.
What Claude doesupsert_record_field (status colours), describe_page_blocks (the icons and colours it may use), set_page_design with the type’s appearance.
What you'll seeColoured status pills in the list and on the record page, and the icon in the tab.
What to checkChanging how a page looks changes it for the whole team. If Claude says it is not allowed to, only a workspace admin can change a page’s design: ask an admin to run it.

You have two ways in. Let the CRM propose a design from what your agent already knows about the business, or define one type yourself.

Settings is the last tab.
  1. Click Settings, then Record design in the left list.
  2. Click Design my CRM. It reads your connected agent, works out what kind of business this is, and proposes pages for Contacts, Companies and Customers.
  3. Review the highlighted additions. Keep what fits, remove the rest with the ✕, and press Publish. Nothing is saved until you publish.
A fresh workspace shows every page as “Standard”. Nothing is saved until you publish.

For a thing that is not a contact, a company or a customer, click the dashed New record type card instead. It is a page, not a pop-up, because it is done once.

The “Address in the app” is permanent once the first record exists; the names above it can change.

You land straight in the designer for the new type. Add fields with + New field: Text, Long text, Number, Money, Date, URL, Single choice or Multiple choice. For a choice, write the options one per line.

Currency, once: In Settings → Overview, the Currency card sets what every money field shows across the CRM. Leave it on automatic and it follows your agent.

Bring in what you already have

The people your agent talked to are already in. Import is for everyone else: an old spreadsheet, your phone book, a list from another system.

People

Say this to Claude
Add these three people to my CRM: Maya Cohen, 050-123-4567, maya@example.com. Daniel Levi, 052-765-4321. Noa Katz, 054-555-0199, noa@example.com. Then show me the list of people so I can check them.
What Claude doesupsert_crm_contact once per person, then list_crm_contacts.
What you'll seeThree people in Contacts. One call per person is fine for a handful.
What to checkFor a whole list, attach the file and ask Claude to import it, or do it in the app with Import: it matches columns, finds duplicates and shows a preview before anything is saved.
  1. Open Contacts and click Import above the list.
  2. Choose A spreadsheet (a CSV from Excel or Google Sheets) or Your phone contacts (a .vcf file).
Import acts on the whole list, so it is hidden inside an audience.
Two different flows, so it asks which one first.
  1. A spreadsheet: drop the file, then tell it what each column holds. The ones it recognised are already filled in; a column you leave unmatched is kept as an extra field on the contact.
  2. Under If someone is already on your list pick Fill in what is missing: it adds the email, tags and fields they lack and never overwrites what is there.
  3. Check the preview, then press Import. Nothing is saved before that.
From a phone: On an iPhone: Contacts → select → Share. On Android: Contacts → Settings → Export. Then choose the .vcf file.

Records of your own type

Say this to Claude
Here is my treatments spreadsheet (attached). Import it into Treatments. Match the columns for me, run a dry run first, and show me every row that would fail before you write anything.
What Claude doessuggest_crm_import_mapping (columns → fields), then import_crm_records — a dry run by default: every row is checked and nothing is written. After your OK it runs again for real.
What you'll seeA summary (rows that would go in, rows with problems) and the reason for each failed row: a duplicate, a missing link, a rule the data breaks.
What to checkUp to 5,000 rows at once. Link columns take the linked record’s title, so import the types others link to first. Fix the rows and re-run; do not ask Claude to override a rule unless you meant to.
  1. Open the tab of your type (for example Treatments) and click Import.
  2. Drop an Excel or CSV file with the column names in the first row.
  3. Choose the field each column goes into, and what to do with each row: Add new, Add or update or Update only.
  4. Press Check the file. Rows with problems are listed and skipped; nothing has been saved yet. Then import the valid rows.

Companies, customers, meetings and the timeline

People are one half of a business relationship. The other half is the company they belong to, whether it is a customer, what was said in the last meeting, and what happened, in order.

