Chapter 6: Working with Contacts

Contacts are people with whom you communicate, either in pursuit of a business opportunity or for personal reasons. In Business-to-Consumer (B2C) scenario, contact is the most important information for acquiring customers where as in Business-to-Business (B2B) it is a part of the organization details with which you are doing business. You can also create personal contacts that are not associated with any account. A personal contact does not display as part of the account or business opportunity information. Only you can see your personal contacts.

Contacts can be added to the Zoho CRM system by filling the contact form, importing contacts from other Contact Management & CRM applications, synchronizing contacts from the Microsoft Outlook software, or converting leads to contacts. Contact information can include an address, title, phone numbers, e-mail address, Birth date, and other personal details of an individual.

The most important function of contacts module in the Zoho CRM system is they can be used for both customers' acquisition as well as procurement of products from the vendors, i.e., contacts can be related to accounts as well as vendors according to your business process.

Contacts Module contains the following:

• Contact List View
• Page Navigation
• Quick Create Contacts
• Contact Reports
• Contact Tools such as Import, Export, Mass Delete, and Mass Transfer
• Alphabetical Search
• Custom Views

You can perform the following operations in Contacts module:

• Navigate contacts
• Search contacts (Alphabetical or advanced search options)
• Create list views
• Create contacts (Form filling, quick create, or duplicate options)
• Import contacts (from external sources)
• Associate contacts with other records
• Send E-mail to the contacts
• Export contacts to other spreadsheets
• Change contact owner (individually or in bulk)
• View contact related reports
• Print contact details
• Delete contacts (individually or in bulk)
• Customize contacts

Navigating Contacts

(Access Privilege: Read permission)

You can navigate contacts available in the Contact List.

To navigate contacts

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts Home page, under the Contact List section, select one of the views from Select View drop-down list to display the list of accounts according to the type of the account (For example, Prospect, Investor, Reseller, and others).  
3. In the Contact List section, click the Start, Previous, Next, or End links to access the respective list of contacts. 

Searching Contacts

(Access Privilege: Read permission)

You can search the contacts alphabetically or filling the required information in Search box.

To search contacts

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts Home page, under the Contact Search section, do one of the following:
   • Specify the search criteria in Search box and click the Go button. Or
   • Select one of the alphabetical search links.
3. In the Contact List page, list of contacts are displayed as per search criteria.

Creating List Views

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permissions)

In the Contact List you can create/modify/delete the custom views, sort columns in the list view (ascending/descending order), search the records available in the current list view. In addition, you can modify some of the columns in standard list views. By default, the following standard list views are available in the Contacts module:

• Standard Views
  • All Contacts
  • My Contacts
  • New This Week
  • New Last Week
• Recent Views
  • Recently Created Contacts
  • Recently Modified Contacts
  • Recently Viewed Contacts

Refer to Chapter <>: Managing List Views chapter to learn more about creating list views.

To create list views

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts Home page, under Contact List section, click the Create View link.
   
   

   Note: Under the Contact List section some of the standard list views are displayed. You can only rearrange the order of columns and add more columns to the standard list views.

3. In the Create New View page, do the following:
   • In the View Information section, specify name of the custom view in the View Name (mandatory) field. The custom view name appears in the View drop-down list. You can also set the custom view as a default list view by selecting the Set as Default View check box.
   • In the Specify Criteria section, specify the filter criteria. For more details refer to the Specifying List View Criteria section.
   • In the Choose Columns section, select the columns to be displayed in the List View. For more details refer to the Selecting List View Columns section.
   • In the Accessibility Details section, select the users to whom custom list view has to be enabled. For more details refer to the Enabling View Access section.
4. Click Save. The custom list view is displayed in the View drop-down list.

Creating Contacts

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permissions)

In Zoho CRM, you can create contacts as given below:

• Entering data in contact details form
• Duplicating the contact with few changes from the existing contact details
• Importing contacts from other Contact Management applications
• Converting leads to contacts
• Synchronizing Microsoft Outlook contacts with Zoho CRM

Note: Some of the standard fields listed below may not be visible/editable depending on your organization business process and field-level security settings. In case your organization added/modified fields please contact your System Administrator for more details about usage of the other fields.

In the Contact: Edit form, you need to specify the contact-related information. The following table provides descriptions of the various fields in the form.

List of Standard Contact-related Fields

To create contacts individually

1. In the Contacts home page under Contacts list, click the New Contact button.
2. In the Contact: < > page, enter the contact-related information. The Last Name is a mandatory field. Refer to the List of Standard Contact-related Fields section for more details.
3. Click Save. Contact details are displayed in the Contact: <Contact Name> page where you can perform the additional operations. Refer to the Associating Contact with Other Records section for more details.

Note: By default, the person who creates the contact owns the contact. If you want to assign the contact to a different user, in contact creation form, select the user name from the Assigned To field.

To create contacts instantly

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the left hand-side bar under the New Contact section, enter the contact's last name.
3. Click Save. Contact details are displayed in the Contact: <Contact Name> page where you can update with additional details or perform the additional operations.

To create duplicate contacts

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contact List view page, select the contact to be duplicated.
3. In the Contact: <Contact Name> page, click the Clone button.
4. In the Edit: <Contact Name> page, modify some of the contact details.
5. Click the Save. Contact details are displayed in the Contact: <Contact Name> page where you can perform the additional operations.

Importing Contacts

(Access Privilege: Data Import permission)

You can migrate your contacts from other Contact Management, CRM, and Address Book applications. Before migrating data, you must convert the data into CSV/XLS format.

To import contacts

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts: Home page under Contact Tools section, click the Import My Contacts or Import My Organization Contacts button.
   Note: Import link is displayed only if you have privilege to use Import feature. Please contact your administrator in case these links are disabled.
3. In the Specify Import File: page, browse the Contacts-related import file (CSV/XLS format) and then click the Next button.
4. In the Fields Mapping page, map the CSV/XLS column header with contact fields in Zoho CRM.
5. Click the Import button. It will take a few seconds to complete the importation.
6. In the Contacts: Home page, imported contacts are displayed under the Contacts List section. You can continue the importation further or complete the operation.

Associating Contact with other Records

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permissions)

You can create a 360-degrees view of the contact to display all the associated details, such as potentials, trouble tickets, open activities, history of the completed activities, attachments, and notes. 

To associate contact with other records

1. In the Contact: <Contact Name> page, you can update the following details:
   • Open Activities: To add tasks and events
   • Closed Activities: To display all the closed tasks and events
   • Cases: To create cases for the contact
   • Products: To add products for the contact
   • Attachments: To attach documents and notes
   • Notes: To attach notes to the contact.
2. After updating the associated records, you can move to the next record.

Sending Emails to Contacts

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permissions)

You can create mailing list for contacts and send mass E-mail to the contacts from contact list view. Please ensure the contacts contain an E-mail ID otherwise, E-mail will not be sent to the corresponding contact(s).

Note: Standard Users can use the standard E-mail templates available in the system where as System Administrator can create E-mail templates from Setup section. If you are a System Administrator refer to the Creating E-mail Templates section.

To send Emails to individual contacts

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts: Home page under the Contact List View section, select the contact.
3. In the Contact Details page, go to Mails related list view and click the Send Mail button.
4. In the Compose Mail page, enter the email message, attach files, add additional email IDs in CC & BCC fields, and finally click the Send button. An Email will be sent to the recipients and copy of the mail is stored under Mails related list view.

To send Emails to a group of contacts

1. Click the Contacts tab
2. In the Contacts: Home page under the Contact Tool section, click the Mass E-mail Contacts link.
3. In the Mass E-mail page, do the following:
   • By default, the E-mail Template tab is enabled. Select the template to be used from the E-mail Template pick list. The template content is displayed under E-mail Template Body section.
   • Click Matching Criteria tab. You can create a contacts mailing list by specifying the matching criteria under Specify Criteria section.
4. Click the Send button to send the E-mail message to the selected contacts.

Exporting Contacts

(Access Privilege: Data Export permission)

Occasionally it is very useful to export the contacts from Zoho CRM to Spreadsheet programs for further data analysis.

To export contacts to spreadsheets

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts: Home page under the Contact Tools section, click the Export All Contacts button.
3. In the File Download pop-up dialog, click Save to save the contacts files in CSV/XLS file format.

