Contacts
Overview
Contacts are the people behind the customers — the individuals you actually talk to. A contact belongs to exactly one customer.
The separation matters: the customer carries what concerns the company — billing address, VAT identification number, payment terms. The contact carries what concerns the person — salutation, position, direct line, language. Looking for those fields on the wrong object is a search that never ends.
Core tasks
Create and maintain contacts. New contact creates a contact person — assigned to a customer or standing on its own without a customer (a private individual, B2C). A contact carries several channels: email, phone, mobile and any number of further email addresses. The detail page holds salutation, email, phone, mobile, position, department, language, the owning customer, roles and status.
Detach a contact from its customer. In the edit dialog, Detach from customer sits below the customer. After saving, the contact stands on its own — its channels, roles and history remain. You need the permission to edit contacts, including in the brand of the previous customer. The person of a private customer cannot be detached while they are that customer's only main contact.
Assign several roles. One person can hold several roles — for instance decision maker and billing. The first one is the main role. The Role filter finds a contact by any of its roles, and document dispatch sends an invoice to the contact with the billing role even when it is not their main role. Which roles exist is maintained in the contact role catalogue.
Search the list. Columns show name with position, customer, email, phone, role and status; filtering is by role, status, tag and brand. The Tag filter offers the tags and shows only contacts that carry the chosen tag.
Register additional email addresses. A contact can hold several addresses. This is not a convenience field but the reason incoming mail is still filed correctly when someone writes from a private or an old company address.
Review the history. The Communication tab shows the message history with this person — emails and every other channel in one history.
See the marketing consent. With the marketing module the Marketing consent card shows the consents for all of the contact's email addresses — topic, channel, state and origin. With marketing.consent.manage you record or withdraw them here by hand; both require a reason that is stored on the consent and in the change log (see Consents).
Use the CRM timeline. With the sales module the CRM tab appears. At the top is the timeline: notes, tasks, calls, meetings and email records on this contact — and those on its deals (as primary contact or participant) and leads. A linked row names the deal or lead it belongs to. The input above logs a new activity directly on the contact, with a due date; for a call the contact's name is prefilled. Below are the contact's deals and leads; a click opens them. The same activity also appears on the customer timeline and on the deal — there is no second copy.
Set the language. The Language field governs which language this person is written to in by the software — it belongs to the contact, not to your own interface setting.
Fields in detail
The What it does column answers what changes in the system — not what the field is called. The grey name behind the label is the API field: the same thing runs under that name through automation, import and AI tools.
Creating and editing a contact
| Field | Required | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
First name firstName | yes | text, max. 255 characters | Part of the name. First and last name together form the display in selection, document and salutation. |
Last name lastName | yes | text, max. 255 characters | The second required part. |
Customer customerUlid | no | an existing customer | Which company the contact belongs to. Without a customer they stand alone — findable, but in no customer record. Via the API an empty text ("") detaches the contact from its customer; a missing field leaves the assignment unchanged. |
Salutation salutation | no | text, max. 20 characters | Used as the form of address in mails and documents. |
Email email | no | email address, max. 255 characters | The main address. Documents and mails go there, and incoming post is attributed to this person by it. |
Further addresses aliasEmails | no | list of email addresses | Secondary addresses of the same person. Post from them lands in the same record instead of creating a second contact. |
Phone phone | no | text, max. 50 characters | Landline number. |
Mobile mobile | no | text, max. 50 characters | Mobile number; the target for SMS and WhatsApp where set up. |
Position position | no | text, max. 255 characters | The function in the company, e.g. "Head of purchasing". |
Department department | no | text, max. 255 characters | The unit the person belongs to. |
Roles roles | no | several entries of the master data "contact roles" | What the person is responsible for on your side (invoicing, technical, purchasing …) — several things at once, too. Document dispatch picks the right recipient by it. Saving replaces the whole list; an unknown or inactive entry is rejected. |
Main role role | no | one entry of the master data "contact roles" | The first of the roles. Whoever writes only this field (older integrations) sets exactly one role. |
Primary contact isPrimary | no | yes/no | Who is proposed when only "the customer" is meant. There is exactly one per customer; the mark moves rather than duplicating. |
Channels channels | no | list of channels | Which ways this person can be reached on. Governs what the history and the dispatch offer. |
Language locale | no | one of the configured languages | Language of address. Empty means the customer's language, otherwise the system language. |
Status statusId | no | master data "contact statuses" | Life state of the contact, e.g. left the company. A departed contact stays on old documents but is no longer proposed. |
Tags tags | no | several terms | Free grouping across role and customer; filterable and usable as an entry into marketing journeys. |
Notes notes | no | multi-line text | Free text on the person. |
Watchers watcherIds | no | list of users | Who may read the contact. A contact has no owner of its own — this permission comes on top of the customer's and replaces no permission. Saving replaces the whole list. |
Brand brandId | no | one of your brands | Assigns the contact to a brand. Empty means assigned to no brand. |
Settings & permissions
- Permission
platform.contact.read. Without it neither the list nor a detail page is reachable; a deep
link redirects back to the dashboard.
platform.contact.createto create,platform.contact.deleteto delete.- **The CRM tab** needs
crm.activity.managewith the sales module active; deals appear with
crm.deal.view, leads with crm.lead.view. Every list only shows what you may see in the respective brand.
- Role and status are master data and can be adjusted in the administration area.
- Portal access is separate. A contact is at first only a record. Access to the customer portal
arises solely from an explicit invitation — a distinct action with its own permission, so that nobody is granted access by accident.
FAQ & troubleshooting
I cannot delete or deselect the main contact of a private customer. For a private customer the person themselves is the main contact; the system creates them on creation and keeps them. Make another contact of this customer the main contact first, then the person can be changed or deleted.
I cannot find a contact. Check the role, status and tag filters. If the owning customer belongs to a brand you hold no permission for, the contact will not appear either.
A contact cannot see the customer portal. The record alone is not enough — the person has to have been invited.
Mail from this person is filed under the wrong customer. Then the sender address used is missing from the additional email addresses, or a domain rule on the customer takes precedence.
Position and phone cannot be changed on the customer. Correct — those fields belong to the contact and are maintained here.