Create a list of people that are working on the project such as the client, external consultants, project manager, builders, and list the internal staff that are part of the project team. Use this list to look-up their contact information to send out email correspondence, project proposals, and invoices. Select which of the project contacts have access to use the project portal.
Setup required before use | Who can use it? | Where is it? |
User Assistant project manager Project manager Director access Assistant system administrator System administrator | Open Project > Project contacts tab |
Tip: Hide contacts by making them 'inactive' when they are no longer part of the active project team.
What is the project contacts tab?
List all the people that make up your project team on the contacts tab, to use these details for sending project emails or addressing project documents like proposals, project summary documents, invoices, and credit notes.
Use the 'role' to list out what type of job or work they will perform in your project team. This helps you to list out all the contacts you require for the project used as the local government or council, which the builder involved is, who is the architect, what engineers are required etc. Having a quick list of the contacts for the project helps your staff quickly find the details for who to call or email about a project query by checking the role.
Setup the internal project team list by adding your staff to the project contacts tab. This lets other staff know which people internally are involved with the project and what their role is in the project team.
Important project contact settings are:
Primary contact - the main person to contact about project. Normally the client, or the person that makes project decisions.
Invoice contact - who the project invoices should be addressed to in the 'attention to' fields and mailed to by default.
Care of (c/o) contact - a third party that the invoice should be emailed or posted to.
Project portal - chat with the project team (external contact and internal staff) about project tasks, and share the project documents with the selected project contacts in the Synergy project portal. Choose which contacts have full portal access, or which have restricted portal access.
Why use the project contacts tab?
A contact list of all the internal staff and external contacts that make up your project team.
Actions available
Contacts can be added to the project to build the project team. This is a list of all external parties which can be contact types of company, individual, or personnel. The role is used to show how that contact is working on the project, to give your team a prompt for what type of queries to contact them about via phone or email.
Add a project contact by:
Go to: Project > Project contacts tab.
Click the 'add' button in the top right.
Click into the 'contact' field and either: Type part of the name to shorten the results shown, then select the existing contact to be added to the project. Create a new contact by pressing the 'Ctrl A' keys (or clicking that green text) whilst the contact drop down is open.
For company type contacts select the personnel to call at the company from the 'personnel' drop down list. For individual type contacts selected in step 3, the matching name is automatically added into the personnel box.
Select the role (category) that the contact will perform on the project. e.g. Builder, Landscape Architect, Engineer, Painter etc.
(Optional) Check the box 'invoice contact' if they should be sent invoices for the project.
(Optional) Check the box 'primary' if they are the main person to make decisions about the project.
(Optional) Check the box 'care of' if invoices should be sent to the address of this contact.
(Optional) Select a 'portal access' option if you want to allow this contact to chat with the team in the project portal, or to have access to download shared project documents. Choose from the portal access options of full, restricted, and none.
Tip: Contacts with restricted portal access are able to only chat with staff, they cannot view any of the other external contacts in the portal.Save.
Repeat for each contact required to be part of the project team.
Tips:
The default personnel record 'The Manager' is shown for any company contacts when no personnel records have been created yet.
Update the project contact rows later to add the personnel that work for that company, once you have the details like phone, address, email.
Create a new contact by using the Ctrl A keyboard shortcut.
Internal staff can be added to the project contacts tab to build a list of people working on the project team.
Add custom roles in Settings > Contact Lists > Roles to describe the types of contact roles at your organization. Different roles can be setup for both staff records and contact records.
Include staff members in the project team to have their details shown in the project portal to the external contacts. Add staff to the project contacts tab by:
Click the arrow on the 'add' button in the top right corner and select 'Add staff'.
Click into the 'staff' field and type part of the staff name you want to add. Select the person to be added from the list.
Select a role from the drop down list, to describe the main tasks that the staff member will perform on the project.
(Optional) If the project is non-billable you can select a staff member to be the 'primary contact' by selecting the 'is primary' checkbox.
Save.
Repeat for each Synergy staff member that is part of the project team.
