Section 17 · Pipeline Hygiene — Stop Losing Money to Messy CRM

17.5Find opportunities owned by former employees

Built in the POC

What DMA asked for · Decision Book p.32

Find accounts and deals owned by people who have left DMA, so they don't disappear.

Why it matters to DMA: Simple, and it stops pipeline vanishing when the team changes.

In our words, from DMA's Product Decision Book v3, page 32.

A rule compares every account's and deal's owner with the Nutshell user list: an owner whose user is disabled is a former owner.
Open deals with a former owner are high severity; closed ones low, accounts medium.
The flag says who owned it; reassigning is a person's decision in Nutshell (the book's autonomy here is L1, recommend). Escalation cases already move to a backup automatically when their owner is away.
The rules run with every audit of the CRM (and again after each sync). They only detect and explain; nothing is changed in Nutshell by a flag, so a person stays in charge of the fix.

It plays on its own while it's on screen; hover or use the controls to pause or step through.

Step 1 of 4

The user list

One Nutshell user has been disabled.

The same six stages on every page. Nothing reaches Nutshell except through the write gate.

1Nutshell
Source
Deals, contacts, tasks, activities, notes and users.
2Sync
Copies Nutshell changes into the bridge database
Keeps the mirror current, so the rules see today's state.
3Bridge database
A copy of the CRM data, plus what the AI works out
One open flag per record and problem, with its details and the rule version.
4AI
Claude models, only through DMA's own gateway
Not needed for most flags: they are rules. The audit adds what only the notes say.
5Write gate
The only way back into Nutshell: checked, approved when needed, sent once
Flags don't write to Nutshell; fixes happen there, by people (or through the write gate where a field rule allows it).
6Nutshell
The system of record
Reps fix the record; the flag closes on the next run.

Drawn from the POC's database catalogue: structure only, no data.

PK primary keyFK reference the database enforces (solid line)ID reference kept by id (dashed line)

Table	What it holds	Columns
ai.hygiene_flags	One open flag per record and problem (stuck deal, missing next step, former owner, bad email, duplicate), with severity, details and the rule version.	10
crm.users	Nutshell users, with whether each is still enabled.	15
crm.leads	Deals and their owner.	26

Synthetic demo data: every name, business and number is made up.

1 / 3

What you see

1.The filter

Pipeline hygiene, filtered to former owners.

localhost:13301/hygiene?hyg_flag=former_owner

What happens in the system

Bridge databasecrm.users
The Nutshell user list is mirrored; one user is disabled.

Former-owner flags in the POC today (live counts on the synthetic sample: one of eight users is disabled).

localhost:13301/hygiene?hyg_flag=former_owner

Pipeline hygiene, filtered to records owned by a former employee.

Dashboard · Pipeline hygiene, records owned by people who left. Captured from the running POC on September 25, 2026; synthetic data.

Opens the exact screen in the running POC, in a new tab.

Open	Where	What to try
Pipeline hygiene: former owners	DMA AI dashboard	Records owned by someone who left.
Escalation roster	DMA AI dashboard	How cases already move to a backup.

Built in the POC

Built in the POC. This capability runs in the POC today, on synthetic data, end to end.