The Inbox
Everything from outside your team waits here with where it came from, so nothing reaches your directory until someone says yes.
Your team can change the directory directly. Everything else arrives in the Inbox as a proposal: what would change, where it came from, and why to believe it. Everyone who can decide what's in it gets a notification when something new is waiting.
Where proposals come from
Sources, which you set up under Sources and which Halo reads on a schedule.
Sign-ups, from your extranet's join page.
Website forms, if a form is set to send to the Inbox.
Businesses, sending changes from the extranet.
Spreadsheets, which you take in yourself.
Read with Halo, when you hand it a page or some text.
Deciding
Open a proposal to see it field by field, beside what's there now if it would change a record you have.
Take only some of it. Untick any field you don't want.
Say whether it's a duplicate. If it might be something you already have, Halo lists what it matches and why, and asks you to choose. Choosing one shows what it says now, with only what it lacks ticked. Choose No, add it as new if it's different.
See what's going. A business can empty a field it no longer wants. That shows as Remove, and you can untick it like anything else.
Add it as a draft, or add and publish.
Reject it. A no stays a no: a source won't bring back the same thing unless what it says changes.
Add a note if it's worth saying. A business that sent in a change sees it, in the email telling them what you decided. Someone who signed up doesn't: nobody at an address from a form hears anything until you say yes, so rejecting a sign-up sends nothing, and adding one sends a welcome.
To go faster, Apply at the top of the Inbox says yes to everything showing that isn't a possible duplicate, oldest first, so a business's latest word stands. What's new stays a draft, and new contacts get their welcome. If some can't apply, it says which and why.
When a business sends again about something still waiting, its new word replaces the old one in the same proposal. What it didn't change again stays. If it sets everything back, the proposal goes. A source works the same way: if it goes back to saying what your record already has, what it said in between leaves the Inbox, marked The source no longer says this, and comes back if the source says it again.
If the same thing appears twice in one batch, such as two rows of a spreadsheet for one place, each says the other might be it. Apply one, and the other can be pointed at it.
Delete for good removes a proposal and the details in it, for when someone asks. It can't be restored, and whatever it already changed stays. A proposal from a website's form says which website and page it came from, and links to the response. Deleting the response leaves the proposal here, so delete it here too if someone asked for their details to go. Owners, Admins and anyone who manages Halo CRM can do this.
Sources
Choose New source, then what to read:
| Source | What it reads |
|---|---|
| A calendar | An iCalendar feed (.ics), as town calendars, ticketing sites and Google publish |
| Business websites | Pages you list. Most carry schema.org data for search engines, which is exact |
| A JSON feed | An address that answers with a list, such as another system's API |
| Something that posts to Halo | Your other systems send items as they happen, with a token you copy once |
None of these use AI credits. They read public addresses only.
Trust this source when what it finds can go straight in. It still can't add something that might be a duplicate, which waits for you. New listings stay drafts, unless you also choose Publish what's new.
When a source fails, its card says why. It waits longer between tries, up to a week, and whoever manages Halo CRM hears at the third failure in a row. It goes back to its schedule as soon as a read works. A website source that read some of its pages says which it couldn't.
Spreadsheets
Choose Take in a spreadsheet, pick what each row is, and choose a CSV file. Halo reads it however it was saved, including Excel's plain CSV, semicolons and tabs, and says if characters were already lost. It guesses which column fills which field from the headings, and you can change any of them. One column has to be the name. Each row waits here for a decision.
A file of more than 500 rows runs in the background, so you can close the page. Halo notifies you when it's done, and Jobs in Halo Data shows how far it's got.
A value Halo can't use, such as a date it can't read or a region you don't have, is left out of that row, and it says how many of each. Dates can be written the way people write them, and regions by name.
Read with Halo
Hand it a page's address or some text, such as an email, a flyer or a press release. What it finds waits here, beside the words it relied on, for you to check. It never reaches the directory by itself.
Each read uses a few AI credits. To turn it off, use Read with Halo under Settings, Halo AI in Halo Data.