Tip: Add custom roles in Settings > Contact Lists > Roles to describe the types of staff roles at your organization. Different roles can be setup for both staff records and contact records.
When the contact you are looking for does not appear in the drop down list, you can create a new contact record from within the add a project contact pop-up window. Follow these steps:
Click the 'add' button in the top right.
Click into the contact drop down list and: Desktop PC - With the drop down open press 'Ctrl A' on your keyboard. Laptop or mobile - Type part of the contact name that doesn't exist and the text 'add [ctrl +a] is shown in green. Click this green text.
Choose which type of contact you are creating from the options Company - Type the company name and add the details for any of the other optional fields as needed. Save. Individual - Type the individual first and last name and add the details for any of the other optional fields as needed. Save. Personnel - Type the first and last name of the person, then choose which company they work for, and add the details for any of the other optional fields as needed. Save.
The new contact is created with the tag 'quick add' applied. You can later search for all the contacts with this tag applied and update the contact record to have all the required details like email and postal addresses and phone numbers.
Tip: If you create a new company contact you can use the default personnel record 'The Manager' as the project contact. Edit the contact later to add the personnel that work for that company later when you have all the details.
Each project contact row allows three options to be configured. Select the row action button
against a single contact record to find the options to set as the:
Primary contact - Who is the main person to call about the project. This is normally the client, the person that bought you this sales proposal, and can make decisions on the project. There must be one primary contact on every project.
Invoice contact - The main person that project invoices should be sent to. There should be one invoice contact setup on each project. By default the 'primary contact' is selecting as the invoice contact. Change this to another contact or personnel is required. New invoices created will default to use this contact record when only one invoice contact is chosen.
In cases of joint venture projects you can mark several contacts marked as an invoice contact, if multiple people are invoiced for the same project invoice (invoice value split 50 % to contact A, and 50% to contact B).Care of (c/o) contact - Optional to allow you to choose if an invoice should be emailed or posted to a third party. Use the c/o contact option to have the c/o address appear automatically when creating an the invoice for this project. Multiple c/o addresses can be set if required.
Tip: Internal staff cannot have any of the above options applied. Staff are added to build the project team. Staff cannot be sent project invoices.
The project portal allows your team of external contacts or internal staff to have a central location to view project documents, and comment or chat about project tasks. Learn more about using the project portal.
Portal access has to be enabled for each person on the project contacts tab that you want to be able to use the portal. This applies to both external project contacts (personnel at a company or individual type contacts), or internal staff. Choose which contacts have full portal access, or which have restricted portal access, or no access for the portal.
Select which project team members will have access to the project portal by:
Select the row action button for a project contact.
Select the 'Change portal access' option.
Use the 'change portal access' window to either: Add extra contacts to the portal - select the contact / personnel details, the contact role, and then select which level of portal access is allowed, Update portal access for the current project contacts - use the 'portal access' column in the contacts table to choose an access level for each contact.
A portal invitation email is sent to this project contact, with the access link to open the Synergy project portal section.
Tips:
Once the project contact has logged into the portal, then the portal access symbol will become green. Hover over this to see the last time that contact accessed the portal (date and time).
All project contacts added can have 'portal access' by default using the organization settings for privacy. This can be configured by your System Administrator.
When contacts are added to the project portal an invitation email is sent out to the 'Email 1' address on their contact record.
If the contact has not received the portal invitation email then you can resend it by:
Select the row action button for a project contact.
Choose the 'resent portal invitation' option.
The page refreshes and the portal invitation email has been re-sent.
Within the project portal your project team members can request that other people be added to the project contacts list. For example an existing project contact will request that another staff member at their company to be added to the project contacts list. They are requesting the staff member be added so that they can also have portal access enabled for the project.
Invitation requests from the portal are shown at the end of the project contacts tab. These invitation requests must be approved by a staff member before they are shown in the project contact list. Staff with any Synergy access level can approval a portal invitation.
How the portal invitation request works
The company name entered in the portal will be check against the contacts for your organization.
The 'email address' entered in the portal will be checked against the contacts for your organization.
