Contacts

Overview

A Contact is a record for a person or an organisation that can be stored for the current event or retained for all events.

Contacts are a key component of the system. Different types of contacts are used in different circumstances.

• Administrators can enable a Contact to become a User, allowing them to sign in to the system. See our section on Users under System Administration.

• Contacts can have Expertise recorded to easily identify staff with specific skills and experience

• Contact records can be linked to Items making data entry faster and more accurate when contacts are kept up to date.

• Some registers automatically generate contacts (as sub-items) when new records are created.

• Contacts can be linked to resources, for example for contractor management.

• Contacts are accessible in the mobile app, making it easy to store and retreied key staff and stakeholder details anywhere at any time.

• The contact record controls communication preferences, including how they can be contacted, for example by SMS, Email or both.

Access

To access Contacts:

• Contacts must be enabled within the current event

• Sign in with an appropriate role. Contacts is available to almost all user roles as it is a global register, if you can't access it, ask your administrator to check your permissions.

• Contacts with User accounts enabled are stored in the Contacts Directory (Private) which means only users with coordinator level access will be able to view their details.

Locate the Contacts register under Operations > Contacts in the menu.

Types of Contacts

Viewing Contacts

Contacts are listed in and searchable via the register Datagrid.

To view an existing Contact:

1. Navigate to the Contact register datagrid.

2. Locate the item you wish to view. The register includes filters for Totals, Type, Users (Active or On Duty), Special (Alphabetical Index), Classifications and Tags.

3. Open the item using the ID, Status or Name (Full name: Surname, Firstname)

4. To return to the Datagrid use the Back button

Contact Settings

The following section outlines the most important settings for managing contacts.

General

The General section contains information on the contact.

Contact Type

Use the Contact Type to classify a contact as an Individual or Organisation. Note that you can only enable user accounts for individuals.

Contact Details

This section contains the Name; Organisation and other details including Job Title; Phone and Email contact information and Location.

Note that Organisations differ from Positions. This is the company or organisation that the contact belongs to or works for.

Both Phone and Email are important to complete as they enable automatic notifications and communications to be sent to the contact.

Location

Location information is optional but can help you to identify contacts available in different areas on the map. The map location can be selected using the Location selector.

User Account (Individual Contacts only)

A Contact can become a User in your system by selecting Enable user account for this contact. Only users with Administrator rights will be able to edit this section of the record.

Other User sections include:

• Email Subscriptions

• Advanced

See Users for more on managing User accounts.

Workflow

Contact Status

This field is used to manage whether the contact is active or inactive (that is, visible or hidden or deactivated from the register view). You can still find inactive records via the filter menus.

Event (Contact Event & Shared Contacts)

By default, all newly created contacts are private to the event in which they were created. This means they cannot be accessed from other events and only users with access to that event can see the contacts.

To make the contact accessible to a different Event or Workspace use the Event selector under Workflow.

Refer to the Contact Types for more on public and private contacts.

Tags

Tags can be used to categorise and group contacts and users for later retrieval.

On Call (Users only)

A user can be marked as On Call, allowing coordinators to quickly place them on duty in an event for their designated positions. Communications can also be sent to all 'On Call' users.

Communications Preferences (Individuals only)

The Communications Preferences section determines how communications Contacts and Users receive communications and system notifications.

• Contacts can only receive communications if they have a Primary or Secondary Phone number recorded.

• If Receive Communications by SMS is enabled, the contact can receive text messages.

• If Receive Communications by Email is enabled, the contact can receive communications via email.

• Ideally both SMS and email should be enabled in case one of the methods is not available.

Editing Contacts

Contacts can be edited from the Contact Register datagrid.

1. Navigate to the Contacts register

2. Locate the Contact you wish to edit by using the Edit button

3. Make the necessary changes to the settings

4. Save

Adding Contacts

To add a new Contact:

1. Click the from any screen.

2. Select the type — Individual or Organisation

3. To create a User, select Enable user account for this contact

4. Enter the details including Name, Organisation, Job Title, Phone numbers, Email addresses

5. Include any optional information such as Location/address etc

6. Configure optional settings such as User Account, Event, Tags, Communications Preferences etc

7. Save

See Adding new register items for more information

Adding Individuals

To add an individual (person), you will need to select the Contact Type of Individual under the General section.

For individuals, both first and last name must be included.

Adding Organisations

To add an organisation, you will need to select the Contact Type of Organisation under the General section.

For organisations, the Organisation name must be included.

It is recommended to make organisations as a Shared Contacts as they are likely to be used in multiple events.

Adding Users

See the section on Users under System Administration for more on how to create and manage user accounts.

Bulk Actions

The following additional bulk actions can be performed via the Actions menu (note that some are only available to administrators for this refer to User and Contact Administration: Bulk Actions:

Importing Contacts

A System Administrator can import in bulk via the Import system using the Contacts Import option.

Reports

Reports available for Contacts includes the Contacts Report: