Editing Contacts

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You create or modify contacts using the contact editor. The usual way to open the editor is to click New Contact or Edit in the View section of Coding Definitions | Contacts.

The contact editor window contains the following:

Details section: Shows basic information for the record.

Code: The name of the contact person.

Business Phone: The person's business phone number.

Email: The person's email address.

The Contacts record should contain the person's email address in the format that is used when that person sends out email. (In some organizations, a person might have multiple aliases that all go to the same mailbox. Mail sent from that box is always sent from a specific email address; that's the address which should go into the Contacts table.) This is particularly important when contact records are associated with requestors.

Alternate Email: A second possible email address for the person.

Home Phone: The person's home phone number.

Pager Phone: The person's pager number.

Mobile Phone: The person's cell phone number.

Fax Phone: The person's fax number.

Web URL: The person's web page address.

Location: The person's location. You give this address by specifying a record in the location table. For more on locations, see Locations.

User Name: A read-only field giving the Windows user name associated with this person, if any. For more on user records, see Users.

Preferred Language: A drop-down list containing all languages recognized by Windows. If you specify a language from this list, MainBoss will attempt to use that language when sending email messages to that person. More specifically, it will use language strings for that language, as defined in the Messages section of your MainBoss Service configuration. For more information, see Configuring MainBoss Service.

AD Reference: If this contact record refers to a person in your organization, and if that person has a login name on your network, the person likely has a record in your Windows Active Directory. This record can contain information about the person, including the person's name, primary and secondary email address, and more. The person's active directory record has a unique identifier code (called a GUID).

You can use the "AD Reference" field to record a person's GUID code. This is useful, because this ID is unique—you may have more than one John Smith in your organization, but each of them will have a unique code, making it easier to distinguish one from another. In addition, most organizations have procedures to update Active Directory records if a person's information changes. For example, if someone changes their email address or even their name, your organization will likely add the new information to Active Directory. In this way, Active Directory usually contains the most up-to-date information that your organization has.

For more on Active Directory, see Contacts.

Comments: Any comments you want to record about this person. If you initialize or update the record from Active Directory, MainBoss will add a comment indicating the date and time of the operation.

Contact Functions section: Lists other tables where the selected contact person appears. For example, if the person is a requestor, the Contact Functions section will indicate that the person appears in the Requestors table.

The buttons in the Contact Functions section let you assign new functions to a person. For example, if you click New Requestor, a window opens so that you can add this person to the Requestors list.

If a contact record has no listed contact functions, it refers to a contact in a vendor record (e.g. sales contact or accounts payable contact). For more on vendors, see Vendors.

Contact Relations section: Shows any relationship connections which this contact person has. For more on relationship connections, see Relationships.

New Unit Related Contact: Creates a new relationship between this person and a unit. For more information, see Unit-to-Contact Relationships.

: Deletes the selected relationship.

: Lets you search through the list of records for a particular record. For more information, see Searching for a Particular Record. The button has an accompanying drop-down list containing the following:

Find Next: Uses the same search condition(s) as your most recent search and finds the next record in the table that matches the condition(s). If the search reaches the end of the table without finding a matching record, it goes to the start of the table and continues the search.

Find Previous: Same as Find Next except that it goes backward in the table. If the search reaches the start of the table without finding a matching record, it goes to the end of the table and continues the search.

: Updates the list to reflect any recent changes.

Save & New: Saves the current record and sets up the window for you to enter a new record. Fields in the new record will be blank or set to default values.

Save: Saves the current record. The editor window stays open in case you want to make more changes to the same record.

Save & Close: Saves the current record and closes the editor window.

Cancel: Closes the window without saving any changes you've made to the record since the last time you saved. When you Save the record, the Cancel button changes to Close, indicating that you can safely close the window without losing any changes.

Close: Closes the window. This button only appears after you've saved changes with Save or before you've entered any data at all. Otherwise, the button is labeled Cancel.

Initialize all from Active Directory: Obtains contact information about a Windows user from the Windows Active Directory. The information is used to fill all relevant fields in the contact record. After the fields have been initialized, you can change them before saving the record.

After initializing the various fields, MainBoss sets "AD Reference" to the unique code that Active Directory uses to identify this person. MainBoss also adds information to "Comments" telling the date and time that this record was initialized.

Update all from Active Directory: Use this button if you have previously initialized the record from Active Directory and wish to update the contact information with any recent changes. MainBoss will use the ID code in "AD Reference" to find the person's Active Directory record and will replace any information in the contact record that doesn't match information in the Active Directory record. After doing this, MainBoss will add a message to the "Comments" field stating the date and time when the information was updated.

Information filled into the contact record is not automatically saved—it will only get saved when you click the editor's Save button. We strongly recommend that you check the filled-in information to make sure you got the right person before you Save. If it's the wrong person, you can just click Cancel to restore the original information.

Once the "AD Reference" field is filled in and saved, its value is difficult to change; you can only do so with the MBUtility command. (For more on MBUtility, see the MainBoss Installation and Administration Guide.)

For more on contacts, see Contacts. For more on viewing contacts, see Viewing Contacts. For more on editors in general, see Using Editors.

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