Accounts and contacts

Contacts are the people who send requests. Accounts are the companies or departments they belong to, so you can see everything from one company in one place. A contact doesn't need an account. Open Accounts and contacts in the sidebar; the page has an Accounts tab and a Contacts tab.

Who sees what

Records	You see
Accounts	The accounts in your organizations, except an account whose account access is limited to staff in other countries.
Contacts	A contact when you can see at least one of their cases. Staff who logged internal requests aren't contacts and don't appear.

Counts of cases and contacts only include what you can see.

Who	May
Admins	Create, edit and delete accounts, and add contacts before they have written in.
Agents	Edit contacts.
Account Managers	Create, edit and delete accounts, set their Account access, and handle personal data requests.

Finding an account or contact

Tab	Search by
Accounts	Name, email domain or account number (the exact number).
Contacts	Name, email address or phone. The tab lists the most recently active contacts first.

How contacts join accounts

An account has email domains, for example example.com. When someone writes in for the first time from an address at one of those domains, their contact joins the account. When an admin adds a domain to an account, contacts who wrote in before from that domain join it too, unless someone placed them in an account by hand.

The rules:

• Free email services such as Gmail can't be an account's domain: anyone can have an address there.
• A domain belongs to one account in an organization.
• Removing a domain leaves the contacts where they are.
• A contact put in an account by hand stays there, even if their domain belongs to another account.

The account page

The account page is the account at a glance. At the top are its domains, labels and account number, and a row of numbers:

Number	What it counts
Open cases	Open now, with how many wait for the account's answer, or are overdue or high priority. It links to the inbox filtered to the account.
Created	Cases in the last 90 days, against the 90 days before.
First response and Resolution	The median times over the 90 days, counted as on Reports.
Satisfaction	The share rated great over the 90 days.

Below, in the main column:

Part	What it shows
Cases	The account's cases, Open or All, with who sent each. The latest five show first; Show all lists every one, page by page.
Cases per week	Created and resolved, week by week over the last 12 weeks.
Contacts	The people in the account, the first five until you Show all or search.
Agreements	The DPAs, NDAs and other agreements with the account, and how each stands.
Services and approvers	With Service Configuration: the services the account uses, its change approvers and who gets notices.

And on the side:

Part	What it shows
Open now	The open cases by status (each links to the inbox), how many are overdue or high or urgent, and how many met their service levels over the 90 days.
What they say	The account's ratings over the 90 days, and the latest comments.
About	The organization, the Account number (from your CRM, HR or invoicing system), contacts, all cases, the account's notes and its data properties.
Account access	Who may work on the account's cases (below).

Every number counts only the cases you may see, as everywhere in the desk.

Account labels, such as "enterprise", are set by admins. They're shown on the account and next to the requester on every case from the account, so you can see at a glance what kind of account it is. They're separate from case labels.

[!NOTE] Notes on an account are for the team only; requesters never see them.

The contact page

The contact page has their cases (Open or All) and the facts: email, phone, account, language, whether they're registered, Signed in if they have signed in to a portal, how many cases they have and since when they've been a contact. Notes are shown below the facts.

[!NOTE] Registered means they may send requests to units that only take known contacts, without being in an account. A contact in an account is known through it. Accepting a held request with Accept and register registers the sender.

Editing a contact

Edit on the contact page changes:

Field	Notes
Name and Phone	Optional.
Account	Search for an account in the same organization, or pick No account. Picked by hand, the contact stays there.
Registered	See above.
Language	The language of the emails they get.
Notes	Only your team sees them.

The email address can't be changed. The permissions needed:

Change	Permission (role that has it)
The contact's Account	Change accounts (account.write, Account Manager)
The other details	Change contacts (contact.write, Agent)

[!IMPORTANT] Moving a contact can change who may work on their cases, because an account can have its own access rule.

Export data and Delete permanently… in the … menu (with privacy.export and privacy.erase, Account Manager) are for when someone asks what you hold about them or to be forgotten. See personal data requests.

Account access

The Account access card on an account page says who may work on its cases:

Rule	Who may work on the cases
As each case's unit says	The unit's rule applies. The default.
The whole team	Anyone with access to the unit, whatever the unit's rule.
Only staff working in …	Only staff working in those countries.

Some accounts, often for data protection reasons, only allow staff in certain countries. Change on the card (with Change accounts, account.write, Account Manager) sets the rule; see restricted access for how it works.

[!WARNING] Taking a country away takes effect at once: staff there lose access to the account's cases and are unassigned from them, with a note on each case's timeline.

Every change is in the audit log, with the rule before and after.

[!TIP] When the account agrees in writing that staff in more countries may help them, keep that agreement on the account with Agreements (the Support from other countries template), then add the countries here.