Contacts, organisations and the timeline

Keep the people and businesses you work with in Contacts, link people to their organisation, and log every call, meeting and visit on their timeline.

This article is being updated.

Contacts holds the people and businesses you deal with - customers, suppliers and partners. It has two tabs: Contacts for people and Organisations for businesses. Every business has Contacts.

Add a contact or organisation

1. Go to Contacts and select New contact. On the Organisations tab the button is New organisation.
2. Under Record, choose Contact or Organisation.
3. Pick the Type - Customer, Supplier, Partner or Other. A record can be more than one, such as both a customer and a supplier.
4. Fill in the name, email and phone, then select Create contact.

If the email address is already on another contact, Prevarro tells you rather than creating a duplicate.

Find people

Search the list, sort it, or use the filters for type, tags and smart lists. To keep a set of records you come back to, tick them and choose Save as list. Your saved lists appear above the table.

The bar that opens when you tick records also has Archive and Delete, with Restore in place of Archive when every ticked record is archived. Each row's menu has Archive (or Restore on an archived record) and Delete too.

Link people to their organisation

Open a contact and select Link to organisation. Search for the organisation, or create a new one on the spot with Create and link.

An organisation's record lists its people under Contacts. Select Add contact there to create a new person already linked to it.

The record

Select a name to open its record. The left side holds the details:

• the name, email, phone and address
• sites - the places you do work at, on a customer organisation or a customer with no organisation
• customer, supplier and partner details, depending on the type
• custom fields and communication preferences

Click a field to edit it.

The timeline

The right side of a record has the tabs Activity and Notes, and Tasks if your role can see tasks.

Activity is the record's timeline. It shows:

• emails and text messages with the person
• touch points you log - calls, meetings and site visits
• system events - changes made to the record, and form responses

An organisation's timeline also includes its people's.

If your role lets you change the record, a person's timeline has a box at the bottom for writing to them. Write the message and select Send email. Once your business has switched SMS sending on, the box also offers SMS beside Email, and a text goes with Send SMS. If a message doesn't go, see Why didn't my message send?

To log a touch point:

1. On the Activity tab, select Log interaction.
2. Under Interaction, choose Call, Meeting or Site visit.
3. Add a Flag if it matters later: Positive feedback, Improvement feedback or Complaint.
4. Add a Subject and the Date, and the Time, Summary and Outcome if you like.
5. Select Save interaction.

Use the filters above the timeline to Show All, Messages, Touch points or Activity, and to narrow it by date range or Flag. On an organisation you can also pick one of its People. You can search the timeline too. To change or remove a logged touch point, use Edit or Delete from its menu.

Notes

Notes holds freeform context - an observation, a preference, a reminder. Type it in the box at the top of the tab and select Save. Click a note to change it. Notes can be searched and filtered by date. For calls, meetings and visits, use Log interaction instead so they show on the timeline.

Tasks

The Tasks tab lists the tasks linked to the record. An organisation's tab also lists its people's tasks. Search it, or pick All, Open or Completed. If your role lets you add tasks, select Add task to create one already linked to the record.