Managing Contacts
As people experience changes in their lives, you should update their Contact record. This section covers some of the life changes that individuals experience – from birth to death, and everything in between.
Administrative Contacts
Default Contact
If a Contact, Donor, or Participant is not an authenticated user, MinistryPlatform uses the information provided to try to find a unique match on the Contacts page. If it can't find a unique match, then the record is temporarily assigned to the Default Contact.
Regularly review records assigned to Default Contact and reassign them to the correct record. The most common way to manage reassignment is to use the Assign Donor Tool for Online Donations or the Assign Participant Tool for Events with public Event Registration.
Unassigned Contact
The Unassigned Contact is a dummy Contact, Participant, and Donor record that you can use as a placeholder when there is not enough information to assign to a real record. (The Unassigned Contact doesn't need to have a User record.)
Use the Unassigned Contact for records assigned to the Default Contact record that didn't provide enough information to actually create a new record. For example, Anne registers multiple other ladies for a woman's event using her email and phone for all of the Contacts and Participants she registered. You may assign those records to the Unassigned Contact record since you don't want to create new records with the incorrect data in your system. You can also use the Unassigned Contact for cash donations in envelopes that are illegible.
Reassigning to the Unassigned Contact record consequently removes the record from any Fix Default Records views.
Church Administrator Contact
The Church Administrator Contact is a dummy Contact used to send Platform notifications, attendance reminders, form submission notifications, and so on.
You should change the Church Administrator email address to one that the primary SPoC can check (it an be their personal inbox). The Church Administrator account is the fail-safe for the church if they accidentally lock themselves out.
Life Changes
See our MinistrySmart webinar on how to manage these specific life changes in MinistryPlatform.
Birth
When a family welcomes a new child to their family, you can add the child to the appropriate Household using the Add/Edit Family Tool. To do so, look up the existing Household and scroll to the next available Family Member section after the Adult Male and Adult Female sections. Then add the child's information in the available Family Member section.
Moving Out / Marriage
Use the Split Household Tool to move one or more family members into an existing Household or into their own new Household.
Separation / Divorce
Similar to moving to a new Household, use the Split Household Tool to update your data for this scenario.
Death
It's important to update all areas of MinistryPlatform to ensure that all further communication to the family does not have the deceased person's name. Use the Deceased Person Tool to quickly update virtually all data related to the deceased person kept in MinistryPlatform.
Combine Duplicates
The Duplicate Finder routine runs regularly on your system to search for duplicate records. The duplicate records identified must have multiple values in common (such as email, date of birth, and phone) and have similar names. While this routine is good at catching many duplicates, sometimes there is data that only an actual person can discern. As such, it's important that you train all Users to keep an eye out for duplicate Contact records.
When you find a duplicate Contact record, you should indicate a "Duplicate Of" Relationship for the duplicate Contacts. This process does not combine the duplicates, but instead notes the duplicate records so that a trained User can later use the Combine Contacts Tool to review and eliminate one of the records.
For details on how to handle Contacts that aren't actually duplicated, but might be seen as one, see the Combine Contacts Tool.
Combine Contacts Tool
Use the Combine Contacts Tool to regularly review and combine Contacts with "Duplicate Of" Relationships. A SPoC or other trained User should do this at least weekly.
Contact Relationships
The Contact Relationships page in the People List folder displays all designated Contact Relationships. On this page, you can search for the "Possible Duplicate" Relationship Type and find all of the potential duplicate relationships within the system. Utilize the Duplicates and Possible Duplicates views to identity and correct Contacts with these statuses. Use the Fix Delete Related 2 Self view to find and remove relationships that relate a Contact record to itself.
Indicate a "Duplicate Of" Relationship
- Open one of the duplicate Contact records.
- Click the Relationships tab.
- Click New.
- Click the
in the Related Contact field to search for and select the duplicate record.
- In the Relationship field, select the Duplicate Of Relationship.
- Click Save.
Multiple Donors
In rare cases, a Contact may have more than one Donor record. This can occur when Users use the New button on the Donors page to create a new Donor record and assign that new Donor to a Contact that already has one. It may also happen when someone edits a Donor record, changes the assigned Contact, and selects a new Contact that already has a Donor record.
To avoid this situation, train your Users to use the Add/Edit Family Tool or Batch Manager Tool to create a new Donor record.
Merge Duplicate Donor Records
A nightly data quality routine searches for this scenario. When it finds one, it duplicates the Contact record, creates the additional Donor record associated with the new record, and adds a "Duplicate of" relationship to tie both records together. You can then use the Combine Contacts tool to merge the duplicates.
Once completed, all Donations and Pledges transfer to the remaining Donor record.
Multiple Participants
In rare cases, a Contact may have more than one Participant record. This situation occurs when Users use the New button on the Participants page to create a new Participant record and assign the new Participant to a Contact record that already has one. It may also occur when someone edits a Participant record, changes the assigned Contact, and selects a new Contact that already has a Participant record.
To avoid this situation, train your Users to search for the individual on the Contacts page, launch the Add/Edit Family Tool for that individual, and click Save. This creates a Participant record for that individual if one doesn't already exist.
Merge Duplicate Participant Records
A nightly data quality routine searches for this scenario. When it finds one, it duplicates the Contact record, creates the additional Participant record associated with the new record, and adds a "Duplicate of" relationship to tie both records together. You can then use the Combine Contacts tool to merge the duplicates.
Once completed, all Groups, Events, Responses, and Milestones transfer to the remaining Participant record. If the Participant is in two identical Groups with the same Group Role, these records combine so only the oldest remains.
Multiple Users
In rare cases, a Contact may have more than one User record. This situation may occur when Users use the New button on the Users page to create a new User record and assign the new User to a Contact that already has one. It may also occur when someone edits a User record, changes the assigned Contact, and selects a new Contact that already has a User record.
- Family members share an email address (for example, a husband and wife had a shared email); or
- A parent's email is also listed as their child's email address.
When this occurs, Users can't log in using the shared email address or use the shared email address to reset a password. To mitigate these concerns:
- Encourage people to use a unique email address.
- If they continue to share an email address, make sure they have a username that is not the shared email address.
Merge Duplicate User Records
A nightly data quality routine looks for this scenario. When it finds one, it duplicates the Contact record, creates the additional User record associated with the new record, and adds a "Duplicate of" relationship to tie both records together. You can then use the Combine Contacts tool to merge the duplicates.
Once completed, this process transfers all User Groups and Security Roles to the remaining User record. If the User record has more than one instance of a Security Role, it only keeps one.
Delete Contacts
We don't recommend deleting Contact records. The most common scenario to delete contacts is when there are duplicate records. In that case, we recommended you combine the duplicates instead.
If you must delete a contact, you can select a Contact record on the Contacts page and select Delete from the Actions menu. This requires you to reassign or confirm deletion of other pieces of data throughout the Platform, so please consider this choice carefully. In most cases, an error displays due to a circular reference between tables which must be resolved. Furthermore, the Delete option is intentionally hidden by from the Contacts page by default, so a SPoC must first grant full rights to the Contacts page via a Security Role.
Inactivate a Contact
If someone stops attending your church, you can inactivate their record. While you can update their Contact Status to Inactivate, we recommend you use the Inactivate Tool instead. This tool automatically updates several aspects of the individual's record, such as the Participant record, Group Participant records, future Event Participant records, and more. Changing the Contact Status does not automatically update these items.