All My Contacts

This screen displays all of Contacts from every Contract Group that you have access to manage.

Contacts are much like any Address Book in other programs, and hold the basic contact information for any individual person. Contacts are organized into one of more Contact Groups.

Contacts also hold other properties that allow them to be integrated into other features of your website. Some Contacts are simply names and addresses that are stored online, while others are connected to mailing lists, Users, Members, and Affiliates.  Based on the properties the Contact has, we identify them as a "Contact", "Subscriber", "Member", or an "Affiliate".  Members and Affiliates will also have a User account that corresponds to their Contact.

IMPORTANT: When necessary, Contacts are automatically connected to Users, however not all Users have a contact. The User account holds the login information and access rights, while the Contact holds the individuals basic contact information for the User, along with the Membership status, and Affiliate status.

Contacts share information with their corresponding User account, and with the built-in interactive Pages like the My Account Pages, Custom Form Pages, E-mail Campaigns, and Checkout processes. These updates happen automatically by liveSite. For example, when a User logs in and views their My Account Page, and change their e-mail address, their User Account and their Contact are both updated with the new e-mail address.

You can move and organize Contacts into one or more Contact Groups. The built-in registration processes can place a Contact in a Contact Group, as can Custom Forms, and when completing an Order, and event when ordering a specific Product.

Filtering & Viewing Contacts

Contact screens allow you to displays any of the Contacts that you have access to.  Filters allow you to narrow your view of the Contacts.  The Opt-In number at the top of the view indicates how many Contacts in the view are also Subscribers.

The Date Range filter allows you to narrow your view of Contact to a specific date range when the Contacts were last modified (or created).

The Keyword Search filter allows you to search for a specific keyword throughout all the Contacts in the current view.  Press "Clear" to remove the Keyword Search.

The Contact Group filter allows you to narrow your view to only a particular Contact Group.  Select the Contact Group and click "Update".

TIP: Next to the Contact Group is a numeric value that indicates how many Contacts are in that Group.

The Advanced Filters will allow you to further limit the Contacts that appear in the view. Clicking "Remove Advanced Filters" will clear the Advanced Filters for the view.

TIP: To reset all the filters and display all the Contacts you have access to, click "Remove Advanced Filters" if you have Advanced Filters showing, then press "Clear" to remove any Keyword Search, and finally select the "[All]" Contact Group, and click "Update".

You can show and hide the Contact Groups for Contacts by clicking on the "Show/Hide Contact Groups" link.

Creating Contacts

Contacts can be created through the Control Panel by any Contact Manager one at a time, or they can be created automatically by liveSite when a Visitor registers as a Guest or Member.

To add a Contact manually, click on "Create Contact" to create a new Contact.  If you need to add many Contacts at one time, you can click "Import Contacts". 

To create a Contact automatically:

• Have your Visitors register on the website (submit the Registration Entrance Page).
• Have your unregistered Members register on the website (submit the Membership Entrance Page).
• Have your Visitor submit a Custom Form Page that has an e-mail address field defined.

To understand how Contacts gets created automatically, let's walk through an example. In this example, a Visitor enters your website. They decide to register as a Guest to access some Guest Access Pages and Files. When they register, a Contact is created and linked to their User account (which is also created during registration). Their Contact will also be added to the Registered Guest Contact Group (so that they might receive your next e-mail campaign e-newsletter, for instance).

Importing Contacts

Contacts contain be imported and assigned to a Contact Group from a spreadsheet (CSV file).

You can also import Contacts for Unregistered Guests but they will still need to submit a Registration Entrance Page so that a User account can be created and they can become a Registered User and login.

You can also import Contacts for Unregistered Members (by including a Member ID field) but they will still need to submit a Membership Entrance Page so that a User account can be created and they can become a Registered Member and login.

You can also import Contacts for Unregistered Affiliates but they will still need to submit an Affiliate Sign Up Form Page so that a User account can be created.  Once the approval process is complete, they will become a Registered Affiliate. 

TIP: All the fields found in the Microsoft Outlook Address Book are available so you can easily import directly from and Outlook Address Book export file.  

Click on "Import Contacts" to import your Contacts.

E-mailing Contacts

You can e-mail any Contact that has a valid e-mail address and has "Opt-in" status for their Contact, and any Contact Groups that they have subscribed too.  To e-mail Contacts, you will need to be a Campaign Manager, and you can click on the [CAMPAIGN] tab to begin the process.

Updating Contacts

To update a Contact manually through the Control Panel, click on the Contact you wish to update.  

You can also select several Contacts and set their "Opt-in" or "Opt-out" status which will affect whether they will receive any e-mail Campaigns.

NOTE: Even Contacts without User accounts can follow the "update my e-mail preferences" link in any e-mail message they receive from a Campaign and update their own e-mail address, opt-in status, and subscriptions.  (However, they will not have access to any other My Account Pages until they register.)

To understand how Contacts get updated automatically, let's walk through an example. In this example, a Registered Guest (Contact has been created and linked to their User account).

• Now if the newly Registered User (our Guest) goes to their My Account Page, and changes their e-mail address and adds their contact information, this will update their e-mail address in their Contact and their User account automatically.
• Now the Guest finds a Custom Form to submit. Any fields marked "Connect to Contact" will be pre-filled with their Contact information.  If they change any of the connected fields, their Contact will be updated when they submit the Custom Form.  These updates will be reflected the next time they visit their My Account Pages.
• If the Custom Form Page also defined a Contact Group, their Contact will be added to the Contact Group automatically simply because they submitted the particular Custom Form Page.
• Now let's say the Guest decides to make a payment, or order something from the website. When they checkout, their billing information will be pre-filled from their Contact, which again, has their latest information. Upon completing their Order, they will again be added to another mailing lists defined by the Products ordered, and any address updates during the checkout process will be reflected in their Contact/User information.  If multi-recipient shipping is enabled, all of their shipping addresses will also be added to their My Account Address Book and available to be recalled when they return again to shop.
• If the Guest goes to their E-Mail Preferences Page and adds or removes themselves from any e-mail subscriptions (mailing lists) their Contact Groups and Opt-in Status are updated in their Contact.

This is only one example of the many ways in which you can automatically updates Contacts. The good news is that you don't have to do any of this "web plumbing" yourself.  liveSite handles all the data management for you - you just add Pages and link them together. 

Organizing Contacts

Select the Contact you wish to add or remove from a Contact Group and select "Organize Contacts". This feature is only accessible when you have clicked "Show Groups" in the Contact screen heading.

Exporting Contacts

You can easily export any or all Contacts to your local computer that can be opened with a spreadsheet or word processing program. 

Filter the Contacts view until you have all the Contacts you want to export, and click on "Export Contacts" to create a download text file (CSV file).

Deleting Contacts

Filter the Contacts view until you have all the Contacts you want to delete, and click on "Delete Contacts".

WARNING: When you Delete Contacts, all Contacts in the currently filtered view are deleted (even though you can only see the first screen of Contacts that will be deleted).

WARNING: Take care when deleting Contacts, there is no undo.  Once you confirm the deletion, the Contact data is gone!

TIP: You might want to export the Contacts to create a backup copy of the data before you delete.

Create / Edit Contact

This screen displays a single Contact. You can view or update this Contact's information, subscriber status, member status, affiliate status, or Contact groups.

WARNING: Don't delete this Contact if it has a corresponding User account (make sure it is not also viewable in the "My Contacts by User" view.

Import Contacts

IMPORTANT: If you want the Contacts to be imported with User accounts, then please use the Import Users feature under the Users tab, instead of this feature. The Import Users feature allows you to import Users & Contacts at the same time.

You can Import Contacts into your website database from your local computer any Comma Separated Values (CSV) File. CSV file format is a universally accepted way to move data between systems. Most spreadsheet programs and databases can save data as a CSV text file so it is an ideal way to upload Contacts.

Importing from Microsoft Outlook

You can easily import your Address Book from MS Outlook and create mailing lists for your important Contacts.

Importing from a Member Database

When importing Members, please include all Member IDs in the Member_id column.

A Member ID should be a string of characters that your the Member will know, because they will need to use them to register as Members after you have imported the unregistered Members.

Also, you may want to also include Expiration Dates in the expiration_date column. Please be aware that the format of the expiration date should be yyyy-mm-dd.

