Contacts

Contacts are people your organization sells to, supports, markets to, or works with. A contact can be an early prospect, a decision maker, a customer, or an end user.

Workstation uses Contacts for the prospect lifecycle. There is no separate Leads module: a prospect is a contact, and you qualify it with properties such as Lead Status, owner, source, pipeline, stage, rating, and Lead Score.

Contact data

The standard Contact properties cover:

Identity: name, salutation, birth date, gender, and profile details
Work context: title, department, company, account, and reporting relationship
Communication: email, secondary email, phone, mobile, preferred method, language, and time zone
Address, including latitude and longitude, and social profiles
Consent and compliance: email opt-in, do-not-call, and tax-exempt status
Qualification: lead status, owner, source, channel, industry, pipeline, stage, rating, lead score, company size, revenue, budget, and expected close date
Marketing attribution: referral, UTM fields, click IDs, and originating ad
Description, staff alert, last activity date, and system dates

Administrators can add custom and computed fields in Properties. Required fields and available fields may therefore differ by workspace.

On the Contact properties screen, Add computed properties installs an Insights group of read-only rollups, such as total deal value, number of deals, number of appointments, upcoming appointments, and total spend. You can show them on the record, use them as list columns, and filter or segment by them.

Creating a contact

Open Contacts.
Select New Contact.
Enter the first name and any known contact details. Last name is optional unless your workspace requires it.
Assign an owner, source, pipeline, and stage when relevant.
Associate the contact with an account or other records.
Save the contact.

While you type, the form checks for existing records:

An email or secondary email that another contact already uses blocks the save and links to the existing contact. If you can’t see that contact, ask an administrator for access.
A phone number that another contact already uses shows a warning, but you can still save, since phone numbers are sometimes shared.
A work email domain that matches an Account offers Link to account, and shows other contacts you can see at that domain.

You can also create contacts through imports, forms, Inbox conversations (everyone who writes in gets a contact automatically, see Inbox), meeting-link bookings, connected apps, and other workflows. When Apollo is connected, Find people provides a prospecting entry point from the Contacts page.

Lifecycle and qualification

A contact can belong to a Contact pipeline and stage. This lets teams model steps such as New, Attempted, Connected, Qualified, or Disqualified without converting the person into a different record type.

Contact qualification and Deal progression are separate:

The Contact pipeline describes the person’s lifecycle or readiness.
The Deal pipeline describes a specific revenue opportunity.
One contact may be associated with multiple deals over time.

See Pipelines and Stages for stage configuration, transition rules, and stage-required fields.

Accounts and relationships

A contact can have a primary Account and additional account associations. One account-contact relationship can be marked primary for that account.

Contacts can also be related to deals, tickets, appointments, carts, projects, invoices, activities, emails, and other records. Use associations to keep the customer history connected rather than duplicating the person.

List and Kanban views

The Contacts page supports List and Kanban views.

Built-in tabs include All contacts, My contacts, and Unassigned.
Quick filters include owner, lead status, stage, ad contact status, create date, and account.
Kanban can group by Stage, with a pipeline picker, or by other supported properties.
Selecting a row or card opens the contact in the shared record flyout. The URL keeps the open record, and Open full page goes to the full detail page.

Use Table Views to save filters, columns, sorts, view mode, and Kanban grouping.

Duplicates

Open the More actions menu on the Contacts page and select Manage duplicates. The same page handles Accounts.

Select Scan for duplicates. After the first scan, scans refresh daily.
Review suggestions on the To review tab. Each one shows why the records match, such as the same email, the same phone, the same company domain, or the same name and related details.
Open a suggestion, choose the primary record, and pick the value to keep for each property. Select Merge and review next, or Not a duplicate to dismiss it.

Merging is permanent. Linked records move to the primary record, and marketing opt-outs are preserved. You can also merge several selected pairs or groups at once, keeping the oldest, newest, or most recently active record.

Use Detection rules to match on your own properties, such as a national ID custom field. Dismissed suggestions appear under Rejected and can be restored for 14 days. History lists past merges and can be exported.

Managing duplicates requires view and update-all permission for the object. Merging also requires delete-all permission.

Working from the contact record

The default record page has these tabs: About, Activities, Emails, Conversations, Invoices, POS Sales, Memberships, Loyalty, Comments, Events, Calls, and Timeline. Users with clinical-notes access also see Clinical history. The header has Edit and Delete, plus Call when calling is set up and the contact has a phone number, and Send Email when the contact has an email address. Quick actions log a call, create a task, or schedule a meeting.

The Activities tab is a timeline of notes, calls, tasks, and meetings linked to the contact. See Activities on a record.

The exact card and tab arrangement can differ because administrators can customize Contacts in Settings → Objects. Property cards support inline editing when the field and the user’s permissions allow it.

Staff alert

Use the Staff Alert property for something every teammate should see before talking to this person, such as “Prefers Arabic” or “Allergic to latex”. When it is set, an amber Staff alert banner appears at the top of the contact record and on the client’s appointments. Clear the property to remove the banner.

Bulk actions

Select contacts on the list page to assign an owner, edit standard or custom properties, delete records, or create follow-up tasks. Bulk actions run in the background, and the list refreshes when they finish. Property validation and conditional requirements are checked during supported bulk updates as well as normal edits.

Visibility

Contact visibility follows the owner-based data-visibility scope set in Departments:

All shows every contact.
Department shows contacts owned by visible department members.
Own shows only the user’s own contacts.
Unassigned contacts remain visible under the shared visibility rules.

Permissions still control whether a user can create, edit, delete, or reassign contacts.

Import and export

Use Settings → Import / Export (Data Import and Export) to load Contact data from CSV or Excel. Map columns to native and custom properties, then choose Create Only, Upsert, or Replace.

Stabilize property internal names, option values, and pipeline stages before a large import. See CRM Setup for the recommended order.