1. Using B2C Service
  2. Add a Contact

Add a Contact

Contacts can be added to the knowledge base by customers and staff members.

Before you start

Because many staff members can have permission to add contacts, the contact you plan to add may already be in the knowledge base. To avoid duplicating contact records, search the knowledge base before adding a contact to be sure it does not already exist. See Record Search Options.
A customer can add a contact record when creating an account on the Customer Portal. Staff members can add contacts using a contact workspace. They can also add them when working on incidents, opportunities, organizations, tasks, assets, and contact lists.

Here's what to do

  1. Do one of the following:
    • Click New on the ribbon.
    • If your navigation set is configured to add contacts from the application menu, click File and select Contact. See Configure the File Menu.
    You can also add a contact while working on many types of open records, using one of the following methods:
    • Right-click in the Contact field of an open incident, opportunity, task, asset, or contact list, then select Add New. The new contact opens on a subtab, which contains the same fields and tabs as the standard contact workspace does.
    • Use the Contacts tab of an open incident, opportunity, or organization record to add a new contact. See How You Add Contacts from Other Records.
  2. Enter field information.

    Contact Workspace Fields

    Field Description
    First Name Enter the contact’s first name in this field.
    Last Name Enter the contact’s last name in this field.
    Email Enter the contact’s email address in this field. To add alternate email addresses, click the arrow and select Email Alt 1 or Email Alt 2. Then enter the alternate email address in the field.

    If you enter an email address that is already in the knowledge base, you will receive an error message and not be able to save the contact. If email address sharing is enabled, meaning multiple contacts can share the same email address, a yellow icon with a black exclamation point displays when you enter an email address that is associated with a different contact in the system. If this icon appears, you can save the contact without changing the contact’s email address. Email address sharing validation begins when the Email address field receives focus and ends when the field loses focus. See Email Address Sharing.

    Office Phone Enter the contact’s phone number in this field. To add other phone numbers, click the arrow, select one of the options, and enter the phone number in the field. The options include Mobile, Fax, Assistant, and Home.
    Address Click Edit in the lower right corner of the field to display a window for entering the contact’s address. Enter information in the Street, City, and Postal Code fields, and make selections on the Country and State/Prov. fields drop-down menus. When you select the country, the associated states or provinces appear in the State/Prov. menu. Press Enter when you are finished to close the window and display the address you entered.
    Contact Type Click this drop-down list and select a contact type. These options are unique to your organization and were added by your administrator. See Add or Edit a Contact Type.
    Channel Usernames Click Add in this field to open the Channel Usernames window where you can add Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube user names for contacts. See Overview of Channels.

    This field does not display unless your administrator has configured a custom contact workspace for the Channel Usernames field. See Overview of Workspaces. In addition, contacts can provide their own Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube user names through the ChannelAllInput and ChannelAllDisplay widgets on the customer portal.
    State Click this drop-down list and select one or more of the following check boxes: Service, Outreach, or Opportunities.

    The State field classifies how the contact was added, whether through Service when working on an incident, Outreach when adding contacts, or Opportunity Tracking when working on an opportunity, and what areas of B2C Service the contact has since had activity in. The State field may be updated automatically, and you can also update it manually.

    Organization Click Search to the right of the Organization field to open the Organization Search window and search for an organization to associate with the contact. See Associate a Contact with an Organization.
    Salesperson Click this drop-down list and select the salesperson assigned to the contact. This field defaults to No Value. See Assign a Record from a Report.
    Title Enter the contact’s title in this field.
    Login Enter a name in this field to designate a login for the customer to use when logging in to the customer portal. If the customer added the contact record on the customer portal, this field displays the login the customer entered. This field applies only to Service. A login must be unique for each contact even if email address sharing is enabled. See Email Address Sharing.

    The login may not contain a space, single quote, double quote, less than, or greater than character. We recommend that you use ASCII characters when creating a customer login.
    SLAs An SLA is a service level agreement. Click Add or Edit in this field to add, edit, or remove an SLA instance for the contact. (If you have read-only permission in your profile, you will only be able to view an SLA instance that has already been applied.) See SLA Instance Field.

    This field applies only to Service and only for contacts that do not have an organization association. If the contact is associated with an organization, you must apply SLA instances to the organization, not the contact.

    Global Opt-in Click this drop-down list and select Yes if the customer has opted to receive marketing mailings and No if the customer does not want to receive them.
  3. To associate the contact with a new opportunity, click the Opportunities tab. (This tab is on top by default on the standard contact workspace.) Click Add New to open a new opportunity on a subtab, and then complete the fields. See Overview of Opportunities.
  4. To add a note to the contact record, click the Notes tab, click Add, and enter your comments in the field.
    Add notes to the contact when you want to provide information for other staff members. Notes are not visible to customers. Click the Contact Note drop-down list to select the channel through which you gained the information you are adding to the note. Besides selecting No Channel, options include Phone, Fax, Post, CSS Web, and Email.
  5. To associate a task with the contact, click the Tasks tab where you can add, open, print, copy, assign, delete, and forward tasks associated with the contact and mark them complete. See Tasks Tab.
  6. To associate the contact with a new incident, click the Incidents tab. Click Add New to open a new incident on a subtab, and then complete the fields. See Add an Incident.
  7. To view surveys the contact has participated in, click the Surveys tab.
  8. To view mailings the contact has received, click the Outreach Activity tab.
  9. To attach files to the contact record, click the Attachments tab. See Overview of the Attachments Tab.
  10. To view the audit log for the contact record, click the Audit Log tab. See Audit Logs.
  11. To add a flag to the contact, click the area next to the white flag at the top of the content pane. See Add a Flag to a Record.
  12. If the contact you are adding is on a subtab (because you are adding the contact to a contact list, incident, opportunity, or task), click OK.
    Note: Closing the New Contact subtab saves the contact data in memory, but the contact record is not added to the knowledge base until you save the record you have added the contact to.
  13. Click Save.