A contact holds the details and history of a customer or prospect. A deal tracks a particular sales opportunity: its stage, owner, value, and close date. Keep the relationship on the contact and use linked deals for separate opportunities, rather than creating a new contact for every sale.
Create a contact#
- Open Contacts and choose New contact. In an empty workspace, the button appears in the empty state.
- Enter a Name; it is the only required field. Add Email, Phone, and Company if you have them. Name and company take up to 120 characters each. A phone number takes up to 40.
- Choose a Status from your workspace’s options (the first one is preselected), then select New contact (or press Command+Enter / Ctrl+Enter) to save. The form closes and the contact is added to your Contacts list.
You are set as the new contact’s Owner. Open the contact to change the owner and fill in your workspace’s custom fields. If creation or editing is unavailable, check your contact access with a workspace owner or admin.
Each email address can belong to only one contact in the workspace; saving a second contact with the same address fails with That already exists. Find the existing contact with search instead. That does not look like an email address. means the email needs fixing, and That name is too long — 120 characters at most. (or the same for the company name) means shortening it.
Contacts can also arrive without this form: from Google email and calendar sync, depending on your workspace’s setting, from Quo or Dialpad, from workflows, from a new deal whose company matches no contact (see Deals), or through the API.
Link the right opportunity#
On the contact record, open the Deals field under Record details (it reads Link deals… while empty) to select an existing deal, or choose New deal inside the picker. A deal created there is already associated with this contact.
Search the picker, or turn on Linked only to see just this contact’s deals. Choose a linked deal again to unlink it.
A contact can have several deals, but each deal has one associated contact. Choosing a deal that belongs to someone else prompts Move this deal?; choose Move deal to move it here. It is removed from the other contact; a deal never has two contacts. Changing these links requires permission to edit deals.
Work from the record#
Edit the contact’s name directly at the top of the record. Under the name, quick actions offer Compose email plus icon buttons for New note, New task, and More actions (Upload file, Delete contact). Compose email needs a Google account you own connected under Settings; without one, the button stays visible but disabled. New task is disabled without write access to Tasks.
The previous and next arrows above a full record step through your workspace’s contacts from newest to oldest; they do not follow your list’s search, filters, or sort. To walk your current list, use the preview instead.
Use Overview for highlights—including Status, Owner, Open pipeline, Deals, Email, and Phone—plus Activity for the timeline, and Notes, Tasks, and Files for related work. The record also has Emails and Meetings tabs. Overview ends with Associated deals: one card per linked deal with its value, close date, and stage, open deals first by close date, then deals in a stage whose name starts with “Closed” (such as Closed won and Closed lost). Click a card to open that deal. Open pipeline in Highlights adds up the value of those deals, leaving out any in a stage whose name starts with “Closed”. The count includes every linked deal, and up to 20 cards are shown; a contact with none reads No deals linked yet. Add a task for an action someone must complete; use a note for context or an agreement—see Tasks and Notes.
Each tab after Overview shows a count: 99+ above 99, and an en dash while a count is unavailable, such as Emails or Meetings before Google is connected. Overview previews up to 5 emails, 5 tasks, 3 notes, and 3 files; the tab shows the rest. On Overview, each section’s View all opens its tab, and Tasks, Notes, and Files have add buttons when your access allows. Activity groups entries under Upcoming, This week (starting on your week’s first day), and then by month; its Filters show or hide Meetings, Emails, Tasks, Notes, and Record updates, plus Messages and Calls.
On Files, choose Upload to attach one or more files of up to 25 MB each: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, OpenDocument, RTF, plain text, CSV, TSV, PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, or ZIP. Click a file to download it. Uploading and deleting files need write access to Contacts, and a deleted file is gone for everyone in the workspace. Ariyel checks that a file’s contents match its type, so a renamed file is refused with That file does not match its type and cannot be uploaded. Empty files (That file is empty.), larger ones (That file is too large — 25 MB at most.), and types not on the list (That kind of file cannot be uploaded.) are refused too.
Emails and meetings come from connected Google accounts and are matched to the contact’s Email address, so a contact without one shows no email or meeting history. Meetings shows those calendar events in the same Activity-style feed as the Activity tab—who had it, when, and its card—under Upcoming, This week, and earlier months. See Email and calendar.
