Native CRM

Most teams connect an existing CRM — HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive. For teams that don't have a CRM to connect, SMVue offers a first-party CRM workspace so the manager still has a single place to run the team.

Beta — available as a gated add-on. Native CRM is in active development and is enabled for eligible organizations as a Stripe add-on. If you'd like access, contact us.

What it does

The native workspace gives you the core records a sales team needs, kept inside SMVue:

• Contacts, accounts, and deals — create and maintain the records directly in SMVue, including relationships, ownership, activities, and search.
• A working deal board — move deals between your actual pipeline stages. Stage probability and won/lost outcomes feed SMVue's forecast and AI context.
• SMB-friendly setup — SMVue creates a starter pipeline, and a manager can add team members manually from Team without first connecting another CRM.
• Custom fields — workspace admins with a Manager seat can add typed fields for companies, contacts, and deals when the standard details are not enough.
• Portable backups — workspace admins with a Manager seat can download and restore an SMVue JSON export that preserves relationships, owners, pipelines, stages, and custom fields.

Set up Native CRM

After Native CRM is enabled for your workspace:

1. Complete the Native CRM setup step. SMVue creates a starter sales pipeline.
2. Open Team and add the reps who will own CRM records.
3. As a workspace owner or admin with a Manager seat, open Settings > Native CRM to rename the pipeline, add or reorder stages, set stage probabilities, and mark won or lost outcomes.
4. Add any custom fields your team needs.
5. Open CRM and create the first company, contact, or deal.

Keep the pipeline small at first. For most new CRM users, four to six stages that match how the team actually sells are easier to maintain than a detailed process copied from another business.

Who can see and change records

• Managers can work records in the team scope they manage and manage collaborators for records owned by that scope.
• Reps can work the records they own and records explicitly shared with them. A rep can add activity to a shared deal without receiving permission to change its owner, collaborators, or stage.
• Executive members inside the manager workspace have a read-only workspace-wide view. Create, edit, archive, pipeline, import, and collaborator controls are hidden and also rejected by the API. The organization-level Executive workspace created through Sales Executive onboarding does not expose Native CRM.

Workspace owners and admins with a Manager seat can additionally configure pipelines and custom-field definitions and import or export portable backups.

Configure terminology and sales motion

When your workspace has the Native CRM semantic flexibility add-on enabled, workspace owners and admins with a Manager seat can open Settings > Native CRM to choose a supported sales motion and set customer-facing names for the standard CRM entities. For example, you can display Accounts as Clients and Opportunities as Engagements.

SMVue stores these names as a versioned display-semantic configuration. They do not rename stored records or canonical APIs, and only gated Native CRM surfaces that consume the effective semantic contract can apply them. The available sales motions and stage, activity, stakeholder, and value roles are controlled by SMVue so reporting remains consistent; this setting does not create custom objects or transactional inventory, invoice, or fulfillment records.

SMVue can suggest a collaborator when that teammate has real activity on a deal or account. The record owner or that owner's manager must accept the current suggestion; a rep cannot browse for and add arbitrary peers.

Customize the pipeline and fields

Workspace owners and admins with a Manager seat can go to Settings > Native CRM to maintain the sales process. Pipeline stages are ordered and each stage has a probability plus an Open, Won, or Lost outcome. Changing a deal's stage updates its pipeline position and its open/won/lost status together.

Workspace owners and admins with a Manager seat can also create typed custom fields for companies, contacts, and deals. Available types include text, number, checkbox, date, date and time, dropdown, and multi-select. Values are validated against the field definition, and fields can be archived or restored without deleting existing record data.

Back up or restore CRM data

As a workspace owner or admin with a Manager seat, open Settings > Native CRM and choose Download backup to save a portable JSON file. Use Import SMVue backup to restore a prior SMVue export. Matching records update instead of creating duplicates, so retrying the same import is safe. When Native CRM semantic flexibility is enabled, the backup also carries a signed, versioned custom-field definition manifest so values, options, archive state, and approved governance can be restored safely. Older, modified, or cross-workspace backups still import with conservative defaults and warnings; they cannot approve reportability or AI exposure. An import accepts up to 5,000 records and 5,000 custom-field definitions; export a fresh backup before a large restore.

How to think about it

SMVue is the manager's command center on top of the CRM. Native CRM exists so teams without an external CRM still get that command center — it is not a replacement for HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive, and it isn't intended to match their full feature set. If you already run a CRM, connect it instead; you'll get the same coaching, pipeline, and acquisition views over your existing data.

Related

• CRM integrations overview — connect an external CRM instead.
• CRM workspace — work contacts, companies, deals, and the deal board.
• Deals — how SMVue works the deals in your pipeline, native or synced.