After the Members have been imported, you should direct your unregistered Members to any Page on your website that is placed in a Membership Access Folder.  When they reach this Page, liveSite will prompt them to register as a Member by displaying the Membership Entrance Page. They will need to know their Member ID to go beyond this Page.  This step provide your members with secure login accounts for their protection.

Once the Member has successfully registered, liveSite will redirect them to the original Page in the Membership Access Folder you directed them too.

Importing Affiliates

You can import Affiliates and their Affiliate Codes, and Commission Rates using the Contacts Import feature.

Import from CSV file

The easiest way is to get your data into columns in a spreadsheet. You may import Contacts by uploading a CSV file. You can save a CSV file from Microsoft Excel. Here are the guidelines for the CSV file:

• The first row of the CSV file must contain the names of the columns that you wish to import data for.
• You may use any number of columns from the list below.
• Columns can be listed in any order.
• Column names must be similar to those in the list below (i.e. "first_name" or "First Name" or "FirstName" or "firstname" or etc.).
• Exported column names from Outlook are supported.
• The possible values for opt_in are "0" (Opt-Out) and "1" (Opt-In). "1" is the default.
• The possible values for affiliate_approved are "0" (not approved) and "1" (approved). "0" is the default.

Here is the list of the valid Contact Properties that you can import. Place one of the following on the first row of each of your data columns:

• email_address
• opt_in
• salutation
• first_name
• last_name
• suffix
• nickname
• company
• title
• department
• office_location
• business_address_1
• business_address_2
• business_city
• business_state
• business_country
• business_zip_code
• business_phone
• business_fax
• home_address_1
• home_address_2
• home_city
• home_state
• home_country
• home_zip_code
• home_phone
• home_fax
• mobile_phone
• website
• lead_source
• description
• member_id
• expiration_date (Format: yyyy-mm-dd)
• affiliate_approved
• affiliate_name
• affiliate_code
• affiliate_commission_rate

My Subscribers

This screen displays all Contacts that have an e-mail address and are opted-in to receive e-mail Campaigns.

My Affiliates

This screen displays all Contacts that have submitted the Affiliate Sign Up Form Page and have been approved to receive commissions for online Orders.

My Customers

This screen displays all Contacts that have placed an Order.

NOTE: If the Order is deleted, this Contact will no longer show up on this screen.

TIP: You can always track your Customers using Contact Groups. Site settings and Product settings allow your Site Managers and Commerce Managers to append a new Contact Group to a Contact whenever they place an Order.

My Members

This screen displays all Contacts that have a Member ID.

The existence of a Member ID does not necessarily mean this Contact can access any Pages or Files in the Membership Folders. Each Member's Contact must still be tied to a User account before they can login and access any content that is not in a Public Folder.

If the Contact has already registered as a Guest through the Registration Entrance Page, then if you manually add a Member ID and future Expiration Date, they will be considered a Member, and have access to the Membership Folders the next time they login.

Setting up Members

Existing Members through import

If you have existing members that you currently manage outside of your website, you will need to create or import a Contact for each member before they can attempt to register with your website.  Membership Access information is located in the Contact, and will need to be defined for each Member so that the website will know that they are approved as a member  when they register.

When you create or import Contacts for your members, be sure to include a Member ID and an optional Expiration Date.

TIP: Member IDs do not have to be unique to each User.  If you allow an organization-wide membership for your Customers, you can import a Contact for each individual person in the organization, each with the same Member ID.  This allows each individual to register and create their own User account but they will all share the same Member ID.  If you add an Expiration Date to any Contact sharing a Member ID, liveSite will expire the membership of all Members that share the same Member ID.

TIP: If you want to grant a lifetime membership to any Member, leave the Expiration Date field blank.  You can always fill in a value at any time to expire their membership earlier.

New Members through online purchase

You can also allow the Member ID (and optional Expiration Date) to be created for you, when a Customer places an Order through the website. This is ideal for providing fee-based membership access.

For these members, you don't need to import or create a Contact for each member ahead of time.  Instead:

1) Set the Membership fields in the Product they will be ordering.

2) Make sure that the first Page in your checkout process (i.e. Express Order Page, Billing Information Page, etc.) is located in a Registration Folder so that the Customer will be required to register/login at the time the Order is placed.

When the Order is placed, the Customer will be able to access the contents of all Membership Folders until the Expiration Date. At that point, their login will no longer allow them to access content in Membership Folders.

The Order Number is used as the Member ID, and any optional Membership Renewal (Days) specified by the Product are added to the current date and saved in the Member/Customer's Contact.

TIP: If you want to grant a lifetime membership to the Customer when they purchase, then set the Membership Renewal field in the Product to a large number (e.g. 999999).

New Members through trial form

You can also allow the Member ID (and optional Expiration Date) to be created for you, when a Registered User submits a Custom Form Page that has the "Membership Trial Days" feature enabled. This is ideal for letting trial members view Membership Folder content for a limited time.

For these members, you don't need to import or create a Contact for each member ahead of time.  Instead:

1) Setup a Custom Form Page and enable the "Membership Trial Days" feature in the Custom Form.

2) Place the Custom Form Page in a Registration Folder so the site Visitor will be required to register or login before proceeding to the Custom Form Page.

3) When the Custom Form Page is successfully submitted, the Member will be able to access the contents of all Membership Folders until the Expiration Date. At that point, their login will no longer allow them to access content in Membership Folders.

The Submitted Form's Reference Code is used as the Member ID, and any optional Membership Renewal (Days) specified by the Custom Form are added to the current date and saved in the Member's Contact.

NOTE: Once a Member has been granted membership in this way, they cannot submit another (trial) membership form using the same e-mail address.  This prevents abuse of the trial memberships. (There is no way to limit trials by IP address of other means, it simply won't offer any more protection from abuse.)

Renewing Members through online purchase

You can also allow any member (trial or expired) to renew their membership when they place an Order through the website.

1) Set the Membership fields in the Product they will be ordering.

2) Make sure that the first Page in your checkout process (i.e. Express Order Page, Billing Information Page, etc.) is located in a Registration Folder so that the Customer will be required to register/login at the time the Order is placed.

When the Order is placed, the Customer will be able to access the contents of all Membership Folders until the new Expiration Date. At that point, their login will no longer allow them to access content in Membership Folders.

Since a Member ID will already exist, the Member Id will remain unchanged. The Membership Renewal (Days) specified by the Product are added to the current date and saved in the Member/Customer's Contact.

TIP: You can use the Membership Renewal reminder feature found in the Site Settings to automatically send each Member an e-mail when their membership is about to expire.  The allows you to totally automate the  membership process.

My Active Members

This screen displays all Contacts that have a Member ID and have a future Expiration Date.

NOTE: The existence of a Member ID and future Expiration Date does not necessarily mean this Contact can view any Pages or Files in the Membership Folders yet. If the Contact is also found on the "Unregistered Members" screen, then they have not registered yet, and therefore do not have Membership Folder access.

Members still must register either through:

1. the Membership Entrance Page
2. the Registration Entrance Page and purchase a membership Product
3. the Registration Entrance Page and submit a membership trial Custom Form

in order to create a User account that will allow them access until the Expiration Date passes.

My Expired Members

This screen displays all Contacts that have a Member ID and a past-dated Expiration Date.

TIP: You can update the Expiration Date field in the Contact to a future date and their access to Membership Folder content will be restored instantly.

NOTE: The existence of a Member ID and future Expiration Date does not necessarily mean this Contact can view any Pages or Files in the Membership Folders yet. If the Contact is also found on the "Unregistered Members" screen, then they have not registered yet, and therefore do not have Membership Folder access.

My Unregistered Members

This screen displays Contacts that contain a Member ID, but do not have a corresponding User account associated with them. Therefore, these Contacts do not have access to Membership Folders yet.

Members still must register either through:

1. the Membership Entrance Page
2. the Registration Entrance Page and purchase a membership Product
3. the Registration Entrance Page and submit a membership trial Custom Form

in order to create a User account that will allow them access until the Expiration Date passes.

My Contacts By User

This screen displays all Contacts that you have access to, that also have a corresponding User account.

My Contacts By Business Address

This screen displays all Contacts that you have access to, that also have a complete business address.

