A visitor fills out the estimate form on a contractor's website and hits submit. On a live contractor site running on OAS, here is exactly what happens next, in order.
1. The request is matched to the right business
The server looks at the hostname the request arrived on and uses it to work out which contractor's business the inquiry belongs to. The business is never taken from a hidden field or anything else the visitor's browser sent; it is derived server-side from the site the form lives on. That is also what keeps one contractor's inquiries from ever landing on another contractor's business, even if the form data tried to say otherwise.
2. The inquiry is stored before anything else happens
The lead is written to the database first. Nothing downstream — not a notification, not a customer match — gets to decide whether the inquiry existed. If the alert fails to go out later, the lead is already on the books; a failed notification is never confused with a failed intake.
3. OAS checks whether this is a customer it already knows
Once the row exists, OAS tries to match the inquiry to an existing customer record by name, phone or email. When the match is clear, the lead attaches to that customer's history. When it isn't — say a phone number and an email on the form point at two different customers already on file — OAS does not guess. The lead is kept either way, and the ambiguous match is left for a person to sort out rather than decided automatically.
4. The contractor is alerted, after the write
After the lead is committed, OAS alerts the contractor however their account is configured — email, text, both or neither — and every listed address or number is notified, with text sent only where consent is on file. An alert reports something that already happened: the lead is stored whether or not it goes out. We can say an alert was accepted by its provider; we cannot say it reached an inbox or a phone — OAS holds proof of acceptance only, not delivery.
5. The contractor can read it in the portal, too
The inquiry also shows up in the contractor's portal, on a read-only page: the message, the contact details, and nothing to click to act on it yet. There's no status field to change, no note to leave, no way to mark it handled from there — the portal shows the inquiry; it doesn't yet manage it.
What doesn't happen
OAS never automatically replies to the customer who submitted the inquiry — no text, no email, nothing sent back on its own initiative. The contractor's configured alert is the only automatic notification; the only other place to see the inquiry is that same read-only portal page. There is no triage queue, no automated follow-up, and no status workflow in the portal yet — real gaps, not finished features we're being quiet about.
This is the same intake path behind why a customer record should outlive its website: one inquiry becomes one durable record, independent of whatever happens to the channel it arrived through.
If you want to see this running on your own site, get in touch.