On the contact record, Record details shows the primary fields first (Status, Owner, Lead strength, Email, Company, Phone, Text consent, and Deals). Custom fields stay collapsed until you choose View all fields; choose Show fewer fields to collapse them again. If a value is truncated, open it to read or edit in a popover—Alt+Enter while editing also works.
The record also has a Messages tab for Quo or Dialpad texts, calls, and voicemails, and Overview has a Messages section and a Last contact highlight. Imported history stays after disconnect, with the same line privacy; the Reply button is unavailable and the Messages tab explains that the app is disconnected. Once connected, Reply in Quo (or Reply in Dialpad) opens the newest conversation you are allowed to view. Connecting Quo or Dialpad also adds a built-in Text consent field to contacts (Yes · source, date; Opted out · date; or blank), shown in Highlights and editable in Record details or as a table column. Source labels read as Set by hand, Texted START, Texted STOP, or Other source (such as Yes · Set by hand, Sep 11). See Quo and Dialpad.
Overview also shows Ari’s summary above Highlights—use Ask Ari to write the first summary and Refresh to update it. Owners and admins choose what Ari may read under Settings → Ari → Summaries.
Every contact also carries a Lead strength label from Very strong to Very weak that Ari fills in and keeps current. It sits in the Contacts table, Record details, and Highlights; choose it to see how sure Ari is. Nobody types or edits it. A contact Ari hasn’t reached yet reads Not rated yet; one with too little on the record to judge reads Not enough info yet.
Find and update contacts#
Use search and filters to narrow the table. Select contacts to use actions such as Set status or Assign owner; check the selection count, including any selected records hidden by your current filter, before applying a bulk change.
Search matches a contact’s name, email, company, or phone number; phone matches ignore spaces, dashes, and parentheses. The count under the table shows how many contacts match. For filters and saved views, see Filters and views.
Shift-click row checkboxes to select a range, or use the header checkbox to select every contact that matches your search and filters. Set status, Assign owner, and More → Delete need write access to Contacts. Making a teammate a contact’s owner, on the record or with Assign owner, sends them an assignment notification for each contact, subject to their notification settings (Deal or contact); assigning yourself sends nothing. More → Export CSV downloads the selected contacts with Name, Email, Company, Status, Owner, and Created; custom fields are not included. A selection survives a search or filter change: the selection bar then shows how many are hidden by filter, and its actions still apply to every selected contact. Press Escape or choose the bar’s close button (Clear selection) to start over. While a bulk change runs, a status line on the page reads Changing records… N of M checked.; choose Stop remaining changes to stop sending the rest, and the line then says how many were updated (Dismiss clears it).
Click a cell to edit it in place; click the name or elsewhere on the row to open the full record. Name, Deals, Lead strength, file fields, and fields Ariyel fills in for you are not edited in the table, Status can be changed but not cleared, and a lookup cell edits its source field on the linked deal (see Custom fields). Changing a deal’s stage through a lookup, in the table or under Record details, to a stage with required fields the deal is missing opens Move <deal> to <stage>; fill in the fields and choose Move deal, or cancel to leave the stage unchanged.
Arrange the Contacts table#
Drag a column header left or right to reorder columns; a drop indicator shows where it will land. Open a header’s menu for Sort ascending, Sort descending, Move left, Move right, Edit column label, and Hide from view. Edit column label changes the column’s label in your own layout only—it does not rename the field for the workspace. A label can be up to 100 characters. Reset returns a relabeled column to the field’s own name. Name stays sticky and pinned first: you cannot drag it, hide it, or move it.
Column order, hidden columns, labels, widths, and sort are saved to your own layout in the workspace; teammates keep theirs. With a named view open, they belong to that view instead and change it for everyone (see Filters and views). Sort from any column’s menu, including Deals and other linked fields. With no sort chosen, the table sorts by Name.
At the end of the table, Add column lists fields that are currently hidden; choosing one appends it to the visible columns. A long field name ends in an ellipsis; hover to see all of it. Drag the right edge of a column header to make that column wider or narrower; double-click the edge to return it to its default width, or focus the edge and use the arrow keys. Widths are saved for you in this workspace and don’t change what teammates see. With Full access to Contacts, Create new custom field opens the field editor and appends the new field after you save. View settings also sets sorting and visible fields, and with Full access offers Add field to view—see also Custom fields.
Body cells for built-in system fields other than Name—Email, Company, Status, Owner, Phone, Text consent, Deals, and Lead strength—use a soft system tint so they read apart from Name and custom fields, which stay on the canvas. Dark mode has a matching tint.
