Contacts - one person, one record

Xperios Essentials, section 2 of 7. Why everybody is one record, how to find them, and how to read what they are to you.

What you will be able to do

• Find anybody in Xperios, and know why the list stays empty until you type
• Read a contact's tabs to see what that person is to your service
• Know where the history of dealing with somebody is kept
• Change several things about a person and save them in one go

Step 1 of 6

Everyone is a contact, and one person has one record

Everyone your service deals with is a contact. Pupils, parents, teachers, schools, centres, even the people who repair your instruments, all in one place rather than in separate lists. And one person has one record. A teacher who also has a child having lessons with you is not two accounts that have gone wrong. It is one contact carrying a tab for each role they hold.

Use the arrow keys to move between steps.

Everyone is a contact, and one person has one record — press Escape or click to close

1. Everyone is a contact, and one person has one record

   Everyone your service deals with is a contact. Pupils, parents, teachers, schools, centres, even the people who repair your instruments, all in one place rather than in separate lists. And one person has one record. A teacher who also has a child having lessons with you is not two accounts that have gone wrong. It is one contact carrying a tab for each role they hold.

2. Finding somebody takes three characters

   The Contact menu opens the list. Type into the filter to search, and click a row to open somebody. Type at least three characters. Until you do, the list stays deliberately empty, because there are far too many contacts to show them all at once. Three characters is the point at which it starts looking.

   So an empty contact list is not a fault and not an access problem - it is one or two characters.

3. The outer strip is what they are to you

   A contact record has two strips of tabs, one above the other. The outer strip is the roles this person holds. It always starts with Contact, the details true of them whoever they are, and then one tab for each role. Pupil, Teacher, Debtor, School, Centre, Booker, Repairer, User, Customer. You only see the roles they actually have, so the strip tells you at a glance what this person is to you.

4. Identity is on every contact

   Identity is the exception. It is always there, whatever else somebody is to you, because anybody can have a sign-in. One person has one Identity however many roles they hold, so a teacher who is also a parent signs in once and sees both. Worth knowing: the address on the login is not the address on the contact, and changing one does not change the other.

   Which is why a login showing an old address is completely normal. Check the name on the login rather than the address.

5. The inner strip belongs to the person

   The inner strip, on the Contact tab, holds the things that belong to the person rather than to any one role. Details is name, addresses, phone numbers and email. Journal is the history of contact with them, the calls, the emails, the note of what was agreed. Then Notes, Links, Associations and Consent. If somebody asks what was said last time, Journal is where you look.

6. One Edit, one Save, the whole record

   One Edit button at the top covers the whole record, not one per tab. Put the record into edit mode, change the address on Details and something on the Debtor tab, and save once. If you try to leave with changes you have not saved, Xperios asks before discarding them.

The recap

• Everyone your service deals with is one contact, and a contact carries a tab for each role they hold - so a teacher who is also a parent is one record, not two.
• The contact list stays empty until you have typed three characters, because there are too many contacts to list them all.
• The outer strip of tabs is the roles this contact holds, and you only see the ones they actually have.
• Identity is the exception - it is on every contact, because anybody can have a sign-in whatever else they are to you.
• { "The inner strip belongs to the person. Journal is the history of contact with them": "the calls, the emails, the note of what was agreed." }
• One Edit button at the top covers the whole record, so changes across several tabs are saved once.

Now take the test

Six questions, in Xperios under Training. Everything it asks is in The recap above.

If you want the detail

• Contacts — the tabs in full, and what is on each
• Anonymising a contact — erasing somebody at their request