Managing Contacts
Creating Contact Types
Admissions by Liaison allows you to store as many Contact Types as needed to help you manage your interactions with recruits, applicants, students, and others.
To add new Contact Types:
- Navigate to the Settings menu and click Contact Types under Contacts.
- From here, you can review your existing Contact Types. Click the plus icon to add a new type.
- Add the information about your new Contact Type and select an Accent Color.
- Click Save Changes to keep the new Contact.
- After creating your Contact Type, you can edit its properties by clicking on the Contact Type again and working with the Contact Properties section.
- Use the Add Field button to add data points to display for each Contact (e.g., Name, Address, Phone Number).
- Click Add to add your new field and click Save Changes when you're done editing this Contact Type.
Once your Contact Types are added, you can begin adding Contacts.
Working with Contact Relationships
The Contacts section allows you to establish how different types of Contacts are related to each other or to Admissions users at your institution. For example, if your Contact Types include Advisor, Student, Admissions Representative, and Recruiter, you may wish to create Contact Relationship fields within the Student Contact Type to link students to their advisors and admissions representatives. You can also create a User Relationship field to link students to their recruiters at your institution.
To add a relationship field:
- Navigate to the Settings menu and click Contact Types under Contacts.
- Click on the Contact Type you wish to link to other Contact Types.
- In the Contact Properties area, click Add Field.
- Enter a name for the field, and select Contact Relationship if you're linking the Contact to another Contact Type. Select User Relationship if you're linking the Contact to a user at your institution.
- Enter the Relationship label and decide how many of this relationship type each Contact is allowed to have using the No. of Relationships Allowed field.
- If desired, use the Edit Field Priority Order link to adjust which data sources take precedence when importing data into this field.
- Click Add when you're done working with this field.
Once your Contact Relationships are established, you can link individual Contacts to each other from the Relationships section of each contact record.
Working on the Contacts View
The Contacts area is where you can collect and view the data and activities of any people or organizations with whom your institution engages. From the Settings menu, you can add as many contact types as needed. Contacts may include recruits, applicants, students, and others.
- Navigation Menu: use this menu to switch to different sections of the application. Click << to collapse the menu for a larger working area.
- Contact Type and Segment Selector: use this drop-down to filter the list by Contact Type or Segment.
- Search Button: use this to search for contacts using their name, email address, phone number, city, zip code, or other contact information.
- List View / Map View Toggle: use these buttons to toggle between viewing contacts in a list or a spatial map.
- Filters: use this button to filter your contact list. For example, you can filter by address to isolate all contacts from a specific city. Continue to add filters as needed, and save the filter as a Segment for later reuse.
- Add Contact Button: click this button to add an individual contact or to add contacts in batch using a CSV, JSON, or XML file.
- Contact List: click the desired column header to sort by that column. Use the checkboxes to select contacts to perform an action on. Click the checkbox at the top of the grid to select all the checkboxes.
- Edit Grid Button: click this icon to edit the columns included in the contact list grid.
Click any contact to review their Contact Information page. When you select contacts using their checkboxes on the grid, a menu appears with available actions.
Merging Contacts
When you select the Merge action when working with contacts, the data from two or more separate contacts is combined to form one contact.
If there are multiple contacts with data populating the same fields, the most recent data source takes precedence.
The data sources are also ranked to determine priority. This ranking can be found by going to Settings and navigating to Data Sources in the Integrations menu.
Adjusting Contacts Views
Your Contacts Views can be modified to provide users with the information you want to display.
To change the view:
- Navigate to the Settings menu and click Contact Views under Contacts.
- Click on the name of a Contact View to edit it.
- Next, edit the view as desired. To add new fields, click and drag them from the left to the appropriate area on the right.
- Use the plus sign at the bottom of the page to add new columns.
- Continue adding fields within your columns as desired.
- When ready, click Save Changes.
Working with Integration Priority for Imported Contacts
You can bring new Contacts into Admissions using several methods. If you've configured several integrations, Admissions needs to know which integration should take priority in the case of conflicting data. For example, if you've added SlideRoom, MailChimp, and File Uploads as possible data integrations, you may sometimes import the same contact from multiple sources. If your file upload had a phone number listed for one of your contacts, but your SlideRoom integration later imports the same contact with a different phone number, which phone number should be displayed? Setting your integration priority helps sort this out. Note that all imported data is saved, but setting the priority is what dictates which data should appear by default on a contact record.
To configure your integration priority:
- Click Data Sources in the Contacts section of the Settings menu.
- From the Current Integrations page, click Edit Priority Order.
- From the window that appears, adjust your data source priority by dragging and dropping the integrations in the order they should take precedence. Imports from different Contact Types won't impact each other. In the example below, once this order is saved, any time an applicant's contact information is imported using the Sample File Integration file upload, it takes precedence over any conflicting contact information that has been (or will be) imported by the Google Sheets import, or any other applicant imports listed below it.
- When you're done making changes, click Update.