Contact Management

OVERVIEW

This Section will help you to Add, Import, Group, Manage, Search Contacts & Manage Groups
 

DEFINITION OF PUBLIC & PRIVATE CONTACTS
RapidSMS is a web-based solution where each individual user can manage his contacts. In a corporate environment, Public contacts becomes very useful so that contacts need not be replicated again by individuals.

Private Contacts: Contacts that are created by the individual are always stored in the Private contacts. The user can always edit and delete his/her own private contacts.

Public Contacts: The Administrator manages the Public contacts. Contacts and the Groups that are found in the Public contacts can be used by all the users in the RapidSMS. General users can only view and categorise public contacts under their own Private groups and they cannot delete any Public contacts. However, if the Administrator has deleted a Public contact, the same contact will be removed from an end user's private group.

ADD CONTACTS
Add Contacts individually
You can add contacts by adding individually or by importing. This section illustrates how you can add a contact individually.

   

1.


 Click on My Contacts on the left menu. In the page, click on the New Contact button.
(or click on New Contact shortcut icon )
2. Type in the necessary information.
  Note: Contact Name and Primary Contact No. are mandatory fields.
3. Click on Submit button.
  Note: To continue adding another contact, click on Add Another button.
4. Go to the My Contacts view to check out for the newly added contacts.
5. To group the contacts, go to the Manage Group section

Import Contacts
   
1. Go to My Contacts > Import Contacts button.
2. Browse for the Microsoft Excel file and indicate the worksheet.
  Note: You can change the worksheet name from Sheet1 to other names you have specified in your Excel file. Only Microsoft Excel (97 - 2010 version) file format is acceptable for the import function.
3. Click on Upload button.
4 Select the fields you want to import.
  Note: The order of the fields you will specify should relate to the order of the columns in your Excel file. If you have 5 columns in your Excel file, you need to specify 5 fields to be used. ContactName & PrimaryMobile are mandatory fields.
5. Select the group type to be imported.
  If you don't wish to import the numbers into any groups, leave it as Don't Create group. You can also import the contacts into an existing group by selecting the groupname or import to a new group and specify a name.
6. Then, click on Import button.
7.

 When you check the My Contacts page, you should see the contacts. Similarly, if you have specified a group for this import, you can find the group with these contacts.
   

MANAGE CONTACTS


You can edit, delete, search and group the contacts. This section will cover the Edit, Delete & Search functions.
 
Editing Contacts


   
1. Go to My Contacts > Import Contacts button.
2. Go to the name you wish to edit & click on the Edit icon .
  If the contact list is too long, you can use filter or sort the contacts to find it.
3. The procedure is similar to adding a new contact. Make the necessary changes and click on Update contact button.
   

Deleting Contacts
1. Go to My Contacts.
2. Go to the name you wish to delete & click on the Delete icon . The system will prompt you before it confirms to delete.
  Note: Once the contact has been deleted, the name will be removed from all the groups it has earlier been associated with.
Multiple Deletion
1. To delete multiple contacts, use the checkboxes corresponding to the Contact Name.
2. Click on Delete Selected button. The system will prompt you before it confirms to delete.
  Note: Once the contacts have been deleted, the names will be removed from all the groups it has earlier been associated with.
   
   
Searching Contacts
 
   
1. Select one of the parameter you wish to filter. e.g. Contact Name Contains
2. Input the value in the text box & click the Filter icon. There are few types of filtering criteria you can choose from. The easiest one would be "Contains".
3.

 Another way to find is to Sort the header name by ascending or descending order. This is done by clicking on the header (Once for ascending) & (Twice for descending).
4. To remove the Sort function, select the My Contacts from the navigation menu to refresh the page or in the filter function, select Remove Filter.

Note: When performing the filter, you can filter by multiple fields e.g. You can filter by company and filter by contact name. In this way, your filter criteria contain 2 criteria. This is useful if you need to search across huge set of data.
   
Remove Duplicate Contacts
1.
 Duplicate refers to duplicated primary mobile number. When importing contacts, you may have accidentally upload the contact and his mobile number multiple times.
2. The duplicated numbers are displayed in this view when you click on the Remove Duplicate Contacts button.
   

MANAGE GROUPS
This section illustrates how you can create, edit and delete groups.
 
Create Groups
Groups can be created during an import contacts process or by selecting contacts to create a new group. This section illustrates the latter.
   
1. Go to My Contacts button.
2. Select the Contacts by selecting the checkboxes next to each contact name
3. Click on Add to Group button.
4 Choose New Group Name and type in your desired group name.
5. Click on Submit button.
  Note: If you are adding contacts to an existing group, at Step 4, select Existing Group and select a name from the list.
   
Sub Groups
1. When creating a group, you'll notice an option to Choose a parent group.
2. RapidSMS allows you to create sub-groups and does not restrict the number of sub-groups & the subsequent levels.
3. Sub-group is very useful as it saves a lot of time trying to put different groups into a main group. A classic illustration would be a school.
e.g. Level 1 comprises of 5 classes. You should first create a group name called Level 1.
  Then you create the classes like 1A, 1B, 1C under the parent group of Level 1
  During a broadcast, you do not need to select 1A, 1B, etc but only select Level 1
   
Add All to Group
1. The select checkbox method will be tedious if you need to go to various pages to keep repeating the same process of "add to group".
2. You can filter the contacts and click on Add All to Group button
3. All the pages of contacts will be added together to the group name you've specified.
   
Removing contacts from the Group
1. Select & expand My Contacts.
2. Go to the Groupname.
3. Click on the Remove from group icon on the name you wish to remove.
4. For multiple names removal, check the names and click on the Remove Group button.
   
Rename Group
   
1. Select & expand My Contacts.
2. Go to the Groupname.
3. Click on Rename Group button.
4. Type in the new group name and click on Rename button.
  Note: To exit without renaming, click on cancel button
   
Delete the Entire Group
1. Select & expand My Contacts.
2. Go to the Groupname.
3. Click on Delete Group button. You will be prompted to confirm your action before the group has been deleted.
  Note: Contacts still remain in My Contacts except the group has been removed.
   

BROADCAST TO GROUP
   
1. Go to My Contacts.
2. Select & expand My Contacts.
3. Go to the Groupname
4. Click on Send SMS button.
5. Type in your message or select from an existing template message to insert the message to be sent.
  For first time user, there is no template for you to select. Please create your template first.
6. Schedule - default value is NOW.
  Note: If you want to schedule message for later delivery, choose a date/time from the calendar.
7. Task Name is optional. You can input a name. In the future, if you wish to filter your sent items, you can use this Task Name. If you leave it blank, the system will auto-generate an ID for this broadcast job.
8. Click on Send SMS button.
  Note: The possible status are P=Pending, S=Successful, R=Received, F=Failed.
   
  See other ways to send SMS.