Contact Management

The Contact Management section of Messenger is where you can define, group, and control access to, 'Contacts'; people you can send messages to.

Security Domains

Security Domains control which Users can access which Contacts. Every Contact must be in one, and only one, Security Domain.

By default Messenger provides two 'Security Domains' that can be used by your users; The 'Shared' Security Domain, that can be accessed by all users, and each user has a personal Security Domain where they can store contacts that only they can access.

We strongly recommend that you limit your use of Security Domains until you are completely comfortable with their behaviour, otherwise you may find yourself getting confused, especially if you start mixing Contacts from different Security Domains in Groups. Consider this example:

• User Bob has created a 'VIPs' Security Domain that only he can access. This is for high-profile people who should not be visibile to other users.
• User Bob creates a VIP Contact called Donald and puts him into the 'VIPs' Security Domain
• User Bob adds VIP Contact Donald to an existing Group called 'Tsunami Alerts' which is in the normal 'Shared' Security Domain
• When User Mary, who has no access to Bob's 'VIPs' Security Domain, views the membership of the 'Tsunami Alerts' group she will not see Donald.
• When User Mary tries to compose a message to 'Don' the autocompleter will not include Donald in the search results.
• When User Mary sends a message to the 'Tsunami Alerts' group it will not be sent to Donald.
• Only when User Bob sends a message to the 'Tsunami Alerts' group will it be sent to everybody, including Donald.

When defining a Security Domain you must also select the Contact Properties that are appropriate for Contacts in this Domain.

If you decide you don't want a Security Domain, you can use the 'Merge' function to move its Contacts into another Security Domain.

Granting Access

Access to the Contacts within a Security Domain can be granted to Users individually, or more conveniently for large organisations, a Group of Users.

Access permissions are as follows:

Access	Meaning
Viewer	User can only view the Contacts
Editor	User can edit the Contacts
None	User has no access to the Contacts, even if they may be a member of a Group that does have access

An Access that is suffixed with (Default) tells you that no explicit Permission has been defined for the User, and that this is the default Access for the User that has been automatically determined based on the Groups they are a member of, and their Role.

Company Admin and Group Admin Users have Editor access to most Security Domains.

Access can be Granted when editing a normal User, or from the 'Accesses' tab when editing a Security Domain. In this screen shot we can see that Johnny B. Good is already an Editor of the Security Domain, and that we are about to add Peter Jones as a Viewer, and Sally Wills as an Editor. We just need to click 'Add Access'.

A Complicated Example

Some customers wish to tightly control who can access certain Contacts. Here's one approach that provides this flexibility in a manageable manner.

• Decide how you want to categorise your Users. Perhaps in a Movie Magazine business you would have 'Sales', 'Marketing' and 'Editorial'.
• Create a Group for each of those User categories in the 'User' Security Domain, and copy Users into their appropriate Groups
• Decide how you want to categorise your Contacts. Perhaps in a Movie Magazine business you would have 'Artists', 'Freelance Writers' and 'Advertising Agencies'.
• Create a Security Domain and Group for each of those Contact categories, and move Contacts into their appropriate Group.
• Grant the User Groups access to the appropriate Security Domains. eg:
  • 'Sales' might have Viewer access to 'Advertising Agency'
  • 'Marketing' might have Editor access to 'Advertising Agency', and Viewer access to 'Artists'
  • 'Editorial' might have Editor access to 'Freelance Writers' and 'Artists'
• Now when you create a User, simply put them into their appropriate Group(s) and they will automatically get access to all appropriate Contacts.
• Now when you create a Contact, simply put them into their appropriate Group.

Going forward you can also easily change access for entire Groups of Users, rather than having to update many individual Users.

As an aside, notice that you can now also send a message to all 'Marketing' staff, because they have their own Group.

Contacts

Contacts are people you want to be able to send a message to. All Contacts have to be placed into a Security Domain, so we can control which users can see the contact, and also must be placed into a Group. Contacts are defined on this page.

Other, less obvious, fields you may wish to provide include:

• An Alias, which can make the Contact easier to refer to when using Email2sms.
• A Public Identifier, which can help larger organisations who regularly import data from their own computer system.
• A Group. A Contact must exist in at least one group. You can put the Contact into more groups on the Group Membership tab.

