Default Contact

If a Contact, Donor, or Participant is not authenticated with the Portal, MinistryPlatform attempts to find a unique match on the Contacts page to the information provided (first name, last name, email, phone). If a unique match cannot be found, then the record is temporarily assigned to the Default Contact.

Records assigned to Default Contact should be reviewed and re-assigned to the correct record regularly. The most common way of managing the reassignment is to use the Assign Donor Tool for Online Donations.  Events with public Event Registration will often need to be managed regularly using the Assign Participant Tool.   

Unassigned Contact

• The Unassigned Contact is a dummy Contact, Participant, and Donor record that can be used as a placeholder when there is not enough information to assign to a real Contact, Participant, or Donor record.  It is not necessary for the Unassigned Contact to have a User record at this time. 
• The Unassigned Contact is used for records that have been assigned to the Default Contact record that didn't give you enough information to actually create a new record. 
  • For example Lady Churchgoer signs up multiple other ladies for a women's event using her email and phone for all of the contacts and participants that she registers. You may choose to assign those records to the Unassigned Contact record since you don't want to create new records with bad data in your system.  
• Reassigning to the Unassigned Contact record will consequently remove the record in question from any "Fix Default Records" views.
• The Unassigned Contact can also be used for cash donations in envelopes that are illegible. 

Church Administrator Contact

• The Church Administrator Contact is a dummy Contact that is used to send platform notifications, attendance reminders, form submission notifications, etc. 
• You should change the Church Administrator email address to be one that the primary SPoC can check ( it may or may not be their personal inbox).
• The Church Administrator account is the fail-safe for the church if they accidentally lock themselves out.
• Note: Don't modify the Church Administrator record; it will cause issues.

Video Topics: Default Contact Record