  • Companies have a relationship: Prospect, Customer, Partner or Reseller. A company becomes a customer the moment you change its relationship on its page, and then it shows under Customers, which you can filter by Active or Churned.
  • Meetings are write-ups on a company, customer or contact page: what they want, what got done, what is still open.
  • The activity timeline is the Activity card on a contact: every change in order, a single save folded into one entry showing the new value and the old one struck through, plus events from your other apps.
Say this to Claude
Add Green Valley Pharmacy as a company and Dana Mizrahi (owner, dana@greenvalley.example, 052-111-2233) as its contact. Then list every company that is still a prospect.
What Claude doesupsert_crm_company, upsert_crm_contact (linked with companyRef), then list_crm_companies with the relationship filter.
What you'll seeThe company under Companies with its person attached, and a list of prospects.
What to checkTo fill in what is missing from a website, ask “enrich this company” — it only fills empty fields and never overwrites what a person typed.
  1. Open Companies and click Add company; on a company’s page set its relationship.
  2. Open Customers to see the ones that became customers, partners or resellers; Add customer adds one directly.
  3. On a contact, company or customer page use the Meetings card, and read the Activity card for the timeline. Both are cards you can place with the page designer.
Say this to Claude
Write up yesterday’s meeting with Dana Mizrahi: she wants a quote for two more treatment rooms, we agreed the layout, and the open item is the electrician’s date.
What Claude doesAdds the write-up to Dana’s page (and her company’s) as a meeting: what she wants, what got done, what is open.
What you'll seeThe meeting on the Meetings card, and an entry on the timeline.
What to checkDoes it list the open item separately from what was done?

Shape fields and pages

Every place in the app has two pages: the list you land on and the page for one record. The standard ones work; this is where you make them yours.

Say this to Claude
In Treatments add: a Dentist field (a team member), a Notes field (long text), a Quote date (date), and “Days since quote” worked out from the quote date. Make the treatment name required.
What Claude doesupsert_record_field once per field. The calculated one is a formula, daysSince(…) — you never type it.
What you'll seeThe new fields on the record page, and “Days since quote” filling itself in.
What to checkA field key is stable once records use it, so say the names you want before Claude creates them.
Say this to Claude
Redesign the Treatments pages. The list: a board grouped by status, with the number of treatments and the total price on top. The treatment page: status and price up top, then the patient, then tasks and history.
What Claude doesdescribe_page_blocks, get_page_design, set_page_design. It reads the design first and changes only the part you asked for.
What you'll seeA board on the Treatments tab and a reorganised record page. Open one record to judge it.
What to checkThis changes the page for everyone. If you do not like it, ask for the previous layout back — Claude read it before changing it.
Say this to Claude
Add a Payments record type: amount, payment date, and a link to the treatment it pays for. On Treatments add “Total paid” as a sum of its payments and “Balance” as price minus total paid. Statuses may only move Offered → Quoted → Accepted → Done.
What Claude doescreate_record_type, upsert_record_field with a link (relation) field, a rollup (sum over the payments) and a formula, and transitions on the status.
What you'll seePayments on each treatment’s page, and Total paid and Balance filling themselves in. A status move that is not allowed is refused.
What to checkAdd a payment and watch the balance move. Create the type others link to first — a link can only name a type that already exists.
Say this to Claude
Reorder the navbar: Home, Contacts, Treatments, Tasks, Dashboard, Settings.
What Claude doesget_crm_navbar, set_crm_navbar.
What you'll seeThe bar shows exactly that order, in your words.
What to checkSay which tabs you want in the bar and in what order; a type that is only reached through links can stay out of it.
  1. Settings → Record design shows one card per place in your navbar, each with its two pages: Main page and Record page, marked Standard or Designed.
  2. Click Design on the card (or on one of its two pages) to open the designer full screen.
  3. Pick a layout (Magazine, Spotlight, Portrait, Aurora, Duo, Poster, Dossier, Three column, Trio, Hero + split, Hero + one column, Classic, Sidebar or Stacked), then drag cards and fields where you want them. The page shows example values, not your data.
  4. Add a field with + New field and press Publish when you are happy.

Do the navbar in the app too: in the workspace settings, choose which tabs show, their order and their names.

Cards worth knowing: Details, Key metrics (big number tiles), Contacts, Source, Tags, Recent conversations, Activity, Meetings, Tasks and History.

Tasks, rules and one dashboard

A CRM that only stores things gets forgotten. Tasks make it a to-do list for the team; rules create those tasks for you at the moment something changes.

