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Contacts and import

Add contacts one at a time, or import a file in bulk and watch it process.

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A contact is one person you can message. Every contact is identified by a phone number and belongs to the account, so the same person is not duplicated across your services.

What a contact holds

  • First Name and Last Name.
  • Language — the language used when a message is written for this contact.
  • Subscription — whether the contact can currently receive messages.
  • External ID — an identifier from your own system.
  • Email.
  • Phone Number.
  • Note — free text, up to 500 characters.

The phone number is the identity of the contact, so it is shown but cannot be edited from the contact form. External ID has surrounding whitespace removed, and is stored as empty when you leave it blank.

Edit a contact

  1. Open the conversation

    Go to Conversations and select the conversation with the person you want to edit.

  2. Open Contact Info

    Use the Contact Info action to reveal the contact form for that conversation.

  3. Change the details

    Edit any field, then save. The updated details apply to every service.

Import contacts from a file

Bulk contact import lives inside a service, because an import is attached to the campaign that will use it. Upload a contact file to the service and the import runs in the background.

Import a contact file

  1. Open the service

    Open the service you want the contacts to belong to and go to its contacts area.

  2. Upload the file

    Drop the contact file onto the upload area, or use it to choose the file. The file is stored as an import record and is removed automatically after 10 days.

  3. Map the columns

    Match each column in your file to a contact field. The fields you can map are First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, Date, Email, External ID and three custom fields.

  4. Confirm and let it run

    Start the import and watch its progress. The record reports how many rows have been processed and its current status.

Import statuses

  • Pending — the import has been created but has not started.
  • Importing — the file is being read and contacts are being written.
  • Processing — the import is still being worked through.
  • Success — the import completed.
  • Error — the import could not be completed.

A status the app does not recognise is treated as an error, so an unexpected value is surfaced rather than silently ignored.

Using External ID

External ID lets you tie a Furcata contact back to the record it came from in your own system. Supplying it on import makes it possible to report on and update that contact later without matching on the phone number alone.

Imported files expire

The uploaded file is an import record, not permanent storage. It is removed after 10 days. The contacts created from it are not affected.