Phone numbers read the same way everywhere, however they were typed: US and Canadian numbers show as (609) 709-0133, with ext. 12 for an extension; other international numbers show as typed. The stored number doesn’t change; editing a phone, calling it, exporting, and the API use it as saved. A contact with no name, or named only by its number (including “Caller <number>” names from the API), shows the formatted number in grey with a person icon instead of initials until you give it a name.
Click and drag across cells to select a rectangular block, then press Command+C on Mac or Ctrl+C on other platforms to copy it. The clipboard holds tab-separated rows for Sheets, Excel, or Numbers, and an HTML table for Docs, Notion, or email. Shift-click extends the selection; Escape or another press clears it. A press becomes a selection only after a short drag onto a different cell, so ordinary clicks still open the row or cell editor. Copied content matches what you see: avatar initials are dropped, em dash and lookup placeholders copy empty, chips become a comma-separated list, and values shortened to +N copy in full. Group headings are skipped. A small note at the bottom of the page confirms how many cells you copied. If the browser blocks the clipboard, the note reads Could not copy—The browser blocked the clipboard.
A block can span up to 500 rows, and holding the pointer at the table’s edge scrolls it. The checkbox and Add column columns are never selected. A new search, filter, or column change clears the selection. Selecting works with a mouse or trackpad; on a touchscreen, dragging scrolls. If part of the block is still loading, the note says so and nothing is copied; try again once the rows appear.
On Contacts, with a block selected, Delete or Backspace clears every clearable cell in the selection. Command+V on Mac or Ctrl+V on other platforms pastes plain text from the clipboard—from this table or a spreadsheet. One copied value fills every selected cell. A shorter copied pattern repeats in order to fill a taller selection—two rows pasted over twenty fill all twenty. A grid bigger than the selection still lands with its top-left on the block’s top-left, and the selection grows to show where it went. After copy, clear, or paste, a small note at the bottom of the page shows the count and optional detail; when undo is available it also offers Undo. Undo with that note or Command+Z / Ctrl+Z while the block is still selected; it works once. Name (edit it on the record), Text consent (it changes one contact at a time), Deals, Lead strength, file fields, lookups, and fields Ariyel fills in for you are never written from a block. Linked-record fields you added can be cleared from a block but not pasted into; pasted text never picks a linked record. Status can be pasted into but not emptied. Text that does not fit a cell is skipped and counted—values are never invented. Without write access to Contacts, nothing is written and the note says why. Tasks and Fulfillment tables stay copy-only.
Each pasted value is saved the way the cell’s own editor would save it. An email must look like an address, and a phone number needs at least one digit. Numbers ignore commas and spaces; currency fields also ignore $, €, £, and ¥. Select options match by label, and several can be separated by commas; an option that does not exist is not created. Owner and person fields match a workspace member by name or email. A date needs the whole date with its year, such as 2026-09-23, 9/23/2026, Sep 23, 2026, or 23 Sep 2026; text like “Sep 23” or an impossible day is skipped rather than guessed.
Preview from the list#
On the Contacts list, hover a row and choose Open preview at the end of the contact’s name to open a side panel while the list stays live. Click the contact’s name or row to open the full record instead.
The preview is read-first: you can review the name and Highlights, move previous or next through your current sort and filters, and open tasks, notes, or files in their usual dialogs. Use expand or View all when you need the full record.
The preview always shows recent Activity and Tasks, and shows Emails, Meetings, Notes, and Files only when the contact has some. You can add a task from the preview when your access allows; adding a note or file there works only once the contact already has one—otherwise open the full record. The preview also lists Associated deals; click one to open that deal. Ari’s summary, Messages, and field editing stay on the full record. View all opens the full record on that section’s tab. Press Escape to close the preview.
Delete with care#
Deleting a contact removes it for everyone in the workspace and cannot be undone. Its linked deals remain, but their contact association is cleared. Its notes and files are deleted with it; tasks linked to it stay on the Tasks page but are no longer linked to the contact. To keep the contact and simply separate an opportunity, unlink the deal instead of deleting the contact.
To delete a contact, choose More actions → Delete contact under its name, then confirm with Delete contact. To delete several, select them in the table, choose More → Delete, then confirm with Delete N contacts (Delete contact for one). Deleting needs write access to Contacts.