Contact

Sample Uses for Contact

The Contact object represents the people at the heart of educational institutions. These folks include students, students' family members, faculty, staff, administrators, community members, and so on. Contact is a standard Salesforce object, augmented with education-specific fields and, in the case of K-12 Architecture Kit, record types, to help you develop a 360-degree view of your campus community.

• University—Track who's a financial aid applicant, or who's served in the military. 

• K-12—Distinguish student Contacts from faculty or guardian Contacts.

• Any educational institution—Track who has dual citizenship, whose records contain HIPAA-protected information, or who has opted out of FERPA disclosure.

Contact Record Types

Because a Contact can play multiple roles at once—an alumni of one program, a current student in another program, a tutor, and also a sports team member—we don't provide record types out of the box. Creating custom record types that don’t conflict with each other can be tricky, so in general, we don’t recommend it. If you do create them, make sure they're for Contacts for whom only one record type applies. To track a Contact's roles with various organizational entities, consider creating Affiliation records instead.

Configure Contact

Set up initial Contact data for your educational institution and learn about the steps required to maintain the data.

• Initial Configuration for Contact
  It's essential to understand how to manage Contact data and configure related settings. Review these resources to make sure you have the full picture.
• Keep Up with Contact Updates
  Consider these updates, depending on which version of K-12 Architecture Kit you originally installed.

Keep Up with Contact Updates

Consider these updates, depending on which version of K-12 Architecture Kit you originally installed.

Tip As with all objects, verify and customize the security settings, navigation, and layouts for Contact, as needed. Follow the general instructions in Display a New Custom Object After a Product Release, keeping in mind that you're editing settings for a standard object rather than a custom object.

If Installed Before Version	Configuration Task
	Add the following fields to your Contact page layouts, as needed. Disability Status SMS Opt Out Mailing Address Inactive Create a custom field for Credentialing Identifier and add it to your page layouts, as needed. See Model Certifications and Credentials. For more information, see Add Custom Fields and Picklist Values.
	Add the picklist value, Decline to State, to the Gender field.
	Add these Address-related fields to Contact page layouts, as needed: Mailing County and Other County. Add these identification fields, as needed: Former First Name, Former Middle Name, Former Last Name, and Date Deceased. Add the Citizenship Status picklist. Possible values include: U.S. Citizen or U.S. National; U.S. Dual Citizen; U.S. Permanent Resident; U.S. Refugee or Asylee; Other (Non-U.S.).
	Add the Behavior Involvements related list to Contact page layouts, as needed.
	Add the Attributes related list to Contact page layouts, as needed.
	Add the Contact Languages related list to Contact page layouts, as needed.

Create a Contact Record

Represent people such as students, family members, staff, and more, by creating Contact records.

1. Click the Contacts tab and click New. If you don't see the Contacts tab, from the App Launcher (), find and select Contacts, and click New.

2. Enter relevant details, including Social Security Number, phone numbers, emails, addresses, chosen full name, and so on.

   

   Important Pay close attention to the Account Name field. Depending on the type of Contact you're creating, sometimes you fill it in and sometimes you leave it blank so that K-12 Architecture Kit can automatically create the container Account record for you when the Contact record is saved.

   Default Account Model	Type of New Contact	How to Handle the Account Name Field
   Administrative Account	A student or anyone requiring a container Administrative Account (for some institutions, applies to faculty, staff, and administrators)	Leave it blank.
   Household Account	A student or anyone requiring a container Household Account (such as another household member)	Leave it blank unless the household has an existing Account record. If the household Account was created with a previously created Contact record, start typing the Account name in the field, then select it when you see it suggested.
   Either Administrative or Household Account	Anyone not requiring a container Account, such as faculty, staff, and administrators employed by the institution (if not using container Accounts for these types of Contacts) or a community member who's part of a business or organization	Don't leave it blank. Start typing the related Account name in the field (such as the educational institution, a department, a campus organization, and so on), then select it when you see it suggested. If the Account record doesn't exist yet, create it and specify it as the Account Name.
   Either Administrative or Household Account	Anyone requiring a different container Account type than the default account model	Don't leave it blank. If a container Account record of the required type doesn't already exist, create it and specify it as the Account Name.

3. When you're finished, click Save.

Note If you've created a Contact that has a container Administrative Account and you want to also track their membership in a household, you can't use a container Household Account but you can use an Affiliation. From the student's Contact record, in the Affiliated Accounts related list, create an Affiliation record to relate the Contact to the household's Account record. See Create an Affiliation Record.

Things to Know About Maintaining Contact Data

Review considerations for how to maintain Contact data for your educational institution.

Account and Contact data are tightly coupled. Updating data for a Contact that has a container Account, such as recording a name change or change of household, can trigger automatic changes to the name of the Contact's container Account. The specifics depend on your org's configuration. For details, see Customize Administrative and Household Account Names.