Free lead routing tools

Lead routing is the rule-based dispatch of an incoming form submission to the right destination based on its answers. A high-budget enquiry goes to #hot-leads, a low-budget one to #leads, a support question to #cs, an Austin lead to #austin-team. The tools here cover the three parts of the routing workflow: building the rules (simulator), auditing the pipeline they sit in (checklist), and diagnosing what broke when something silently stops (troubleshooter).

(1) Routing rule simulator, when you're designing rules and want to verify they fire the way you expect against a real sample submission. Use it before going live; use it again when adding a new rule. (2) Diagnostic checklist, when you want a flat audit of the whole pipeline. Nine items, top-to-bottom, fix per item. Good for periodic health checks and for handing off a working setup. (3) Form-to-Slack troubleshooter, when one specific symptom appeared (Slack stopped getting messages, the wrong content arrives). It branches based on the symptom and gives you a targeted fix.

Same problem space, different UX. The checklist is linear, walk every item from 1 to 9, tick what's true, fix what's not. Best when you don't know which part is broken or want to confirm the whole pipeline is healthy. The troubleshooter is a decision tree, start with a symptom, answer one or two questions, land on one diagnosis. Best when you've already got a specific symptom and want the targeted fix without reading nine items first.

No. All three run entirely in your browser. The simulator evaluates rules against any sample JSON or key/value text; the checklist is generic Apps Script / Slack pipeline knowledge with the RouteForms delivery-log item flagged as optional; the troubleshooter covers failure modes that apply to any Google-Forms-to-Slack setup, with RouteForms-specific guidance shown only where it's relevant.

The full set RouteForms uses in production: equals, does not equal, contains, does not contain, greater than, greater than or equal, less than, less than or equal, is empty, is not empty. Numeric operators tolerate currency symbols and commas — '₹50,000', '50k USD', and '50000' all compare as 50000. Case-insensitive matching with leading/trailing whitespace trimmed on field names and values.

Top to bottom: most specific first, fallback last. The simulator walks the list top-to-bottom and the first matching rule wins. So 'IF Budget >= 100000 → #vip-leads' should sit above 'IF Budget >= 50000 → #hot-leads', and both should sit above 'IF Source = Pricing → #pricing-leads'. Anything that doesn't match any rule falls through to the default destination, usually the form's main Slack channel.

Field name drift. A teammate renames a Google Form question from 'Budget' to 'Budget (USD)'. The form still works, submissions still arrive, but every routing rule that says 'Budget' stops matching. The fix is in our /tools/google-forms-field-extractor, paste a real response, copy the verbatim field name, paste it back into the rule. The checklist's item 5 calls this out specifically.

Pure Apps Script (via our /tools/routing-rules-to-apps-script translator) is the right answer if you want zero external dependencies and routing logic that lives entirely on Google's infrastructure. RouteForms is the right answer once you start needing operational visibility, a delivery log per form, one-click retries on failed posts, idempotency so retries don't double-post, and email alerts when delivery starts failing. The script gives you the rules; RouteForms adds the safety net.