Prospector
Overview
The Prospector searches your provider's B2B company database and takes matches over as lead, customer or contact. The first provider is Dealfront (company database from Echobot). Octibiz only reads there — nothing is sent to Dealfront or third parties except your search criteria.
You find it under CRM → Leads → Prospector.
Core tasks
Set up access. Without access the page shows Not connected. It is set up once under Settings → Integrations: new integration with provider dealfront, your personal API key from Dealfront (Settings → Personal → API Keys) in the field api_key, optionally account_id for a specific Dealfront account (otherwise the first one applies). The key is stored encrypted and never shown again; Check now reads your Dealfront profile and shows whether the key is valid. Each brand can have its own access, otherwise the cross-brand one applies.
Search. Name or domain, country (two-letter country code, e.g. DE), city, postcode and number of employees can be combined; at least one criterion is required. Searches do not use credits at Dealfront. Load more fetches the next page.
Spot duplicates. Every match is checked against your customer base: the same VAT ID or the same company domain is a hard match (yellow), a similar name a hint (blue).
Take over. Take over opens the takeover:
- Lead — a new prospect with company, website, industry and the first chosen contact person. If an
existing customer has the same VAT ID or domain, the lead is linked to it. The same company never becomes a lead twice — a second attempt opens the existing one.
- New customer — with address, website, phone and VAT ID (only in valid form); the chosen contact
persons become contacts. On a hard match, Octibiz requires Create anew despite the existing customer explicitly.
- Contacts for … — on a hard match, the chosen contact persons are added to the existing customer.
The dialog shows the contact persons with name and level; Octibiz fetches email and phone only when taking over — this may cost credits at Dealfront. If an email already belongs to a contact of another customer, it is neither created twice nor moved; the takeover reports it.
Fields in detail
| Field | Required | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
Company name or domain query | one of the criteria | text | Searches name, alternative names and domains. |
Country countryCode | no | ISO code, two letters | Registered office of the company. |
City / postcode city / postalCode | no | text | Registered office of the company. |
Employees employeeRanges | no | 1-10 to 10.000+ | Company size, several ranges possible. |
Company companyId | yes (takeover) | identifier at the provider | Which company is taken over; the interface sets it from the match. |
Existing customer customerUlid | for Contacts for … | customer in Octibiz | Customer the contact persons are added to; the response names the customer the takeover went to. |
Source source | no | prospector, web_visitor | Where the company comes from — recorded on the lead. |
Brand brandId | no | one of your brands | Whose provider access applies and in which lead or customer is created; without it the cross-brand one or the first brand in which you hold the permission. |
Industries industryCodes | no | the provider's industry codes, at most 20 | Narrows the search to industries. |
Page size pageSize | no | 1 to 100, default 25 | Matches per request. |
Continuation cursor | no | value from nextCursor | Fetches the next page of the same search (Load more). |
Take over as target | yes | lead, customer, contact | What is created in Octibiz. |
Contact persons contactIds | no | at most 20 | Persons whose contact details are fetched on takeover. |
Create anew despite the existing customer createDespiteDuplicate | no | yes/no | Only for New customer and a hard duplicate match. |
Settings & permissions
- Module
module.crm. crm.prospector.view— search and view contact persons;crm.prospector.import— take over.
The takeover additionally needs the target's permission in the brand: crm.lead.manage for leads, platform.customer.create and platform.contact.create for customers and contacts. The role Vertrieb (sales) has all three Prospector permissions out of the box.
- Data protection: You process data from the company database on the basis of legitimate interest
(Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). What flows to Dealfront is listed under Data processors.
FAQ & troubleshooting
“Not connected”. There is no Dealfront access for this brand — create the integration, see above.
“The Prospector provider did not respond or refused: rejected:HTTP 401 …”. The API key is invalid or has expired. Create a new one in Dealfront and replace it in the integration; Check now confirms it.
“The customer … already exists”. Hard duplicate match. Add the contacts there or create a new one explicitly.