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Bitrix24 Onboarding Questionnaire: 50+ Questions to Ask Before You Start

Published: · Updated: · 11 min read

A thorough discovery questionnaire is the single most important document in any Bitrix24 project — it prevents costly rework, misaligned funnels, and missed integrations before a single setting is touched.

Why Discovery Questions Matter Before Any Configuration

Skipping a structured discovery phase is the most common reason Bitrix24 implementations stall. Based on our project archive, the discovery-and-specification stage alone typically requires ~10 hours of analyst time — roughly 5 hours of stakeholder interviews and 5 hours of writing the resulting technical specification. Starting configuration without that groundwork leads to funnel redesigns mid-project, integration surprises, and user-adoption failures after launch.

The questions below are grouped into eight thematic blocks. Not every question applies to every business — use the list as a checklist, mark irrelevant items as N/A, and add business-specific questions where needed.

Section 1: Company & Portal Setup

These questions establish the technical and organisational foundation of the portal.

# Question Why it matters
1 What is the desired subdomain / domain name for the portal? (e.g. crm.yourdomain.com) Required for DNS configuration before any work begins.
2 Is this a cloud or on-premise (self-hosted) deployment? Determines the setup path entirely.
3 Who is the legal owner of the licence? Name, email, phone. Required for licence key registration.
4 Who is the day-to-day technical contact? Name, email, phone. The person who will receive access credentials and instructions.
5 Which Bitrix24 plan are you on or considering? Feature availability differs significantly between plans.
6 Do you operate as a single legal entity, a holding, or a franchise network? Franchise/multi-entity structures may need separate portals or an Enterprise licence with centralised management.
7 How many employees will use the portal at launch? In 12 months? Affects plan choice and scalability planning.
8 What is the primary language of the team? Are multi-language notifications required? Influences template design and system localisation.
9 Do you have an existing IT administrator who can perform DNS changes and manage server access? On-premise deployments require SSH/server credentials; cloud deployments still need DNS access.
10 What is the system email address that will send invitations and notifications from the portal? Provide SMTP server, port, login, and password. Without this, invitation emails either fail or go to spam.

Section 2: CRM & Sales Processes

This is usually the longest block. The answers here drive funnel design, automation rules, and field configuration.

Lead & deal flow

  1. Describe your current sales process step by step — from first contact to closed deal.
  2. Do you use Leads as a separate pre-qualification stage, or do you create Deals directly?
  3. How many distinct sales pipelines (funnels) do you need? (e.g. new clients, renewals, wholesale, retail)
  4. What are the stage names in each funnel, and what action or document marks the transition between stages?
  5. At which stage is a deal considered "won"? What constitutes a lost deal?
  6. What data fields must be filled in at each stage before a deal can move forward?
  7. Do you sell products, services, or both? Should a product catalogue be configured in Bitrix24?
  8. Do you need recurring deals or subscription-based billing logic?
  9. How are leads currently generated — website forms, calls, messengers, offline events, marketplace listings?
  10. Should unassigned incoming leads be distributed automatically? By what rule (round-robin, territory, product type)?

Automation

  1. Which routine actions should be automated? (e.g. "send a WhatsApp reminder 24 hours before a meeting", "create an invoice task when deal reaches stage X")
  2. Are there deals that require multi-step approval before proceeding?
  3. Should the system send automatic payment reminders for overdue invoices?

Section 3: Integrations & External Tools

Integration questions are where most hidden complexity lives. Work through each tool the business currently uses.

The diagram below shows a typical integration architecture discussed during discovery: multiple inbound channels feed into Bitrix24, which then synchronises with back-office systems and document tools.

flowchart LR
    WEB[Website / Web Forms] --> B24[Bitrix24 CRM]
    PHONE[IP Telephony] --> B24
    WA[WhatsApp / Telegram] --> B24
    EMAIL[Corporate Email] --> B24
    SCHED[Scheduling App\ne.g. booking system] --> B24
    B24 <--> ERP[ERP / Accounting\ne.g. 1C]
    B24 --> PAY[Payment Gateway\ne.g. local acquirer]
    B24 --> ESIGN[E-signature / Document Module]
    B24 --> MARKET[Marketplace Connectors\ne.g. Ozon / Amazon]

Telephony

  1. Which telephony provider do you use? Can you provide access to its admin panel?
  2. Which phone numbers should create leads automatically on incoming calls? Which numbers belong to which employees?
  3. Should calls be recorded? Where should recordings be stored?