Changing Contact Owner

(Access Privilege: Owner change permission)

When the prospecting is in progress, occasionally it may be very useful to change the owner of some of the contacts in a single step. You can change the owner of an individual contact or a group of contacts.

To change owner of contacts individually

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts: Home page, select the contact.
3. In the Contact: <Contact Name> page, click the Edit button.
4. In the Contact: <Contact Name> page, change the contact owner from the Contact Owner lookup field.
5. Click Save to update the contact owner.

To change owner of contacts in bulk

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts: Home page, go to the Contact List section and select the check boxes corresponding to the contacts. You can also select all the contacts.
3. Click the Change Owner button.
4. In the Contacts: Change Owner page, select the user from the Select New Owner pick list and click the Update Owner button to change the owner of the contacts permanently.
   
   

   Warning: Contacts ownership will be changed to another user, irrespective of its existing owner. Use this operation carefully, otherwise contacts belonging to different users will be changed to new user. To overcome this problem, first you may search the contacts with a required owner name then change the owner in bulk.

Printing Contact Details

(Access Privilege: Read permission)

You can view a printable form and print the contact details using browser's Print function.

To print contact details

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts: Home page, go to the Contact List section and select the required contact.
3. In the Contact: <Contact Name> page, click the Print Preview button.
4. In the Contact: <Contact Name>, page, click the Print Page button to print the document.

Viewing Reports

(Access Privilege: Read/Write permissions)

You can directly access some of the standard reports pertaining to contacts from the Contacts Reports section. By default, the following reports are displayed under Contacts module:

• Contact Mailing List
• Key Accounts
• Accounts by Industry

To view contact report 

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts: Home page, go to the Contacts Reports section.
3. Click the required report link. The report is displayed in Reports page, which can be further customized as per your requirements.

For more details about reports customization refer to Chapter <>: Working with Reports.

Deleting Contacts

(Access Privilege: Read/Write/Delete permissions)

Rarely, you may need to remove some of the unnecessary contacts, which are moved from the existing account or not doing business with you for a long time. This will help you manage your contacts in a better way. You can delete contacts either individually or in bulk.

Note: The deleted contacts are temporarily stored in Recycle Bin. If required you can restore the deleted contacts again. But if you delete contacts from Recycle Bin, you cannot restore again.

To delete contacts individually

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts: Home page, select the contact to be removed.
3. In the Contact: <Contact Name> page, click Delete.
4. In the Confirmation dialog, click OK to delete the contact permanently.

To delete contacts in bulk

1. Click the Contacts tab.
2. In the Contacts: Home page, under the Contact List section, select the contacts to be removed using the Select Contacts check box (first column).
3. Click the Delete button.
4. In the Confirmation dialog, click OK to remove the selected contacts permanently.

Customizing Contacts

(Access Privilege: Customize ZohoCRM.com permission)

Customization of the contacts module includes, renaming the tab name, modifying the pick list values in standard fields, adding new custom fields, modifying contacts page layout, and show/hide the related list views according to your Contact management process requirements.

For more details, refer to Chapter 24: Customizing Zoho CRM chapter.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can I add my personal contacts to the Zoho CRM Contacts module?

Ans: You cannot add private contacts to Zoho CRM system because users with "System Administrator" privilege can access any users' data.

2. I sell my products/services to individuals. Can I use the Zoho CRM contacts module to track my sales?

Ans: No, currently the Zoho CRM solution is best suited for B2B scenario. You cannot create business opportunities with individuals. The workaround is to create a dummy Account and associate all the contacts with the Account and create business opportunities.

3. How to synchronize my Microsoft Outlook address book with Zoho CRM contacts module?

Ans: You can synchronize your Microsoft Outlook address book with Zoho CRM - Contacts using the Zoho CRM Outlook Edition. For more details refer to the Zoho CRM - Working with Outlook Edition chapter.

4. I have a contact that works for several companies but he/she has the one email address and phone number. How to associate contact with multiple companies?

Ans: Sorry, currently you cannot associate your contact with multiple companies. You can associate a contact with only one company.

5. How can I view a map for my contact address?

Ans: You can view a map for your contact address by clicking the Locate Map button in the Address Information section. Currently you can best view the contact address information in United States. For other countries there is a limited support.