Contacts Module Introduction

The Contacts module is primarily intended for the administration of persons you collaborate with (customers, suppliers, clients, etc.). The Contacts module represents an electronic replacement of your address book. You can easily manage your contacts in eWay-CRM and relate them with projects, companies, events etc. You can see all relations in the Contact window in particular tabs. You can find phone numbers, email addresses and other entries about a contact in its Contact window. All data has to be previously added by you or other authorized users.

Contacts List

Clicking the Contacts icon on the eWay-CRM toolbar will open a list of all Contacts that are saved in the eWay-CRM system.

If you want to edit the basic list view and choose the data you are interested in, go to List of Items, where you can find general information on working with the main list.

You can see basic information about a contact in the main list that you previously filled. You have to double-click the contact for more information. The Contact window will open.

Full Name Column

Using Full Name Format setting, you can specify the format of displayed contact's name in the Full Name column.

Last Activity and Next Step Columns

Last Activity and Next Step are special columns that can be added by the Column Chooser to your list. Columns gives you the best review about the activity on your items and you can be sure that some items are not forgotten.

Last Activity allows you to see when was the last activity on the item - it means when was the last time when the journal, document or email were related to the item. Last Activity Attributes setting can be used for selecting what module should be used for the calculation. You can select only one or all of them - it is up to you and your needs.

Next Step allows you to see when will be the nearest activity on the item - it means when is the end of the nearest task or date of the nearest event. Next Step Attributes setting can be used for selecting what module should be used for the calculation. You can select only one or all of them - it is up to you and your needs.

Contact Management

If you have the appropriate permissions, you can perform the following actions:

Create new contact – detailed information about item creation can be found in the chapter: Create New Items
Editing existing contact – detailed information about editing can be found in the chapter: Edit Items
Item removal – there are several ways to remove an item. They are described in the chapter: Remove Items

Contact Window

Double-clicking a selected contact will bring up its working window. The same Contact window, without pre-filled data, will appear when creating a new contact. It’s up to you to enter all the necessary data.

Basic Information	Basic information about a contact—the most important fields are Full name and Email 1 which are used for other functionalities. The name of the contact can be written right in the name field but it is necessary to type it in the chosen format - see Full Name Format. If you want to insert the name with titles, click the Full Name button. Company field allows you to easily relate contact with a company. If you select company, its address (use Contacts Address Source setting to define what address will be filled from company to a contact) will be automatically added to contact's address as same as website of the company. Otherwise, if you have address and website filled on contact and you add a company by + sign, address and website from contact will be added to new company. If you import contact from Microsoft Outlook, company will be filled as relation or as a text, due to the setting Create New Company While Importing Contact. Profile picture allows you to insert a photography of a contact. If you insert an email address to email fields and this email address is related to Gravatar service, picture from your Gravatar profile will be loaded automatically. The Email Opt Out check box allows you to mark contacts who don't want to receive your newsletters. The function is also automatic: If you send a contact newsletter and he or she subscribes from your emails, the Email Opt Out field will be automatically marked. This contact will be marked as not subscribed during filtering your contacts. You select only those who want to receive your newsletters.
Address	You can write three different addresses for a contact—business, home and other. If you are creating contact from the company using Add New icon in the ribbon, the address of the company will be filled to contact.
Phone Numbers	You need to insert phone numbers in the form CountryCode LocalNumber, e.g. +420 223369817. For more information about possible errors, go to Incorrect contacts set - synchronization rewrites phone numbers from 00 to ++ where you can find information about correct phone number form, too.
Note	Any text you want to add to a contact. For more information about the field, see Note Field.

Integration of Contacts With Outlook

Because the Contacts module is a default part of MS Outlook and also a part of eWay-CRM, it creates specific options. eWay-CRM contacts are separated from Outlook contacts and the decision whether or not they should be synchronized is up to you. There are specific buttons for synchronization with Outlook, as you can see in the picture below:

Clicking the Synchronize With Outlook button will synchronize a selected eWay-CRM contact with the Contacts module in MS Outlook. If the contact is synchronized, there is no need to manage it anywhere else—changes that are made in eWay-CRM will also appear in MS Outlook, and vice versa. General information about synchronization settings can be found in the article Contacts Tab.

For more information about automatic synchronization settings, go to Automatic Contacts Synchronization Between MS Outlook and eWay-CRM. The instructions for manual synchronization can be found in the article Manual Contacts Synchronization Between MS Outlook and eWay-CRM.

Clicking the Import to Outlook button in the ribbon of the Contact window will copy a selected contact with all its details from eWay-CRM to the Contacts module in MS Outlook. For more information about import, go to Contacts Import From Microsoft Outlook to eWay-CRM.

Clicking the Open in Outlook button will open the contact in the Outlook window. If the button is disabled, you cannot open the contact in Outlook because the contact was not imported into Outlook or is not synchronized.

For more information on the possibilities of integration of eWay-CRM with MS Outlook, go to: Integration With Microsoft Outlook.

For other general information on working window, go to: Item Dialog.