Client contacts, sites, and contact tags

Each client’s record holds the people you deal with there and the places they work. Contacts carry a phone number, a job title, and contact tags such as Primary contact or VIP. Sites carry a postal address and a phone number. A contact tag can also warn your technicians: when a tagged person raises a ticket or is added to one, a banner at the top of the ticket says who they are. This page shows how to keep contacts and sites current, how to define and assign contact tags, and how to set up a VIP alert from start to finish.

Before you begin

• You are on the MSP plan. Contact tags are defined once for your whole practice.
• Reading contacts and sites needs identity:read. Changing a contact’s phone, title, or tags, and changing a site, needs identity:manage.
• Defining contact tags needs ticket:manage, the same permission as the rest of Desk defaults. See Roles and permissions.

How contacts, sites, and tags fit together

A client’s contacts are the people in that client’s Users list. There is no second address book. A person Outpost discovered from an endpoint, or one you added by hand, is a contact, and the details you add here are the same person’s details everywhere else in the console. See End users and user groups.

A client’s sites are the same sites its endpoints are sorted into. See Organize endpoints.

A contact tag is a label you define once for the practice. Every client gets the same set of tags, so VIP means the same thing at every client. You assign tags to people inside each client. A tag has these settings:

Setting	What it does
Label	The name technicians see on chips and banners, up to 64 characters.
Code	What filters, the API, and Pioneer AI use, such as vip: 1 to 32 lowercase letters, digits, or underscores. It cannot be changed after you save.
Description	Up to 500 characters. It is shown under the banner on a ticket, so write what a technician must do.
Color	Red, Orange, Amber, Green, Purple, Pink, or Gray. Chips and the edge and icon of ticket banners use it.
Alert on tickets	Shows a banner on every ticket this person is on.
Only one per client	Only one person at a client can hold the tag at a time.
Sort order	Where the tag lists. Lower numbers list first. Banners on a ticket follow the same order.

Primary contact

Primary contact is built in. It marks the main person to contact at a client, and the Primary contact card on the client’s Overview tab shows who holds it. Until someone holds it, the card says Nobody is the primary contact yet. and offers Choose one from Contacts. You can change its label, description, and color. You cannot delete it, change its code, or make it a tag that several people hold.

Single-holder tags move, they do not stack

A single-holder tag, one with Only one per client turned on, such as Primary contact, belongs to one person per client. When you give it to someone else, Outpost takes it off the person who held it and gives it to the new person in the same step. Nothing is refused and nobody ends up with a duplicate. When you choose a single-holder tag for a contact, the console tells you who it moves from first.

Tags without Only one per client can be held by as many people as you like. A client can have several VIPs.

Define a contact tag

1. Select Inbox > Desk defaults, then the Contact tags tab.
2. Select Add contact tag.
3. Enter a Label and a Code, and optionally a Description.
4. Choose a Color.
5. To warn technicians on this person’s tickets, turn on Alert on tickets.
6. To allow only one holder per client, turn on Only one per client.
7. Select Save.

The tag reaches every client right away. A client that cannot be reached at that moment catches up within a few minutes, the same way the other desk defaults do. See Desk settings.

To change a tag, select Edit in its row, change it, and select Save. To remove one, select Remove, then Remove again to confirm. Removing a tag takes it off every person who held it, at every client. Primary contact is marked Built in and cannot be removed.

Keep a client’s contacts current

1. Select Clients, then the client’s Record.
2. Select the Contacts tab. It opens Users in the client’s workspace, with a Tags column. To show only the people with one tag, filter on Tag.
3. Select a person to open them, and stay on the Profile tab.
4. Enter their Title and Phone, then select Save changes.
5. In Contact tags, select the checkbox of each tag this person holds, then select Save tags.

Tags save on their own, separately from the rest of the profile. A single-holder tag is marked One per client. When someone else holds it, selecting it shows Moves from and their name. Phone numbers are stored encrypted, like names and email addresses.

Keep a client’s sites current

1. Select Clients, then the client’s Record.
2. Select the Sites tab. It opens Sites in the client’s workspace.
3. Select Edit in the site’s row.
4. Under Address and phone, enter any of Address line 1, Address line 2, City, State or region, Postal code, Country, and Phone. All are optional.
5. Select Save changes.

New site has the same fields. The site’s Overview tab shows the Address and Phone under Details.

Example: flag a VIP on every ticket

Your client’s owner should never wait in the queue. This example makes a red VIP tag that warns technicians, then gives it to that person.

1. Select Inbox > Desk defaults, then Contact tags, then Add contact tag.
2. In Label, enter VIP. In Code, enter vip.
3. In Description, enter what a technician must do, such as Owner of the business. Pick up within 15 minutes and call them back.
4. In Color, choose Red.
5. Turn on Alert on tickets. Leave Only one per client off, so a client can have more than one VIP.
6. Select Save.
7. Select Clients, then the client’s Record, then Contacts.
8. Open the owner. In Contact tags, select VIP, then select Save tags.

From now on, every ticket where the owner is the requester or a participant opens with a banner under the ticket’s title, edged in red, that reads VIP: and their name, with your description below it. Their requester card on the ticket shows the VIP chip. Removing the tag from the owner, or turning off Alert on tickets, removes the banner.

What a ticket shows

A ticket shows one banner for each tagged person and tag that alerts. It counts:

• the requester
• every participant on the ticket, whatever their role

A person on a ticket twice gets one banner per tag. Banners are ordered by the tag’s Sort order, then by name. Tags without Alert on tickets show on the person’s chips but never as a banner. See Tickets.

Verify

• The client’s Contacts tab shows the tag chip in the person’s Tags column, and filtering on Tag lists them.
• Open one of their tickets. The banner is under the ticket’s title.
• For Primary contact, the Primary contact card on the client’s Overview tab names the new holder, and the previous holder’s chip is gone.

Next steps

• Tickets
• Desk settings
• End users and user groups
• Add and manage clients