Email

  1. Which email addresses will be connected to Bitrix24? Provide IMAP/SMTP credentials or confirm OAuth access.
  2. Should each employee connect their own mailbox, or will there be shared team inboxes?
  3. Are you aware that emails sent directly from Bitrix24 may have lower deliverability than those sent from a native mail client? Have you configured SPF/DKIM/DMARC on your domain?

Messengers & social channels

  1. Which channels need to be connected to the Open Lines / Contact Centre module? (WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, live chat, etc.)
  2. How many phone numbers / accounts are available for each channel?

Website

  1. Which CMS/platform does your website run on? (WordPress, custom, headless, etc.)
  2. What forms should push data into Bitrix24? (contact form, subscription form, calculator, order form)
  3. Which UTM parameters and analytics IDs (e.g. Google Analytics Client ID) should be passed alongside form submissions?
  4. Who will implement the webhook on the website side — your own developer or the implementation partner?

ERP / Accounting system

  1. Do you use an ERP or accounting system? Which one?
  2. What data needs to flow between Bitrix24 and the ERP — contacts, invoices, stock levels, product catalogue, turnover by client/project?
  3. Is a standard connector sufficient, or is custom development required? Who will handle the ERP-side configuration?

Scheduling / booking tools

  1. Do you use a separate scheduling or booking platform?
  2. Should bookings sync automatically into Bitrix24 deals/contacts, or will staff enter data manually in both systems for the first phase?

Payment gateways

  1. Which payment gateway do you use? Should payment links be generated and sent from within Bitrix24?

Marketplace integrations

  1. Do you sell on marketplaces (Amazon, Noon, Ozon, etc.)? Should orders flow into Bitrix24 CRM automatically via a ready-made connector?

Section 4: User Roles & Access Rights

Access design is often underestimated and causes the most post-launch friction.

  1. List all user roles that need different levels of access. (e.g. Sales Manager, Senior Manager, Department Head, Administrator)
  2. Should managers see only their own deals and contacts, or also their colleagues'?
  3. Should viewing a company record automatically grant visibility of all contacts linked to that company?
  4. Should there be a shared client base, or should each manager's client list be private?
  5. How should responsible managers be assigned to new incoming leads — manually or automatically?
  6. Do any external parties (partners, resellers, contractors) need limited access to the portal? Should they be added as employees or handled via an external-participant mechanism?
  7. Is two-factor authentication required at login?

Section 5: Data Migration

  1. Where does your current client/contact database live? (Excel, another CRM, ERP, paper)
  2. In what format can the data be exported? Excel is the standard import format for Bitrix24.
  3. How many records are there approximately — contacts, companies, deals?
  4. Does the data need cleaning or deduplication before import? (The implementation partner can assist, but this is typically scoped separately.)
  5. Are there custom fields in the source system that have no equivalent in Bitrix24 and need to be created?
  6. Should historical deal history and communications be migrated, or only active records?
  7. If you have a product catalogue in another system, can it be exported to Excel for import? (Each row = one product; each column = one attribute.)

Section 6: Documents & Electronic Signing

  1. What documents does your business generate regularly — quotes, invoices, contracts, acts of completion, safety waivers?
  2. Should these documents be generated automatically from deal/contact card data using templates?
  3. Do clients need to sign documents electronically? If yes, what is the preferred method: link sent to client's phone, scanned paper copy attached to the contact card, or a tablet/kiosk at reception?
  4. If e-signing is used, does it need to comply with local e-signature or data-protection regulations in your jurisdiction?
  5. Should documents have an expiry date tracked in the system (e.g. annual safety waivers for returning clients)?
  6. Should accounting fields (counterparty accountant email, contract reference numbers) be stored in the contact/company card?

Section 7: Analytics & Reporting

  1. What key metrics does management currently track? (revenue, conversion rate, number of deals per manager, average deal size, resource utilisation)
  2. Should reports be broken down by manager, department, product line, or source channel?
  3. Do you need a unified dashboard aggregating data from multiple sources, or are standard Bitrix24 CRM reports sufficient for the first phase?
  4. Should reports on completed shifts, project profitability, or labour costs be generated automatically?
  5. Do you need to track resource utilisation — equipment, vehicles, people — within Bitrix24?
  6. Should managers be able to log meeting notes in a structured format (meeting objective, summary, agreed actions, to-do tasks)?