My Contacts By Home Address

This screen displays all Contacts that you have access to, that also have a complete home address.

All Duplicate Contacts

This screen displays all duplicate Contacts, which are any Contacts that share the same e-mail address. You can merge any or all duplicate Contacts into a single Contact, removing the duplicates.

Children and Orphan Contacts

Before you merge Contacts, it is important to understand how they are merged safely, so that unverified data is not accidentally added to any User accounts, and that no data is lost unnecessarily. There are two types of duplicate Contacts. "Child" Contacts are those Contacts that are connected to a User account. Child Contacts always appear at the top of its group of duplicate Contacts on this screen, and there is a checkbox visible that is linked to their associated User account. "Orphan" Contacts are those Contacts that are NOT connected to a User account. Orphan Contacts contain unverified data with respect to User account information.

Merging Rules

When a group of Contacts are merged together, and all Contacts in selected group are Orphans, then each Orphan's data fields are merged together into the newest Orphan Contact. Only data fields that are empty are merged, no data is overwritten. The last modified date for the remaining Contact is not modified. The older Orphan Contacts are then PERMENENTLY DELETED from the database, and the remaining Contact is no longer visible in the Duplicate Contacts screen.

When a group of Contacts are merged together, and one of the Contacts in selected group is a Child Contact, then each all Orphan's are NOT merged together into the Child Contact. This is done because we cannot verify that any Orphan Contact data is valid, so it cannot be added to a User account's contact data. The last modified date for the Child Contact is not modified. All Orphan Contacts are simply PERMENENTLY DELETED from the database, and the remaining Child Contact is no longer visible in the Duplicate Contacts screen.

When a group of Contacts are merged together, and all are Child Contacts that share the same e-mail address, they will be ignored. If necessary, you can manually merged these Contacts since a closer inspection will reveal that their associated User account does not share the same e-mail address.

WARNING: Due to the destructive and permanent nature of merging contact data, only Site Managers, Site Designer, and Site Administrators can merge Contacts. Once Contacts are merged, they cannot be unmerged - the merged Contacts are deleted from the database. Therefore, we highly recommend that you back up by export all Duplicate Contacts before attempting to merge any contacts. Realize that if you do need to import your previously saved Contacts, only orphan Contacts will be created.

All Contact Groups

This screen displays all Contact Groups that you have access too. Contact Managers can import, update, and delete all Contacts in any their Contact Groups they manage.

All Contacts are organized into Contact Groups. Contact Groups can be used to simply group Contacts together for purposes of organization or classification, but more commonly are to create mailing lists for sending e-mail Campaigns.

If a Contact Manager is also a Campaign Manager, they can also create e-mail Campaigns and send to all Contacts within their Contact Groups.

TIP: Since Contact management rights for Contact Groups can be given to individual Users, Contact Groups are ideal for managing e-mail lists (and subscriptions) by department, ministry, organization, team, or topic.

Creating & Updating Contact Groups

You must be a least a Site Manager to create or update Contact Groups. To Create a Contact Group, click "Create Contact Group".

Viewing Contact Groups

Contact Managers cannot view Contact Groups, only the Contacts within the Contact Groups they have access to. All Contacts Groups are visible to Site Managers.

Deleting Contact Groups

You must be a least a Site Manager to delete Contact Groups. To delete a Contact Group, edit a Contact Group and click "Delete".

Create / Edit Contact Group

This screen displays the a Contact Group and e-mail subscription features.

All Contacts are organized into Contact Groups. Contact Groups can be used to simply group Contacts together for purposes of organization or classification, but more commonly are to create mailing lists for sending e-mail Campaigns.

If a Contact Group is used as a mailing list, then it can be "open" to any Subscribers, or "closed" to any new Subscribers.

Open Subscriptions are ideal for creating numerous self-managed mailing lists covering many topics and allow any Subscriber to join the mailing list at any time.

Closed Subscriptions are used for creating private mailing lists that are maintained by a Contact Manager or by the liveSite system's work-flow features. This allows you to create and manage Staff-Only mailing lists, Member-Only mailing lists, and Customer-Only mailing lists, etc.

Here are the Properties of a Contact Group: