Contact Tracking
The Contact record has several key data points to give you a clear picture of how a person participates in your church.
Contact Status
Contact Status is the status of this Contact related to the church. You can manage these values manually or through automation (for CloudServices subscribers).
Manual
If you manage this value manually, the values:
- Are required and should be set manually based on the activity level of a Contact at your church.
- May or may not be a summary of database activity depending on how they are managed.
- Help answer the question: Is this Contact still here? Will they return?
- Include a small number of fixed values that a church should not change: Active, Inactive, Deceased, Temporarily Away, Homebound.
Important: We don't recommend changing or adding to these values because they will adversely impact all routines, integrations, and reports.
Automated
We highly recommend you automate managing the Contact Status. See Contact Status Management for details. If enabled, the values:
- Are automatically set and updated by a nightly routine according to your church's rules for inactivating or reactivating Contacts based on Participant Types.
- Can be manually set when needed (for example, a new record set to Active, an elderly Contact set from Active to Home Bound).
- Are based on database activity.
- Help answer the question: Is this Contact still here? Will they return?
- Include a small number of fixed values that a church should not change: Active, Inactive, Deceased, Temporarily Away, Homebound.
Household Congregation
While not directly tracked on the Contact record, the Congregation is valuable data tracked on the Household record.
Household Congregation is an indication of a Household's primary venue of worship. The values:
- Are optional and, if needed, should be manually set based on where the Household is most engaged. See Congregations or Parishes.
- Are not at a summary of database activity.
- Impact whether this Household displays if the Global Filter is applied for a User.
- Help answer the questions: Where does/did this Household worship?
- Include the list of languages or locations of worship at your Church. We recommend at least two "administrative" values for "Friends and Internet" and "Church-wide".
Other Important Data Points
For other key data points to consider in conjunction with these, see: