Setup Checklist

A practical, week-one checklist for the new HotCRM admin. Work through it in order — each section builds on the previous.

✅ Day 1 — Foundation

1. Company profile

Navigate to Setup → Company Information:

• Company name, address, time zone, default currency
• Fiscal year start month (used by all forecast reports)
• Default language

2. Business hours

Setup → Business Hours:

• Working days (e.g., Mon–Fri)
• Working hours (e.g., 9 AM – 6 PM)
• Holidays for the year

Business hours drive SLA calculations — e.g., "resolve within 8 business hours" uses these.

3. Email setup

Setup → Email:

• Inbound email forwarding for cases (e.g., support@yourdomain.com)
• Outbound email signature templates
• DKIM / SPF for sender authentication

✅ Day 2 — People

4. User invites

Setup → Users:

• Import or invite all users
• Assign each user a profile
• Assign each user a role in the hierarchy
• Set a manager for each user (drives approval routing)

5. Role hierarchy

Setup → Roles:

• Confirm the default hierarchy (Executive → Directors → Managers → Reps) matches your org
• Add custom roles for regional or specialised teams

6. Profiles & permissions

Setup → Profiles:

• Review the six built-in profiles (see Profiles)
• Clone and customise if needed (e.g., a Junior Sales Rep profile with limited delete rights)

✅ Day 3 — Data foundations

7. Account & contact ownership

• Decide org-wide default for accounts and contacts (private vs public read vs public read/write) — see Sharing & security
• Configure account teams if you sell as pods rather than solo reps

8. Lead routing

Setup → Lead Settings:

• Default lead owner / queue (when no rule matches)
• Routing rules (by region, industry, source)
• Auto-response email to new leads from the web form

9. Product catalog

• Import products — at minimum: code, name, list price, billing type
• Set up product manager (the contact for each product line)
• Upload datasheets (feeds the AI Copilot's Product Information knowledge base)

✅ Day 4 — Process

10. Opportunity stages

Confirm the 7-stage default pipeline matches your sales process. Stages and probabilities are:

If your process differs, adjust in Setup → Opportunity → Stages.

11. Case SLAs

Confirm the default SLA matrix:

Adjust if your support promise differs.

12. Approval process

• Confirm the discount approval threshold ($500K default) — see Approvals
• Confirm approvers (manager + director by role)
• Test by submitting a sample opportunity

✅ Day 5 — Knowledge & AI

13. Knowledge bases

• Seed Support Knowledge with your top 20 FAQ articles
• Seed Sales Knowledge with your sales playbook
• Seed Competitive Intel with battle cards for your top 5 competitors
• Product datasheets — already in product records (synced automatically)

See Knowledge Bases.

14. AI Copilot

• Confirm the AI Copilot is enabled (Setup → AI)
• Choose which skills to enable
• Run a sample query ("Give me Customer 360 on [test account]") to verify
• Configure data sensitivity rules — which fields the Copilot must redact

✅ Day 6 — Dashboards & reports

• Pin CRM Overview as the home dashboard for everyone
• Set up team-specific dashboards (sales / service / exec)
• Schedule weekly subscription emails for managers
• Review the standard reports and customise filters

✅ Day 7 — Launch

• Run the migration check (all imported records have owners and required fields)
• Run a smoke test: create a lead → convert → opportunity → quote → close-won → contract
• Train users on their daily workflow (45-minute role-based sessions)
• Set up an internal #hotcrm-help channel for questions

After launch

• Week 2: Review dashboard usage and adoption metrics.
• Month 1: First retrospective — what's working, what's not.
• Quarterly: Review profiles, sharing rules, knowledge bases for drift.

Need help?

• Sharing & security — most "I can't see X" questions
• Profiles — most "I can't do X" questions
• Automation — for adding new business rules