If you have defined custom tags, such as position, location, or pet, these are also able to be defined here. You can customise displayed tags on the contacts page by editing the Security Doamin and selecting visible columns. Tags can be searched just like other contact details - handy if you have, for example, a team name as a tag and you would like to text them all without having a group.

If you cannot add Contacts or Groups to your Groups then contact your Group Administrator as they may have set higher security settings.

See Importing Contacts for bulk management options.

Contact Groups

Groups are primarily collections of Contacts, although a Group can also contain Users, and other Groups. Creating a Group is very similar to creating a Contact. Groups are defined on this page of the Application.

You have the additional ability to control the types of 'Contacts' allowed in a Group:

Type	Purpose
Contacts Only	Only allow Contacts in the Group
Users Only	Only allow Users in the Group
Users and Contacts	Allow Users and Contacts in the Group

System Identifier is a read-only property that can be used when importing Contacts programmatically. More information available here

The Group Membership tab allows you to view the Contacts, Users, or other Groups, that are Members of this Group. A quick view of a Group's Members can also be accessed by clicking through the Group's name when it appears as a recipient on the Compose Page.

Importing Contacts

There are two methods to import Contacts into a Group. The first is an online process done via the website. The second can be automated to upload from a CRM system or HRM system.

The online import can be found when adding or editing a Group, as shown below.

If you are wanting to send to a list of recipients one time only (or the list changes regularly) then use the Bulk Sender option on the Compose page.

File Format

Messenger imports files in CSV format, such as those that can be exported from Microsoft Excel.

The first line of an import file is the header row. The minimum import is a file with a number header, followed by a number on each line after:

Number
61497565432
61492776143
61492776242
6149219878763
614921887863
614921828763
614918828762
61498828762

This can be enhanced with names and group information. In the example below, users "John Stamos" and "Nicky Tomb" are in no groups, but "Christine in Accounting" is in the "Work" and "Play" groups:

Name,Number,Group
John Stamos,61497565432,
Nicky Tomb,61492776143,
Thistoo,61492776242,home
Zeeble,6149219878763,Work
Overseer,614921887863,Work
Jenny,614921828763,Play
Christine in Accounting,614918828762,Work|Play
Support Phone,61498828762,Work

You can import any field within the Messenger Contact - including 'tags' such as email, company, position, function, city, department, country. For example:

Number,Name,Alias,Group,Email,Department
9898840240,a111112,a12357,TESTINGGROUPS,foo@foo.com,Sales
211601037,a111113,a12358,TESTINGGROUPS,foo1@foo.com,Marketing
64211601038,a111114,a12359,TESTINGGROUPS,foo2@foo.com,Finance
64211601039,a111115,a12360,TESTINGGROUPS,foo2@foo.com,IT

Restrictions and Rules

When importing a Contacts it is important that the file meets the following criteria:

• Comma delimited format (CSV file)
• Header row with the applicable values of "number", "name", "alias", "email", and "group". Check the spelling of the header rows!
• Each row must have the same number of fields, blanks are acceptable.
• Phone numbers must be valid and should be in International Format.
• Name values must be less than 70 characters long.
• Alias values must meet validation requirements:-
  • Must be less than 64 characters. Longer values will be truncated.
  • Must only contain alpha-numeric characters (a-z, 0-9), hyphen, underscore or full-stop. (ie: no spaces or special characters).
• Email address must be 254 characters or less. Longer values will be truncated.
• Multiple groups can be defined by pipe-delimiting the "group" field.

Merge Mode

When importing Contacts into a Group you must decide if you are fully defining the Group membership, or if you are simply adding or updating Group Membership -- call this 'Merge Mode'.

Merge Mode	Description
Enabled	Merge all members of this group with the records defined in the import file
Disabled	Replace all members of this group with the records defined in the import file. Any existing records that are not in the import file will be deleted.

Choosing a Key

When using Merge Mode (ie: you want to update existing Contacts) you must choose a 'key' so we can identify the Contact.

The best key to choose is the one least likely to change for your Contacts. If you have an external system with an existing identifier, you should provide a 'public identifier' with your imports and use that, but for most people 'Number' works fine.

Importing via HTTP POST

As well as being able to import Contacts interactively, we also offer the ability to import Contacts via an HTTP POST to the https://www.bulletinmessenger.net/abimport.jsp URL.

The http parameters are as follows:

Parameter	Meaning
username	Your Messenger user login
password	Your Messenger user password
absid	The System Identifier of the Group you wish to import into. (Recommended)
abalias	The Alias of the Group you wish to import into. (Alternative to absid)
abname	The Name of the Group you wish to import into. (Alternative to absid. Not recommended, because it will fail if the Group is renamed)
abid	The legacy 'Address Book Id' of the Group you wish to import into. (Alternative to absid. Not recommended, and will not work for newly created Groups)
merge	Do you wish to use 'Merge Mode' or not? Valid values: 'true' or 'false'. Defaults to 'false
key	Which field would you like to use as the Import Key. Defaults to you Company's 'Contact Key' as defined in 'Contact Settings'. Options are: number name email alias publicid (ie: Public Identifier) systemid (ie: System Identifier)

This is best illustrated via an example using cURL:

curl -k -F 'username=foo' -F 'password=bar' -F 'absid=G#272478' -F 'key=number' -F 'merge=true' -F 'file=@test.csv' https://www.bulletinmessenger.net/abimport.jsp

Exporting Contacts

Contacts can be exported from the Group management screen. Upon clicking Export you will be prompted for a local location and filename to save the Group Contacts to.

When exporting you have the option of also including 'Public Identifiers', which is useful if your organisation imports Contacts with this value defined.

The Exported File contents are fully compatible with the Import File format. Column headings are as follows:

Column	Purpose
Type	Indicates the type of contact. Options are: contact, user, or group.
Name	The name of the Contact, User or Group
Number	The phone number of the Contact or User
Alias	The alias of a Contact or Group. The login name of a User.
Public Id	The public-identifer for the Contact or Group
Group	The pipe-delimited list of Groups that the Contact, User or Group is a member of
Group Public Ids	The pipe-delimited list of Public Identifiers that the Contact, User or Group is a member of

Optional properties such an 'Email', or other Custom fields, are also exported as columns if they are enabled on the Security Domain used by the Group being exported.

In the following example "Joe Famous" is in two groups; "Authors" and "Directors":

"Type","Name","Number","Alias","Public Id","Group","Group Public Ids"
"contact","Anglea McFiction","770000001","ang","C342334","Authors", "G0001"
"contact","Joe Famous","770000002","bigjoe","C724421","Authors|Directors", "G0001|G007"

Group Opt-In

Group Opt-In allows a Virtual Number or Short Code and an Opt-in Keyword to be set on a Group. This means if any Contact sends an SMS with your selected Opt-In Keyword to your Group's Virtual Number or Short Code, Bulletin will automatically add the contact to the Group. This allows Contacts to add themselves to your Groups without any action required.

Admins can also define an Opt-In Message that is sent to a contact who has opted in to a Group. We recommend including instructions on how to Opt-Out from the Group in this welcome text.

If Contacts decide for any reason they no longer wish to receive SMS messages from the Group they just need to send the Group keyword followed by STOP. For example if your Opt-in Keyword is 'MOVIE' to Opt-out Contacts just send 'MOVIE STOP' to the Virtual Number or Short Code.

If your company has a Company-level Stop word this will continue to remove the contact from ALL Company messages.

How to Configure Opt-In:

• Create a Group you want Contacts to be able to Opt-In to (eg: 'Movie News')
• Create a Keyword ('Messages' Menu)
• Choose a Keyword for your opt-in (MOVIE in the example below)
• Choose the Group you want Contacts to be added to ('Movie News' in the example below)
• Enter appropriate messages to send:
  • When they send 'MOVIE' to 4040
  • When they send 'MOVIE STOP' to 4040
  • When they send 'MOVIE HELP' to 4040

Once you have configured a keyword against a Group, you can quickly access it from the 'Group Keywords' tab when editing a Group

Want to get Group Opt-In setup? Have a chat to Sales about getting a Virtual Number or Short Code.