Section 8: Training & Go-Live

Based on our project experience, training is most effective when delivered remotely with screen recording so that participants can review sessions later.

  1. Who needs to be trained — all employees, team leads only, or just the administrator?
  2. What is the preferred training format — remote video call with recording, in-person, or self-paced video?
  3. Beyond general Bitrix24 navigation, which specific topics must be covered? Common requests include:
    • Working with tasks from CRM cards vs. the Tasks & Projects module
    • Using filters and saved views
    • Reading standard CRM reports and dashboards
    • Managing email and Open Lines (messenger integration)
    • Voice input features
  4. Who will be the internal Bitrix24 champion — the person responsible for ongoing administration and user support after go-live?
  5. What is the target go-live date? Are there hard deadlines (contract renewals, seasonal peaks)?
  6. What does success look like at 30 / 90 days post-launch?

How Questionnaire Answers Become a Technical Specification

Completed questionnaire answers feed directly into a formal technical specification (TS) — the document that governs all configuration work. In a typical project, the discovery and TS phase takes about two weeks and ~10 hours of analyst effort: roughly half for stakeholder interviews and half for writing the document itself.

The TS describes each scenario in tables (funnel stages, automation rules, field lists), prose, and flow diagrams. The level of detail and the format are chosen to make the configuration unambiguous for the implementer.

Practical tip: If the hours budgeted for discovery turn out to be insufficient, additional hours can usually be purchased at the agreed analyst rate. Conversely, if fewer hours are needed, the unused balance is typically converted into configuration hours — so there is no financial waste in scoping generously.

Once the TS is signed off, configuration begins. A typical small-to-mid implementation (CRM + 1–2 integrations + training) runs 3–6 weeks from TS sign-off to go-live, depending on integration complexity and the client's responsiveness in providing credentials and test data.

The table below summarises what each questionnaire block ultimately produces in the project:

Discovery block Output in the TS
Company & portal setup Infrastructure checklist, domain setup, licence confirmation
CRM & sales processes Funnel stage maps, field lists, automation logic
Integrations Integration architecture diagram, webhook specs, connector list
Roles & access Permission matrix by role
Data migration Import file template, field mapping table
Documents & signing Document template list, signing workflow
Analytics Dashboard layout, KPI definitions
Training Training plan, session agenda, recording delivery method

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a Bitrix24 discovery session typically take?

Based on our project experience, the full discovery phase — stakeholder interviews plus writing the technical specification — takes approximately 10 hours of analyst time, usually delivered over a two-week period. Individual interview sessions are typically 1–2 hours each.

Do we need to answer all 50+ questions before work can start?

Not all questions apply to every business. Mark non-applicable items as N/A and focus on the sections most relevant to your use case. The minimum required before configuration begins is: portal domain, licence owner details, employee list, and a clear description of at least one sales funnel.

What happens if we discover new requirements after the technical specification is signed?

New requirements are handled as a change request. If the additional scope is small, it is often absorbed within any unused discovery hours. Larger changes are scoped and priced separately before work begins.

Can we import our existing client database into Bitrix24?

Yes. The standard import method uses Excel files where each row is a record and each column is a field. The implementation partner provides a template and import instructions; data cleaning or deduplication, if needed, is typically scoped as a separate task.

Should external partners or resellers be added as employees on the portal?

For small numbers of partners, adding them as employees with restricted access rights is the quickest solution. As the partner network grows, a purpose-built external-participant mechanism is worth evaluating to avoid bloating the employee count and complicating access management.

What integrations are typically discovered during onboarding that clients had not planned for?

The most commonly overlooked integrations are: corporate email (SMTP/IMAP credentials needed), a scheduling or booking tool that the team assumed 'just connects', and the ERP/accounting system — which almost always requires more configuration work than expected, especially if the data exchange is non-standard.

Based on real practice

This article is based on 15 internal documents from the practice of ACP Group — work plans, specs, questionnaires and Bitrix24 implementation cases.

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