Working with Contacts (On-Demand)

The on-demand Global Process App contains the Contacts system auxiliary table, which stores contact records for users. A contact record enables you to define custom user attributes in addition to what is available on the user or resource record. A single contact record is associated with a single user record in the system.

Common use cases involving Contacts include:

Defining contact attributes and displaying them on the User Profile Card. For example, you can add a fixed-length text field to store the address for a contact, and then display that address in the Contact section in the User Profile Card. For details, refer to Adding Contact Attributes to the User Profile Card.
Adding the system Contacts field to primary tables, which enables users to associate a Contact with a primary item. The Contacts field is a system field, which means you can use the View if Contact privilege to limit who can view a particular item. For details, refer to Associating Contacts with Primary Items.

You can add additional fields to the Contacts table and add custom auxiliary tables to the Global Process App using SBM Composer after you "Get" the process app in SBM Application Repository.

Tip: To populate User and Multi-User fields that you add to auxiliary tables in the Global Process App, edit the user field in SBM Composer, associate one or more roles, deploy the process app, and then assign users and groups to those roles in Application Administrator using the following steps:

In Application Administrator, select Projects.
In the Projects tree, select All Projects.
Select the base project, and then click Details.
Open the Roles view, select a role, and then click User Assignment or Group Assignment to assign users.

The assigned users will now appear as selections in the user fields that you added to the auxiliary table.

Getting Started with Contacts

Before you begin working with contacts, ensure that you have granted the proper privileges:

Grant Administration privilege to the Contacts table if it is not granted already. (Users in the Administrators group should have Admin privilege to the Contacts table automatically.) For details, refer to Table Administration Privileges.
Grant users Table privileges to work with the Contacts table. For details, refer to Table Privileges.
Grant View Your Contact Information and Edit Your Contact Information system privileges to users as appropriate. For details, refer to System Privileges.

You can create contact records for yourself and your users using either of the following options:

Use the Import users from spreadsheet option in Application Administrator and select the Create Associated Contacts option. This creates a contact record for each user in the spreadsheet, and populates mapped contact attributes as well. For details, refer to Importing Users From a Spreadsheet.
Use the Import users from LDAP option in Application Administrator and select the Create Associated Contacts option. This creates a contact record for each imported user, and populates mapped contact attributes as well. For details, refer to Importing Users and Contacts From LDAP.
Edit individual users in Application Administrator, select the Create/Update Record from User option, and then click Save. For details, refer to General User Settings.

Adding Contact Attributes to the User Profile Card

You can add customized contact record attributes to the User Profile Card that is displayed in the end user interfaces. To add new contact record attributes to the User Profile Card:

Log in to Application Repository and "Get" the Global Process App from the repository.
Open the Global Process App in SBM Composer and add new fields (attributes) as desired.
Tip: When you add field to the Contacts table, note that View privileges apply to the privilege section that you specify on the field. For example, if you add a field and specify the Manager privilege section, only users who can view fields in the Manager section will be able to see the field on the User Profile Card.
Deploy the Global Process App.
Update contact records individually using the Auxiliary Data page in Application Administrator or use the Import users from spreadsheet option to update the new attributes for your contact records.
Edit the User Profile Card page in Application Administrator and select which new contact attributes should appear in each section of the card.

Associating Contacts with Primary Items

To allow users to associate contacts with primary items:

Open a process app in SBM Composer, and add the Contact system field to the primary table.
Deploy the process app.
Open the Global Process App in SBM Composer, and then select the View if Contact Item privilege on applicable roles (for any roles that do not have View All Items selected already) in the Global Process App. This enables users to view items for which they are the contact.
For example, if you want to limit what Occasional Users can view, remove all View privileges except for View if Contact. This ensures that Occasional Users can only view items for which they are the contact.
Deploy the Global Process App.

Users should now be able to update or transition an item and select an associated contact, and the contact should be able to view the item.