Contact Management

Maintaining up to date contact information for the people in your organisation can be a time consuming task. Your Hubb web site can drastically reduce this workload by providing facilities for each member to update their own contact information through the my profile section of the web site, and at the same time access other members information through the online address book. In the web office you can use this information to send mailings to different groups of people using email or post – whichever is the most appropriate.

This article explains the basic concepts of storing contact information.
 

Contact Database folders

Within your organisation you will undoubtedly have contact information for a number of different groups of people – people who have attended courses, people who are members of your organisation, people associated with a charitable trust. This contact information can all be stored in your web site using a number of different contact databases. The following contact database folders can all be found in the web office 'site manager' navigation pane:

Central contact Database – the primary contact database for your organisation.  Every person belonging to a  'user group' folder must always be registered in this central database first.

 Independent group – although independent groups appear in the group structure under the central contact database they have a separate contact database. Independent groups are useful for maintaining contact information for groups which involve people from outside your organisation.

 Mailing Lists – mailing lists are independent contact databases which are designed for use with the mailing feature.  Although you can add people from your organisation to these lists they are primarily intended for people who have very little contact with your organisation.
The contact information for a person may be copied from one database to another. Any subsequent updates to the contact information will now update the record in both databases.  Removing the record from one database will not remove them from the other.
 

Contact Management and Permissions

The reliability of the information stored in your contact databases is critical – for this reason the ability to edit contact information is restricted to a relatively small number of people.  Whilst every user group folder has a members tab to display the names of people belonging to the group, it is only possible to edit this information in one of the contact database folders.  In order to edit the information you must also have both of the following permissions:

• Membership Manager – this permission is required in order to be able to access the members view.
• Edit members’ details – this permission enables you to click on one of the names in the members view to display contact information which can be edited.  If you do not have this permission then clicking on a name will only allow you to display “read-only” contact information identical to that shown in a user group folder.

For help with granting permissions to users see permissions.
 

Editing existing contact information

You can display contact information for one of the people in the database as follows:

• If you haven’t logged into the web site already, do so now. Click the 'Login' link at the top of the home page and enter the login name and password as supplied.
• Once you have successfully logged in click the web office link at the top of the home page. The Web Office will be displayed shortly afterwards.
• Open the user record using one of the following methods:
  • Select the Quickfind search function located at the top of the Web Office. Begin to enter the name of the user you wish to edit in the box and a list of users who match the entered name will be displayed. Select the user whose record you wish to edit.
  • Select the central contact database folder or other  group folder  you know the user belongs to and the work pane will refresh to display this group. Select the members tab to display the current list of people in this group. Finally click on one of the names to display the contact record.

Contact information is grouped into individual details and family details.  By default the individual details are shown as follows:
 

Name:	Title, first name and surname. You should only use the title option if you wish to automatically include this in any correspondence.
Contact Details:	Correspondence information including login name, email address, phone numbers, and personal web pages. The alternative address field can be used for a work address, or another address the user doesn't normally live at, eg. a student's family home address.
Status:	This area indicates current membership status settings and is not available to the member through the my profile area. Website login access may be enabled or disabled using the blue task button at the top of the window; set the membership setting to match their current membership status and, if necessary, select an involvement level.  Whether or not the person will feature in the address book area of the website is indicated underneath; this depends on the address book policy configured by your organisation. If this person does not appear in the address book click the why? link to display the criteria they must fulfil to be included.  The selected settings in this area will also change the colour coding in the members view to reflect their involvement in the organisation, someone who is shown with a red iconis a non member, with a green icon they are listed as a member. Someone listed as a former member is shown with a grey icon.   Use the record details section to see whether this account is still actively used.
Personal Details:	Use this area to store the date of birth, gender, the description they submitted when applying for an account, a personal photo, and their current privacy settings; the privacy settings enable a user to hide some or all of their details from the Address book if required.

At the top of the record any other members of the family will be listed alongside the family name.  
Click on the the [familyname] family link to display the family details view (at this stage you'll be prompted to save any changes you have made to the individual); information shown is as follows:

Name:	Default surname for each member of the family. Address book printing & ordering: These settings can be used to change the display of the family details in the address book. See the Quick Start Guide - Address Book for more details.
Address:	Address where the majority of family members live.
Phone:	Family home phone number
Photo:	Use this area to store a photo of the family. Once you have finished editing the contact information in this record click the save button to commit any changes.

 

Additional Information

When a person is selected from the members view the contact record also provides access to a number of other tabs with information on the involvement this person has within the website:

Custom Fields – additional fields in the contact database which are specific to one or more groups.  For more information on this feature see the the article here.

Notes – a field where you can store 'free text notes'. For more information see here.

Consent – these are the fields used to set up consent for you to hold data and to email users. There is more information on the GDPR Action plan pages. 

Rotas – see a list of rota duties which this person is participating in.  For more information on rotas see the article here.

Involvement – view and edit which groups this person is a member of.

Permissions – view and edit the permissions the user has. For more information on permissions please see here.

Mail – see a list of mailings which you have access to that have been sent to this person.