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Note: With the advent of Field Management, each church can customize whether fields are required, hidden, have a default value, or appear in a different section on the page. So don't worry if your Contact record looks different from the one shown below; it just means you're doing YOUR church YOUR way!
The Contact record has many fields separated into specific sections.
General
Company: Specifies whether the selected Contact record a company
Company Name: If the Contact is a Company, the Company name
Display Name: Last Name, Nickname
Prefix: Title before the Contact's name (for example, Mr., Mrs., Dr.)
First Name: Contact's first name
Middle: Contact's middle name
Last Name: Contact's last name
Suffix: Provides additional information about the person (for example, Jr., Sr., PhD, JD, LMFT)
Nickname: The name the person goes by and is often used by various applications in lieu of the formal first name.
Date of Birth: Includes the calculated age listed in parentheses. A calculated age which is less than one year is represented in months. The system prevents a future date of birth from being inserted or updated.
Gender: Contact's gender
Marital Status: This value is visible to the User on the Portal My User Account page.
Contact Status: Indicates the overall relationship between this Contact and the organization. See Contact Tracking for details. Can be set automatically.
Household: If this individual belongs to a Household, the Household record is linked here
Household Position: Identifies the Contact's position in the Household (head, minor child, etc)
Anniversary Date: Wedding anniversary
Date of Death: Contact's date of death. When entered, this value prevents the Contacts from aging.
Participant Record: If the user has a Participant record, the Participant record is linked here.
Donor Record: If the user has a Donor record, their donor record is linked here.
Contact Information
Email Address: The singular email address for this Contact (this field does not support multiple addresses):
If you want to store multiple email addresses for an individual, a SPoC could work with Professional Services to add a custom field for Alternate Email. However, this field would be for storage purposes only and no tools, reports, or processes act on it.
Important: Staff at your church should have their staff email address in this field (not their personal email address). The main reason for this is that the To/From email address used for emails from the Platform is based on the email address in this field.
Mobile Phone: Contact's mobile phone
Company Phone: Contact's business phone
Professional Information
Web Page: Contact's webpage for MP user reference. Not accessible by the Portal or other applications.
Industry: For your church's information. Not accessible by the Portal or other applications for the congregation to fill in.
Occupation: This field is simply for your information. It is not accessible by the Portal or other applications for the congregation to fill in.
HS Graduation Year: This field is not calculated; rather, this field simply holds the year data you input.
Communication Preferences
Bulk E-mail Opt-Out: Set this value to Yes when someone requests that their email be omitted from general mailings.
Email Unlisted: Set this value to Yes when someone requests that their email not be displayed in the online church directory or My Groups.
Do Not Text: Set this value to Yes when someone requests that their phone be omitted from general text messages.
Mobile Phone Unlisted: Set this value to Yes when someone requests that their mobile phone not be displayed in the online church directory or My Groups.
Remove From Directory: If Yes, this Contact record is not displayed in the online directory.
Other Information
User Account: If the Contact has a user account (used to log in to MinistryPlatform, the Portal, and other applications), it is linked here.
ID Card: Holds the value for churches that use a card with a barcode or scanner symbol.
Contact GUID: This is pre-assigned by MinistryPlatform.
Contact Setup Date: The date this Contact record was created to assist in determining how long a Contact has been a part of the system and is useful in views, view notifications, or custom routines.
Maiden Name: The surname given to this individual at birth before taking a spouse's last name at marriage. If this is not applicable to the Contact, leave the field blank.
When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.