> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://developers.activeprospect.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Match Lead

The `match_lead` operation allows you to check whether the email address and/or phone number of the lead you have
against what is recorded on the certificate.

Before being converted to a hash to be stored email addresses and phone numbers are normalized. Email addresses are simply downcased while
phone numbers remove all whitespace, hyphens, brackets and parentheses. This normalization is also applied to the
values of lead matching parameters to help legitimate matches be made when the formatting is different.

**Important:** The `match_lead` operation is required when running the `retain` operation.