External Form → CRM

Overview

Send submissions from any form on your website — a contact form, demo request, newsletter sign-up — directly into your Kanvas AI CRM as a new lead. A workspace owner creates an API key in settings, pastes the generated snippet into the external site, and every submission becomes a contact in your CRM with a matching company record and basic source attribution.

Use it for: contact forms, demo requests, newsletter sign-ups — any public form where you’d rather have a lead land in Kanvas AI than in an inbox.

How it works

  1. A workspace owner opens Workspace settings and creates a new form-integration API key.
  2. Kanvas AI generates a short snippet pre-filled with that key. The owner copies it and pastes it into the external site.
  3. When someone submits the form, the submission is sent to https://api.getkanvas.ai using the key.
  4. Kanvas AI looks at the submitted fields, matches them to standard CRM fields (email, first name, last name, phone, company, notes), and creates a new lead in your CRM. A company is auto-created or reused if one already matches.
  5. The lead shows up in the Leads view of the CRM, with any source information (such as the page it was submitted from and basic UTM tags) attached.

Setup

  1. Open Workspace settings → Form Integration. Only workspace owners can create or delete keys.
  2. Click Create API Key and fill in:
    • Name — an internal label so you can tell keys apart (for example, “Marketing site contact form”).
    • Allowed domains — a comma-separated list of websites that may use this key. Use an exact host or a wildcard subdomain. Leave it empty to allow any origin (not recommended for production).
    • Update on duplicate — if turned on, a repeat submission from the same email address updates the existing lead instead of creating a new one.
  3. Copy the key as soon as it’s shown. The full key is only displayed once at creation time; afterwards only a short prefix is visible.
  4. Click View snippet next to the key, copy the snippet, and paste it into your website where the form lives. Two snippet styles are available — one for plain websites and one for React apps. Pick whichever matches your site.

Usage

Toggle a key on or off. Each key in the API Keys list has a status toggle. Turning a key off immediately stops accepting submissions from it; turn it back on to resume without changing the key value.

Replace a key without losing past leads. Delete the old key once you’ve added the new one to your site. Leads that came in through the old key remain in your CRM — they’re not removed.

Update an existing lead. Turn Update on duplicate on for the key so repeat submissions from the same email address update the existing lead rather than creating a duplicate.

See where leads came from. Open any lead in the CRM. The activity timeline shows when the lead was captured and any source information that came with the submission.

Edge cases & limits

  • Allowed domains are strict. If a website’s address isn’t on the list, the submission is rejected. Add new addresses to the key before going live on a new site.
  • Per-key rate limit. Each key has a short-term rate limit to protect against bursts and abuse. Submissions above the limit are temporarily refused; the website should retry a few seconds later.
  • Missing email. Submissions without an email address are still saved, but duplicate-detection won’t be able to match them later. Make email a required field on your form whenever possible.
  • Missing name. If neither a name nor an email is provided, the lead is created with a generic placeholder name. Add a name field to your form to keep your CRM tidy.
  • Unknown fields are preserved. Fields the integration doesn’t recognise (for example, a referral code or a campaign tag your form sends) are stored on the lead so you can see them later.
  • Keys are shown once. Kanvas AI never displays the full key again after creation. If you lose a key, create a new one and update your site.
  • No CAPTCHA. The integration relies on the allowed-domains list and the per-key rate limit. Add your own CAPTCHA on the website if you need extra protection.
  • Sharing a key is risky. Anyone with a key can submit to your CRM through it. Don’t paste keys into public chat channels or commit them to public source code.
  • CRM — what to do with leads once they’re in Kanvas AI
  • CRM Meetings — turn a lead conversation into a recorded meeting with an AI summary
  • Notifications — get notified when something changes on a lead you own
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