Accept or reject a contact assigned to you
When someone assigns you a contact, it waits for your answer. Until you accept it you can read it but not work it. This page is how to find those contacts and decide.
Before you start
- Assignment is part of Lead Assignment, which is on the Core and Max plans
- Nothing to set up. A contact assigned to you is already in your list
Pending is not the same as owning
The most-reported “bug” on this screen is not a bug. While a contact is waiting for your answer:
- you can see it and read it,
- every editable field is display-only, and
- every action button on the record is hidden, not greyed out — the Accept control has taken their place.
Accepting makes you an owner and everything unlocks. Rejecting hands the contact back to the pool, for your assignment rules to route again.
This holds even for an admin who can normally act across other people’s contacts: while a contact is pending to you, you answer first.
Steps
Find the contacts waiting for you
There is no inbox and no separate screen for these — pending contacts sit in your ordinary list and you decide in place.
The quickest way to see only them is the owner filter chip at the left of the filter row. Open it and tick Pending my acceptance — the last row of the list, under a divider. Its sub-line reads Awaiting your response and it carries a small clock. If the list of members is long, type “pending” in the picker’s search box.
That lens is exclusive. Ticking it clears whichever owners you had selected, and unticking it puts them back. The chip then reads Pending my acceptance.
Two more things about the same picker, because both surprise people: Clear in its header returns you to Me rather than to nothing, and if your workspace is set to Owner-private your owner choices collapse to Me — but the pending lens stays available, because it is how the decision is reachable at all.
Pending my acceptance is an exclusive lens — ticking it clears the owners you had chosen
Accept it
On the record, and on a contact card, the whole action row becomes one joined control: a green Accept half with a tick, and a chevron half beside it.
Press Accept. You become an owner, the fields unlock and the normal action buttons come back. The row leaves the pending list straight away, so the control disappears with it.
In the table’s action rail it is the same control, shrinking to the word Accept or to the tick alone as the space narrows. Clicking the row still opens the record, so you can read the contact before you decide.
Or hand it on, or reject it
The chevron beside Accept holds the other two answers. Its tooltip reads Reassign or reject, and it opens on hover with a mouse or on a tap on touch. The panel has at most two rows:
- Reassign — opens the Assign owner window so you can pass the contact to the right person. It is absent, not greyed out, if your role cannot assign contacts.
- Reject — sends the contact back to the pool for the assignment rules to route again.
Reject in that panel fires immediately — there is no second confirm. The only place that asks twice is the narrow icon-only version of the control, where pressing ✕ swaps in Confirm reject and Cancel reject. If you are not certain, press Accept instead: you can always reassign afterwards.
Reassign and Reject live behind the chevron — and Reject there does not ask twice
Watch the clock, if there is one
When the assignment carries a response window, the border of the Accept button itself depletes like a ring as the time runs down, with a halo pulsing past it. Hover it and you get Pending · 4m left. The tone turns from amber to red at the five-minute mark, and once the window has passed it reads Overdue.
A contact assigned without a window wears no ring, and the button reads Accept. The decision then waits as long as it needs to.
Decide on several at once
Select the rows — Space on the row you are on, or its checkbox.
When every selected contact is one of your own pending assignments, the floating bar at the bottom collapses to 3 selected and offers exactly three verbs: Accept, Reassign (only if your role can assign) and Reject.
The ordinary bulk verbs are replaced rather than added to, because a contact nobody has accepted has no owner to act as yet. If you still see the usual verbs, something in your selection is not pending to you.
If you try to edit one instead of answering
Editing a field on a contact that is waiting for you brings up a window instead of an editor. It is headed This lead is pending your response and reads “Farah Zainal” is assigned to you but not yet accepted. Accept ownership to edit its fields, hand it to someone else, or reject it back to the pool.
The three buttons are Accept, Reassign — missing entirely if you cannot assign — and Reject. There is no “don’t ask again” on this one, and the ✕ closes it without deciding anything.
You get this whenever you try to edit a field before answering
What happens after
| Your answer | What it does |
|---|---|
| Accept | You become an owner. The fields unlock, the action buttons appear, and the row leaves the pending lens |
| Reject | The pending assignment is dropped, and the contact returns to the pool for the assignment rules to route again |
| Reassign | The Assign owner window opens so you can pass it to someone else |
All three are written into the contact’s Activity, where an ownership event names itself — assigned, accepted, declined, withdrawn, reassigned or paused. See Open and edit a contact.
If something goes wrong
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Couldn’t accept this lead — it may have just been claimed by someone else | The accept did not go through, most often because a colleague answered first | Refresh the list. If the contact has gone, it was taken |
| Couldn’t reject this lead — try again | The reject did not go through | Try again in a moment |
| The record has no action buttons, only Accept | It is still waiting for your answer | Accept it, and the rest of the buttons appear |
| No Reassign row behind the chevron | Your role does not include assigning contacts | Accept it and ask an owner to reassign it, or reject it back to the pool |
| The bulk bar shows the usual verbs instead of Accept, Reassign and Reject | Not everything you selected is pending to you | Turn on the Pending my acceptance lens first, then select |
| A contact is assigned to you but does not count as yours | Pending is not owning — you are not in its owner list until you accept | Accept it |
| You are an admin and still cannot act on it | A contact pending to you outranks cross-owner rights | Answer it first, then act as its owner |