Contacts Window Overview

Contacts Window Overview

To open the contacts area, click on Contacts in the menu.
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In the list view, you will see records for donors, volunteers, staff members, organizations, or a household.
 

Contact history

Additional and related information like communications, donations, or membership records are stored in separate records that are linked to the contact record. To View additional information, click the expansion triangle to expand and see additional related information that has been recorded for that contact.


To choose what records to show when expanding contacts, click Expansion above the contact list. 
 

In the What To Show drop-down menu, any type of record with a check mark next to it will appear when you expand a contact. Un-checking allows you to hide any information you do not wish to see when you expand your contacts.
 


The Collapse All button will take you back to a simple list of contacts and hides the additional information. Expand Selected opens the additional records of any selected contacts.



Choose to expand the additional information in chronological order by turning on this checkbox.




Searching

The simplest way to search contacts is to click the column header and start typing what you want to find. For example, to find someone with the last name "Smith" click the column header Last Name and start typing Smith. 
 
For more complicated searches, use the Advanced search option. Searching features are always at the top of any Sumac window, and the search criteria that are available vary depending on the list to searching.

For example, perhaps you want to find a list of all your board members. Choose a Search Type of Contact Type, and a Contact Type of Board. Click Search, and Sumac shows the resulting data records in the list.






In the bottom left of the window is the information bar which shows you how many records are visible in a list, and how many are selected. Also, if you tell Sumac to perform an operation that might take a long time, the information bar shows your progress by running a small thermometer along the bottom of your list to let you know how much longer you have to wait.



Column choices

Choose which columns are displayed in the list view by clicking Column Choices. This is helpful if you need to export specific columns of information about your contacts. 

Drag and drop these fields from left to right to add a column to your list. Drag, from right to left to remove columns.


Drag up and down to change the order of the columns. Drag to re-order columns. Click Ok


Sumac remembers column preferences for every user, so next time you open Sumac you will see the same columns.

Sorting

Sort a list by clicking the title of the column you want to sort by and Sumac will sort in ascending order. By clicking the column again, Sumac sorts in descending order.

Notice there is a small triangle in the column title to indicate which way the list has been sorted. You can sort this way in any list window in Sumac. 





If you click to sort a column, and two entries in the column are the same, then Sumac sorts them by the column you previously used for sorting. If you sort first by city, then by state or province, your contacts will be sorted by state but within each state they will be sorted by city.


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