If no matches are found, then the option to create the company and personnel record is shown.
Synergy will create the contact record for the company (if missing) and the personnel (if missing) with the basic details entered in the portal form.
Select what role that contact will play on the project, and choose if they will have portal access.
Approve a portal invitation request
Open the project contacts tab.
If any portal invitations exist they are shown below the standard project contacts table.
Review the invitation that you want to accept, and select the 'create user and link' button.
The add a project contact window opens, and the company and personnel contacts have been created if they did not exist.
Select the role for the contact for this project.
Select any of the flags. e.g. if this contact should have access to the portal.
Save.
Decline a portal invitation request
Open the project contacts tab.
If any portal invitations exist they are shown below the standard project contacts table.
Review the invitation that you want to decline, and select the option to 'ignore this request by clicking this link'.
The invitation request has now been declined and removed from the project contacts tab.
Edit a contact to change the personnel list for a company contact or change their role in the project team by:
Select the row action button for the project contact.
Choose the 'edit' option in the list, and update the following details: Contact change - click the 'X' next to the company or individual name. This removes the current contact chosen, which allows you to use the drop down again to select a different company name. Personnel change - click the 'X' next to the personnel name. The personnel drop down is available again, to allow you to select a different staff member that works at the company or individual contact. Role - The role can be updated by choosing another from the drop down list. Only one role can be chosen for each project contact. Primary contact - Check the box if this contact is the primary contact person at the client. Invoice contact - Check the box if project invoices should be sent to this person. Care of (c/o) contact - Check the box if project invoices should be sent to the address against this contact. Portal access - Select which level of access the contact should have to the project portal: Full, restricted, or none. Restricted access allows an external contact to be able to use the project portal to chat with staff only, no external contact details are shown. Full access to the portal allows both internal and external contact details to be shown in the portal.
Save.
Tip: The project audit tracks each time a project contact is added, edited or deleted.
Use the 'role' on to list what category the contact falls into for your project team. This helps you to list out all the contacts that are part of the local government or council, or the builders, architects, engineers and more.
Update the role on a single contact record in the edit screen. Or following the steps below to update the role on multiple contacts:
Go to: Project > Project contacts tab.
Select the check box(es) on the row left for each item you want to update the role against.
Click the multiple rows action button and choose the 'set role' option.
Select a role from the drop down list, and click save.
The list refreshes to show the project contacts with the updated role.
Tip: The role applied to the contact or personnel will be automatically added to the contact in the roles section.
Make a project contact inactive to stop them from being sent any future created project documents, emails, or invoices. Contacts cannot be deleted from the project if they have been used as an invoice contact. Mark the contact as inactive to stop your team accidentally including the contact on future project communications.
Go to: Project > Project contacts tab and Select the check box(es) on the row left for each item you want to mark as inactive. Click the multiple rows action button and choose 'set as not active'.
The list refreshes and the now inactive item(s) are shown with a strike-out style applied. Update the list to use the 'active' filter 'all' option to see both active and inactive project contacts.
Tips:
If the contact has not been included on any project communications like invoice, then they can be deleted from the project.
Stop the contact being used in the future by opening the contact record, and marking the entire contact as inactive.
Remove a contact or personnel from the project when it was entered by mistake. This will not delete the contact or personnel from the system, only detach them from the project.
Go to: Project > Project contacts tab and Select the check box(es) on the row left for each item you want to delete. Click the multiple rows action button and choose 'delete'.
The list refreshes and the project contacts have been deleted. The contact record itself still exists in Synergy and can be seen in the contacts list as normal.
Tip: If the contact record has been used on a project invoice it cannot be deleted. Instead stop future use of the contact in the project communications by marking it as inactive.
Use the list views to alter which columns are shown in the list for the existing contact records. Select the word 'default' in the top left corner to see the available views.
The contact name is shown in all the views. The standard views add extra columns such as:
Default - the default view for the project contacts tab, with the company name, personnel or staff name, contact role, and any project contact flags that have been set.
Address - view the contact name along with the address from the staff or personnel record.
