Comma5 Inquiries manual

Comma5 Inquiries saves every Contact Form 7 inquiry in your own WordPress, sorts it into Sales or Help, and helps you follow each one through to Won or Resolved. This manual covers everything, but you only need the first three sections to get going.

Before you start

• WordPress 6.2 or later, and PHP 7.4 or later.
• Contact Form 7, installed and active, with at least one form on your site.
• An administrator login to your WordPress site.

Comma5 Inquiries works with any Contact Form 7 form. You do not need to change your forms.

Install

1. In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin.
2. Search for Comma5 Inquiries, click Install Now, then Activate.
3. A new Inquiries menu appears in the WordPress sidebar.
4. Send a test inquiry through one of your forms, then open Inquiries. It should be at the top of the list.

From now on every inquiry is saved the moment it is sent, before the notification email goes out. Your form keeps sending its email exactly as before.

If it does not come up in the search, download the zip from its WordPress.org page and add it with Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin.

Updating: WordPress shows new versions on the Plugins page like any other plugin. Click Update now, or Enable auto-updates to have it done for you. Your inquiries and settings are kept. If you installed an earlier version from a zip we emailed you, it updates the same way.

Moving from C5 Leads Bridge? Install Comma5 Inquiries and activate it. The old plugin is switched off automatically and all your leads carry over. You can then delete C5 Leads Bridge from the Plugins page.

Sales or Help

Every inquiry is either a Sales lead (someone who may buy) or a Help request (someone who needs an answer, including general questions). Each kind has its own statuses, so sales leads move towards Won and help requests are tracked until they are resolved.

Open Inquiries > Settings. Under Forms: Sales or Help, choose a type for each form. Forms with words such as "support" or "help" in their name start as Help; everything else starts as Sales.

One form for both? If your form asks something like "I need a quote / I need help", choose that field under Decided by a field, then tick the answers that mean Help. Any other answer makes the inquiry a sales lead, and an empty answer uses the form's type.

These settings apply to new inquiries. To move one inquiry, open it and change Type at the top right.

Statuses

Sales leads start as New, then move through Contacted, Quoted, Won or Lost. Help requests go from New to In progress, Waiting on customer and Resolved.

• Rename a status, change its colour, or add up to 12 per type under Statuses in Settings.
• Renaming keeps the inquiries that have that status.
• Removing a status moves its inquiries to the first status in the list.
• The first status is the one every new inquiry starts with.

Tip: keep statuses up to date and Analytics can show your win rate and which channels bring the best leads.

Other settings

Spam and email alerts

• Keep spam: submissions that Contact Form 7 (or Akismet or reCAPTCHA) marks as spam go to a separate Spam tab, so a real inquiry caught by mistake can be restored. Spam is deleted after 30 days, or the number of days you choose.
• Failed emails: if a notification email fails to send, the inquiry is flagged with Email failed and a button to resend it. You can also show a warning on the WordPress Dashboard.

Attachments

Choose which file types are accepted, how many files and how large in total. Each file's real contents are checked, not just its name, and anything that could run a script is refused. Files are stored in a private folder and can only be opened by a logged-in administrator.

Where visitors came from

• Pages viewed: records the pages a visitor reads before sending a form, so you can see their journey and time on site. On by default.
• Approximate location: looks up the visitor's town and country from their IP address. Off by default, because it uses an outside service (ipwho.is).
• Proxy or CDN: tick this only if your site is behind Cloudflare or a similar service.

Form field matching

Comma5 Inquiries finds the name, company, email, phone and message in your forms automatically. If one of your forms uses unusual field names, add them here. Every other field is still saved, under Other form fields.

Data

Your inquiries are kept if the plugin is deleted, unless you tick Also delete all inquiries, attachments and settings first.

The inquiries list

• Tabs along the top show All, Sales, Help, Spam and, when needed, Email failed. Inside Sales or Help, filter by status.
• Change a status straight from the list with the coloured drop-down. It saves immediately.
• Search looks through names, companies, emails, phone numbers and messages.
• Click a name or date to open the inquiry. Click an email address or phone number to contact them.
• The paperclip column appears once any inquiry has attachments. Click the count to preview the files.

One inquiry

• The summary line under the name shows the visitor's location (if switched on), time on site, pages viewed, number of visits and where they came from.
• Status and Type are at the top right. Both save as soon as you change them.
• Previous and Next step through the list you came from, including any filter or search, so you can work through inquiries one by one.
• Activity records when the inquiry arrived and every change since, with who made it.
• Pages viewed shows each page they read before sending the form, and roughly how long they stayed on each.
• At the bottom: Move to Spam, or Delete the inquiry and its files permanently.

Analytics

• Choose the period: 7 days, 30 days (the default), 90 days, 12 months, this year or all time. Narrow it to Sales or Help, or to one form.
• The tiles show inquiries compared with the previous period, sales leads and help requests, typical time on site, first response time and spam caught.
• Click anything: a day's column, a channel, a source, a page or a status opens the matching inquiries. A blue chip shows the filter, and you can remove it with its ×.
• First response is the time until someone first changes an inquiry's status or type, resends its email or opens its files. Replies by email or phone are not seen by the plugin, so updating statuses keeps this accurate.
• Win rate appears once at least one in five sales leads has moved past New, so it is not misleading.

Share link

Send live analytics to a manager, director or client without giving them a login.

1. Open Inquiries > Settings > Share analytics.
2. Tick Turn on the share link and click Save settings.
3. Click Copy link and send it by email or message. On the Analytics page, the Copy share link button does the same.

• The page shows totals and charts only: never names, emails or messages.
• It is always up to date, and works on phones, tablets and computers.
• Search engines are told not to list it.
• To stop someone using it, tick Make a new link and save. The old link stops working straight away.

Export

In Settings, under Export inquiries, choose All, Sales only or Help only and download an Excel or CSV file. For Google Sheets, upload the file to Google Drive and open it there.

Privacy and cookies

• Everything is stored in your own WordPress database. Nothing is sent to Comma5.
• Two first-party cookies record where the visitor came from (c5lb_src) and, if page tracking is on, the pages they viewed (c5lb_pages, for up to 30 days). Mention them in your cookie policy.
• If you switch on approximate location, the visitor's IP address is sent to ipwho.is once, after the inquiry is saved. The IP address is not stored with the inquiry. Mention this in your privacy policy.

Questions and fixes

An inquiry did not appear

Check that Contact Form 7 is active and that the form was sent successfully. Spam goes to the Spam tab. If your site uses page caching, test in a private browser window.

"Email failed" on an inquiry

WordPress could not hand the notification email to your mail system. The inquiry is safe. Click Resend email once the problem is fixed. Repeated failures usually mean the site needs an SMTP plugin.

No pages viewed or time on site

These need the visitor's browser to allow cookies, and only start recording after the plugin is installed. Inquiries sent before that have none.

Location is blank

Approximate location is off by default. Switch it on in Settings; it only applies to new inquiries.

Need a hand?

Contact us and we will help you set it up.