A task, by hand

Say this to Claude
Create a task for me: call Maya Cohen back about her quote, due Thursday, high priority, linked to her whitening treatment.
What Claude doescreate_crm_task with the assignee, due date, priority and a link to the record.
What you'll seeThe task on the Tasks tab under Today (or Upcoming), assigned to you.
What to checkReminders go to the person it is assigned to, by email.
  1. Open Tasks. Tabs: Today, Overdue, Upcoming, All open, Done; switch between Mine and Everyone, and between List and Calendar.
  2. Type in Add a task and press Enter, or click New task for the full form: due date, reminder, priority, assigned to, related to (a record), repeat.

A rule that creates the task for you

A rule reads like a sentence: when something happens to a record, only if it matches, then do these things. It acts once per record and event, and rules are created switched off so you can test them first.

Say this to Claude
When a treatment’s status changes to Quoted, create a task “Follow up on {title}” for whoever created it, due in 3 days. Save it switched off, test it on a real treatment and show me what it would do before turning it on.
What Claude doescreate_crm_automation (saved off), test_crm_automation on a record — it changes nothing — and, after your yes, set_crm_automation_enabled.
What you'll seeA dry-run result: whether the conditions hold and the task it would create, rendered. Then the rule listed under Automations → Record rules.
What to checkRules that act on their own are a separate plugin permission, never on by default. Later, ask “what has that rule done?” — Claude uses list_crm_automation_runs.
Say this to Claude
Also: 7 days before a treatment’s planned date, create a reminder task for the dentist on it.
  1. Click Automations in the navbar, then the Record rules tab.
  2. Under your record type click New rule.
  3. When: pick what starts it — a record is created, a field changes, a date arrives, a record is linked. Only if: add conditions, or leave none. Then: add the actions in order — create a task, set a field, set a field on a linked record, create a record, or email the team.
  4. Click Save, then switch the rule On.
One group per record type, each with its own New rule button.
Read it top to bottom as one sentence. Only workspace admins can change rules.

One dashboard

Say this to Claude
Build me a dashboard called “Clinic this month”: new treatments this month, treatments by status, total quoted price, and open tasks per person.
What Claude doeslist_crm_report_sources, run_crm_report to check each number, then save_crm_dashboard.
What you'll seeA new dashboard under the Dashboard tab with those widgets.
What to checkCompare one widget with the list it counts. A role can hide dashboards from a person entirely.
  1. Open Dashboard and click Create a dashboard. It suggests first widgets from your own record types and fields.
  2. Click Add these widgets, or Build my own and use Add widget: pick the data, what to show (count, total, average…) and how to cut it. The preview runs on your real data.

Connect it to your agent and Inbox

The CRM and the Agents app share the same people. The CRM is where you work them; the conversation itself stays in the Agents app.

  • A contact’s page lists their latest conversations. Click one and it opens in the Agents app, where the transcript and the reply box live. The CRM never hosts a chat.
  • The tags your agent applies show up as chips on the contact and as a filter on the list. Set them up once, in Set up tags.
  • Audiences group people. In Contacts, open Audiences → New audience: a dynamic audience is rules (tag, channel, source, phone, email, consent) with a live count; a fixed one is picked by hand.
  • Broadcasts reach an audience. From Contacts → Broadcasts, send a WhatsApp template to a whole audience and follow recipients, sent, failed and status in the same list.
  • The “CRM Agent” button in the navbar opens an assistant panel for how-to questions and for working with audiences.
The side list of Contacts: Contacts, Audiences, Duplicates, Broadcasts.

Send a broadcast from Claude:

Say this to Claude
Send the “appointment reminder” template to the audience Patients due this month. Show me the recipient count before you send.
What Claude doesResolves the audience, shows who is in it, and after your yes sends the approved template to each person on their own channel.
What you'll seeA new row under Contacts → Broadcasts with recipients, sent and failed counts.
What to checkRead the recipient count and the template text before you say yes — a send cannot be recalled.

With Claude, you can also just ask the CRM questions:

Say this to Claude
Show me every treatment that is Quoted and over 2,000 shekels, newest first, and who each one belongs to.
What Claude doesfind_records with filters and ranges, get_record for the people attached.
What you'll seeA table in the chat.
What to checkClaude only answers from what the CRM returned. If a list is cut, it says so.

Connect it to your other tools

The CRM is meant to sit in the middle. Things flow in from your other AssistantLabs apps, and out to whatever else you run.

