Working with Contacts

This chapter provides an overview of contact management in PeopleSoft CRM and discusses how to:

Manage contacts.
Maintain contact groups.

Understanding Contact Management

Contact management enables salespeople (or relationship managers) to manage contacts, tasks, and calendars across all of their accounts by using an easy and intuitive user interface. Relationship managers can:

Add system contacts to their list.
Create and manage contact groups.
Send an email message to selected contacts.
Create tasks, schedules, and call reports for selected contacts.

This feature focuses on shared contacts. The contacts entered and viewed are enterprise contacts and do not include a user’s personal contacts or contacts that are private in any manner. This means that all users can access the contacts and can add the same contacts to their list.

To add private data for a contact that is visible only to you, use the user-defined fields within the Person component.

See Defining Person Business Objects.

Contact management is widely used in industries that support business-to-business (B-to-B), high net worth business-to-consumer, and team selling environments, such as financial services and insurance.

Call Reports

Sales call reports document a contact event such as a meeting, demonstration, or phone call. They are always produced after the event and are follow-up memos documenting the attendees and what took place during the event.

Contact Management Toolbar

PeopleSoft CRM provides a toolbar that is on every Contact Management page. This toolbar enables you to transfer between Contact Management pages and perform commonly used actions for your contact list. You can also access accounts, tasks, and calendars by using the toolbar.

Managing Contacts

This section discusses how to:

Access contacts.
Enter additional filtering criteria.
Modify columns that appear on the contacts list.
Personalize the search filter.
Add existing contacts to the contacts list.
Add contacts to the system.

Pages Used to Manage Contacts

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
My Contacts	RD_CONTACTS	My Contacts	Access contacts to perform various actions for the contacts.
Send Notification	RD_EMAIL_CNTCT	Select Email Contact(s) in the Action field on the My Contacts page.	Send an email to one or more contacts.
My Contacts - Search Contacts	RD_IMPORT_CONTACTS	Click the Search Contacts button on the My Contacts toolbar.	Search for contacts that are already defined in the system and select one or more to add to the My Contacts list.
Remove Contacts	RD_REMOVE_CNTCT	Select one or more listed contacts. Click the Remove Contacts button on the My Contacts toolbar. Select Remove Contact(s) from the Action drop down list and click the Go button.	Remove one or more contacts from the My Contacts and all contact groups to which the contact belongs.
Person	RD_PRSN_PRIMARY	Click the Add Contact button on the My Contacts page.	Add a contact to the system.

Accessing Contacts

Access the My Contacts page.

Use the letters that appear below the View Contacts field as an index to select the starting letter of the contact names to view. You can modify the way the index appears: for example, you might define the index letters as A-C, D-F, and so forth.

See Defining Alpha Indexes.

View Contacts	Select a contact group to view.
Advanced Filter	Click this link to enter additional criteria by which you can filter the contact list.
Select	Select one or more contacts for which to perform a specified action.
Check All / Clear All	Select to select all listed contacts or to clear all selected contacts. Note. This option selects or clears only the contacts on the page that currently appears.
Action	Select the action to perform for the selected contacts. For example, if you select Email Contact(s), then the system displays an email page that is pre-addressed to all of the selected contacts. Actions are: Add Call Report for Contact(s) Add Contact(s) to Group Add Task for Contact(s) Email Contact(s) Remove Contact(s)

Security Considerations

The system provides safeguards against users viewing contact information for which they are not authorized:

For users that do not have access to all companies that are defined in the system, the company column is blank.
For users that do not have access to worker information, the worker home phone and worker home address columns are blank, even if they are visible to other users.

Entering Additional Filtering Criteria

Access the Advanced Filter section of the page.

Enter one or more search criteria to filter the results by the criteria entered.

Note. Unless the signed-on user has access to all companies, they aren't able to search for a contact based on the company criteria.

Show in Results

Select one or more roles to display only contacts for which you have the selected role(s). For example, select View as Account Owner to show only the contacts for customers where you are the account owner.

Modifying Columns that Appear on the Contacts List

Access the Personalize Column and Sort Order page.

The columns that appear on the My Contacts list are shown in the Column Order list box. You can select a column and rearrange its order, hide it, or use it as a sort column.

Some predefined columns (Home Address, Address, State, Postal, Employer, Cell Phone, and Home Phone) are not included in the column order and sort order that appear on this page. To set up the contact list so that you can view those columns, click the Personalize Filter link on the Advanced Filter page.

Personalizing the Search Filter

Access the Personalize Filter Settings page.

Adding Existing Contacts to the Contacts List

Access the My Contacts - Search Contacts page.

This page initially appears with only the search fields visible. The results of the search appear in the contacts list. You can select one or more contacts to add to the My Contacts list.

You can also add contacts to the contact list from the contact list from these components:

360 Degree View
Person
Company
Site

To automatically insert contacts to the contact list, specify Yes in the Auto Insert to My Contacts field that is available on the Sales page of the User Preferences component.

If this flag is set to Yes for a user, a user can click the Add to My Contacts toolbar button on the Company, Site, Person, Lead, or Opportunity components to add contacts on that component to the user's My Contacts list.

Contacts of a customer (company or consumer) are added to the customer account owner's and team members' contact lists. Contacts of a company's child companies can be added to the account owner's contact list. Contacts of leads and opportunities can also be added to the contact lists for the lead or opportunity team members.

Adding Contacts to the System

Access the Person page.

When you access the Person page from the contact management toolbar, any contact that you add to the system is automatically added to your contact list.

Maintaining Contact Groups

This section discusses how to:

Manage contact groups.
Add or remove contacts of a contact group.
Maintain groups and group membership.

Pages Used to Maintain Contact Groups

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
Group Management	RD_GROUP_MGT	My Contacts Click the Group Management toolbar button.	Manage contact groups.
Group Selections	RD_CNTCT_GRP	My Contacts Select Add Contacts to Group in the Action field.	Add or remove contacts of a contact group.
Group Information	RD_GROUP_MGT	Click the name of an existing group on the Group Management page. Click the Add Group button on the Group Management page.	Maintain groups and group membership.

Managing Contact Groups

Access the Group Management page.

Group Name

Click a listed group to open the Group Information page for the group.

Add a Group

Click this button to access the My Contacts - Group Information page and add group details and members to the group.

Adding or Removing Contacts of a Contact Group

Access the Group Selections page.

Select

Click this button to access the Group Information page where you can add or remove contacts of the group.

Maintaining Groups and Group Membership

Access the Group Information page.

Enter values in the First Name or Last Name fields and click Select. The system displays a page that lists all of your contacts with names beginning with the characters you entered. Select one or more contacts and then select an action to create a new contact. Click Save to add the selected contact to the contact group.

Group Name	Click a listed group to open the Group Information page for the group.
Add a Group	Click this button to access the My Contacts - Group Information page and add group details and members to the group.