Social and Tags - view any tags entered against the contact record and any social account details.
Search
When a large number of project contacts exist use the search or filter options to limit the number of rows shown in the list.
Search by clicking the search button and typing the keyword into the search box. To return to seeing all items in the list click the clear button in the search bar.
Tip: Learn more about searching with the list search or the global search.
Filter
Filter the project contacts by selecting the search button. The filter options are:
Roles - Limit the list to only show you the selected role e.g. builder, council, engineer, architect.
Types - Limit the list to only show company contacts, individual contacts, or internal staff members.
Active - Change this to 'all' to see active and inactive project contacts, or only see only 'inactive' items. Projects contacts are marked as inactive when they cannot be deleted as they are linked to invoices or other documents.
Tip: Return to the default view by choosing the clear button in the search bar.
Columns available
Contact Company name of the contact is shown in most cases. However if the contact is an individual type contact if the contact name and personnel name match. Individuals are often sole traders (not a registered business) who don't have a company name. Click on the contact name shown in green to view more details.
Personnel The name of the person at the company or individual type contact that is part of your project team. There can be different contact people at a company for billing vs sales vs project queries. Enter a different row for each type person required at the company. Click on the personnel name shown in green to view more details.
Role The role that the personnel selected will complete for project. The role selected in the project contacts tab is automatically added to the contact record. Each project contact row can only have one role selected. If you need to list a company or person as performing multiple roles, then add the same contact twice and vary the role (or try applying tags to the contact record).
Job title The personnel position or job title that they holds at the company contact. The job title column helps you to know who to call about different query types e.g. sales, invoicing, projects, council.
Phone The main phone number saved against the contact record. If the personnel is listed then this is their phone number. If the text 'the manager' is shown then this is the company contact number. Click on the phone number button to call the contact in the default call program on your device. e.g. this will make a phone call on a mobile phone, or try to use Skype if installed on a desktop PC.
Email The main email address for the contact. If a personnel is listed then this is their work email address (or email 1 from the personnel record). If the text 'the manager' is shown then this is the company email address. Click on the email address button to send an email to this contact in the default mail program on your device.
Website The website button is shown when the website address is entered for the company contact. Click the website button to open the URL in your default browser.
Primary contact The primary contact is the main person to call about the project queries. This is often set as the person who bought the proposal project to your organization, they are normally the decision maker. This can be set to any project contact, they do not require to have the role of 'client' set.
Invoice contact Select the company that will be used as the invoice contact by default. The personnel shown on this row will be used in the 'attention to' field on the invoice. During the invoice creation process the other project contacts are also available to select, this option is only setting the default contact.
Care of (c/o) contact Optional setting to allow you to select which contact(s) can be used for the invoice address using the care of (c/o) address. The invoice will still be addressed to the invoice contact, but sent via post or email to the care of contact.
Portal access Choose which external contacts or staff will have access to project portal. The project portal allows your project team to view shared documents, comment or chat about project tasks, look-up contacts, and download invoice documents. There are three options for portal access available to be assigned to project contacts: full portal access, restricted portal access, and no portal access. Contacts with restricted portal access can chat with staff in the project team, but they cannot see any of the other project contacts in the portal. If the project contact has logged in to the portal, then the portal access icon changes to be a green color. Hover over the icon to see the last accessed date and time. Find out more about project portals.
Address Available in the 'address' list view. Click on the address and the location opens in Google maps. The address listed against the personnel is shown. If the contact listed has a personnel of 'The Manager' then the address listed is from the company contact.
Social media If the social account details have been added to the contact record then the matching buttons are shown in the 'social and tags' view. Social accounts shown are twitter, Skype, and LinkedIn. Click on the social button to open the contacts social feed in the default app on your devices for twitter or LinkedIn. For Skype when you click the button it will launch the Skype dial option if Skype is installed on your device.
Tags View any tags entered against the contact record in the 'social and tags view'. The personnel contact record tags are shown here, or the tags entered against the company contact if the personnel name 'the manager' is shown'.