Managing Contacts
A portfolio record or project can be associated with one or more contact record. This contact record holds the details of an individual or organization who is associated with that record. A contact record can be associated with as many portfolio records as you need it to. The relationship between the contact and the portfolio record is specified via the use of customizable tags, as well as a notes field. Common tags include Landowner, Grantor, Primary Contact, Co-holder, and Grantee.
Access the contacts list by clicking on the 'contact' button on the left side of the screen from within a portfolio record:
From the menu that opens, you can see all listed contacts, as well as add or remove contacts. Add a contact by clicking 'Add Contact' and remove a contact by hovering over the contact card and clicking on the trash can. This will only remove the association between the contact and record - it will not delete the contact from Landscape.
Inactive contacts are contact records that have an end date. You can add an end date by selecting the contact record from the list and filling out the 'end date' field.
Click on a contact card to navigate to the record contact page. The top of the page displays information on the relationship between the contact and the portfolio record. Add tags, enter a start date (good for tracking when someone purchases a property) and an end date (good for tracking when someone sells a property). Record relationship notes is for capturing additional details. Note that you can add custom tags via Settings > List Items > Portfolio > Contact Tags (must be an admin to access settings).
Tip: 'Relationship Notes' is a good place for capturing the ID number that another organization assigns to a property if that number differs from your own ID number. You can then easily pull this number into monitoring reports, letters, etc.
The rest of the fields in the contact entry are all saved to that contact. For example, changing the display name of 'Town of Plainfield' to 'Town of Plainfield (Jane Doe)' would update that name in all records which are associated with that contact.
You can capture as many addresses, emails, or phone numbers as you want with each contact. Just add another by clicking on the '+' button at the top of each section.
Associated Records is an automatically generated list that displays all of the portfolio records
'What's the best way to enter a couple?'
For simplicity's sake, we usually recommend capturing a couple as a single contact. The 'Display Name' would be, for example, 'John and Jane Doe', while the First name field is just the first name of one of the individuals. 'Salutation' could be 'John and Jane'.
'What about an individual at a company or organization?'
If it's an organization for which you have a single point of contact, we recommend capturing the name of the contact with the name of the organization. For example, the 'Display Name' for your contact at a tree service might be 'Terry Timberdoodle (Terry's Tree Service)'. 'Organization' would capture the name of the company, but the first and last name fields could capture the names of your point of contact.
Communications are listed at the bottom of a contact page. This displays all communications with the contact regardless of where it was entered. Note that while you can add communications from here, it's usually more beneficial to do so either from within a work item or the communications tab of a portfolio record.
You can get a list of all contacts and/or their portfolio record associations by using Data Viewer. The 'All Contacts' view will show you a list of all contacts, and the 'All Record Contacts' will allow you to see which contacts are related to which records and what their relationships are.