# Contacts

A contact is a person the agency deals with, recorded whether or not they can sign in. A contact's
type and their companies decide what they can reach: only a client contact with a login, at a client
company, sees that company's projects.

## What you can do

- List contacts, search, and filter by Type, Company, Company link (Has a company, No company) and
  Login (Has login, No login). Show Active or Archived.
- Record a contact: Name, Email, Phone, Job title, Type, Companies and a Profile image.
- Attach a contact to several companies and mark one Primary.
- Open a contact to see their companies, the projects they can reach, how their mail is recognised,
  docs linked to them, docs inherited from their companies, and their activity.
- Archive a contact and restore it.

## How to

1. Open Contacts in the sidebar. The list opens on client contacts: "Showing client contacts." Press
   Show every type to drop the default.
2. To add one, press Create, fill Name, Type and the rest, and press Create contact. Saving adds the
   person to the CRM only: "No account is created, no password is set and no email is sent."
3. To attach companies, edit the contact and pick them under Companies.
4. With more than one company, open the contact and press Make primary on the company their mail and
   tickets belong to.
5. To archive, use the row's menu. Choose Archived in the list to find and restore them.

Types:

| Type | Means |
|---|---|
| Client | Can be given access to their client companies' projects. |
| Prospect | Not a customer. Reaches nothing through a company. |
| Ex-client | A former client. Reaches nothing through a company. |

## Access

A contact reaches a project through their company only when all of these hold:

1. The contact has a login.
2. The contact's type is Client.
3. The contact is attached to the project's company.
4. That company's type is Client.

Otherwise the contact sees only projects they were added to by name. The contact page lists the
projects they can reach, says how many more at their companies they cannot see, and why, for example
"Only client contacts reach a project through their company."

A private project is never reached through a company.

## Limits

- Contacts need the `view contacts` permission, and `create contact`, `edit contact`,
  `archive contact` and `restore contact` to change them. Of the built-in roles only admin holds these;
  a bot can view.
- A contact is not a login. There is no in-app action that grants a contact a login; a login is set up
  separately, for a client contact who needs to sign in, and sign-in is through the agency's single
  sign-on.
- Archiving a contact does not disable their login.
- Contacts never appear in assignee or mention lists or in project access lists.
- Email is optional and unique across contacts.
- No primary company set: their mail is attributed to whichever company was created first.
- No merge or de-duplication of contacts in the app.

## Related

- [Companies](/docs/manual/clients/companies.md)
- [Roles and permissions](/docs/manual/settings/roles-and-permissions.md)
- [Sign-in](/docs/manual/settings/sign-in.md)