  • Sales leads → CRM. In Sales, Leads · CRM decides when a lead becomes a record in the CRM, as what, and which value lands in which field. See the Sales app guide.
  • Bookings. Every booking updates the contact and adds a booked / cancelled / completed / no-show event to their timeline.
  • Export. The Export button on a list downloads it; with Claude, export_crm_records returns a record type as a table.

Webhooks: send changes out

A webhook sends new and changed records, and task events, to Make, Zapier, n8n, your accounting software or your own server. Every request is signed, so the other side can check it came from you.

Say this to Claude
Send every change to a Payment record to https://hooks.example.com/accounting. Create it, send a test, and tell me what the other side answered.
What Claude doescreate_crm_webhook, test_crm_webhook. A new webhook starts off; the first successful test switches it on.
What you'll seeThe webhook under Settings → Webhooks, switched on, with the answer from the test.
What to checkIt needs the plugin’s automations permission, which is never on by default, and the address must start with https://.
  1. Open Settings → Webhooks and click New webhook.
  2. Give it a name and the https:// address, pick the events (Record added, changed or deleted, Contacts linked or unlinked, Task added, changed, completed or deleted) and, if you want, Only for certain record types.
  3. Click Create webhook. Only workspace admins can manage webhooks.
For developers: The CRM also has a developer API (companies, contacts, record types, activities, meetings) with keys scoped to crm:* permissions, created in the Agents app’s organization settings.

Invite your team and set roles

Two separate things: getting people into the workspace, and deciding what each of them may open and change.

1. Invite

Say this to Claude
Invite dana@clinic.example and noa@clinic.example to the workspace as members.
What Claude doesSends an email invitation to each address with the role you named.
What you'll seeBoth people under pending invitations, then under Members once they accept.
What to checkSay “admin” only for people who should change the CRM’s structure.

Do this in the app: in the Agents app, open your organization page and click Invite Member, enter the email and choose the role, member or admin. Once someone is in the workspace, they are in the CRM too.

2. Roles

A role decides which record types a person can view or edit, which fields they never see, whether they open contacts and dashboards, and whether they see everyone’s tasks. Members without a role keep full access and admins always see everything, so nothing changes for anyone until you put them in a role.

Say this to Claude
Create a role called Reception: can view and edit Treatments and contacts, no dashboards, and only sees tasks assigned to them. Then put dana@clinic.example in it.
What Claude doesget_crm_roles, list_crm_team_members, save_crm_role, assign_crm_role.
What you'll seeThe role under Settings → Team roles, and the person listed under it.
What to checkOnly a workspace admin’s connection can change roles; a member’s is refused with a sentence saying so. Ask Claude to read the role back.
  1. Open Settings → Team roles and click New role.
  2. Name it, set a Default access (No access, View or Edit), override it per record type, and choose Hide fields. Switch Sees everyone’s tasks and Opens the dashboards on or off.
  3. Under Who holds which role, choose a role for each person.
Team roles is in the Settings list, under General.
Click “Team roles” in the Settings list.

Your first week

A realistic week for a small business. Each line is one sitting, not a project.

  • Day 1 — connect and look. Connect the agent, open Contacts, scroll through ten people you know.
  • Day 2 — one record type. Create the one thing you keep most (treatments, properties, deals) and add five real ones by hand.
  • Day 3 — import. Bring in the old spreadsheet, dry run first, duplicates on “Fill in what is missing”.
  • Day 4 — one rule. The follow-up you always forget. Test it on a real record, then switch it on.
  • Day 5 — team. Invite one person and give them a role. Ask them to find a record without your help.
  • Day 7 — the numbers. Create the dashboard, and ask yourself which number you actually looked at.

Common mistakes

  • A record type for people. Patients, buyers and clients are contacts and customers. A record type is for what you keep about them.
  • Linking before the target exists. Create the types others point at first (clients and products before units, units before contracts). The same goes for importing.
  • Importing without a dry run. Check first, always. “Add anyway” is only for a list you know is all new people.
  • Expecting the address to change. A record type’s “Address in the app” is permanent. The names can be changed any time.
  • Switching a rule on untested. A rule acts once per record and event. Run the dry run on a real record first.
  • Making roles and expecting a change. Nothing changes until people are put in the role.
  • Redesigning a page casually. A page is the app for everyone in the workspace. Review, then publish.
Stuck? Start from the overview in CRM: what it does, or open the CRM at crm.assistantlabs.io and use the CRM Agent button.
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