Introduction
Contact Management in the Event Portal lets show management grant exhibitors access to manage individuals associated with their company.
Before pulling booth assignments and contact data from Global Admin into the Event Portal, it is important to understand what contacts are, then make two decisions: determine which contact types to pull and decide which type should be designated as the Organization Owner.
Jump to Section:
- What is a Contact?
- Determining Contact Types
- Understanding the Organization Owner Role
- Managing Contacts via the Org Members Block
What is a Contact?
In Global Admin, a contact is an individual user who may have multiple roles in the system. The individual may be:
- Associated with Companies as one or more contact type
- Associated with Sessions as a speaker
- Associated with Proposals as a submitter or presenter
- Associated with proposal tracks to act as a proposal grader
- An attendee who is either imported or manually added to the site to save their favorite exhibitors or sessions
Important
Due to the nature of the Personify IDP login service, DO NOT EVER replace an e-mail address associated with an existing contact in Global Admin with a different user's information. Always create a new contact record, if needed, as modifying details in one system may impact the user's access to a different site.
After creating contacts in your database, you can specify their role within the company by assigning a contact type to the user.
About Contact Types
Contact Types are essential to ensuring the system successfully sends e-mails to applicable users and that they have adequate access to manage their company profile.
In Global Admin, the Company Contact and the Booth Contact are managed in the company record.
- The Company Contact is managed on the Company Info Tab.
- The Booth Contact is managed via the Booth Info page on the Booth Tab.
Since the users saved in either field generally do not sync to the Portal, reviewing contact management details with your Project Manager is important to ensure the appropriate users can enter your portal.
Multiple company contact management in GA offers the ability to associate more than one contact with each company. Maintain clean data across multiple events as new contacts are added by designating an existing contact type or creating new custom contact types.
Default contact types are created automatically when multi-company contact management is enabled. These contact types include:
- Primary Contact - the dedicated person responsible for all exhibitor-related activities.
- Invoice Contact - the dedicated person responsible for billing and invoices.
- General Contact - a placeholder for contacts who are still associated with the company but have been replaced and no longer perform the designated role.
- Advertising Contact - the dedicated person responsible for marketing.
- Shipping Contact - the dedicated person responsible for shipping show materials.
- Sponsorship Contact - the dedicated person responsible for purchasing and managing sponsorships, typically collected via the sponsorship contract.
In most cases, we recommend assigning only 1 contact per type for each company; however, you can specify a maximum number of contacts per company for each type.
Important: Please don't change the name or number of contacts allowed for the General Contact type.
Several aspects of Global Admin have built-in programming associated with this type. Your database may experience severe data loss if the General Contact type is modified.
Since GA allows you to define several types of contacts, pausing to plan and determine which are best to sync into the Portal is the greatest way to guarantee success as you progress through your event cycle.
Determining Contact Types
Multi-company contact management allows you to show users associated with the company on the front end of the Event Portal. Alternatively, events using the EMM Plus & Pro package can hide users if their information is only needed for internal recordkeeping if they are not actively managing the company's booth profile.
Regardless of package type, our best practice recommends only adding contact types that require access to manage the company listing or those that must be visible to attendees and other end users as needed.
General contacts sync to the portal automatically but appear hidden by default.
After contacts are set up to sync into the portal, they are assigned as either an Owner or a Member. Understanding the importance of the organization owner’s role and associated permissions is key to ensuring individual company contacts have appropriate access when navigating your portal.
Choosing Contact Types to Pull into the Portal
Since the booth contact does not sync to the portal, our recommended best practice when choosing contact types to pull is the following:
● Associate Org Owner role with the Primary Contact type or any pre-existing contact type with the number of contacts set to 1.
● Create a new contact type and set the number of contacts to 1.
● Do NOT use year-specific contact types (e.g., 2024 Primary Contact, 2025 Primary Contact). Maintaining the contact type list becomes difficult and may cause system issues.
Pulling Contact Types into the Portal
Once determined, your project manager configures the appropriate settings during site implementation. Afterward, site admins can modify the contact types that are pulled into the Event Portal by navigating to Admin Panel ➔ Site Building Tools ➔ Organizations Manager ➔ Configuration ➔ Contact Types.
The system automatically pulls and displays all existing contact types from your Global Admin database into the Manage Contact Types table. New contact types created in GA appear to be managed in the Portal after approximately two hours.
Hover over the i icon for quick access to details about each column and its purpose:
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Allowed - Select which contact types should be allowed into the Event Portal from Global Admin.
- The contact in GA must have at least one of the allowed contact types checked to sync into the Portal successfully.
- If no contact types are checked as Allowed, only contacts assigned the General contact type will sync.
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Required - Select which contact types should be required for companies using online exhibitor contracting.
- An alert appears on the contact list for companies missing a required contact type.
- Missing required contact types are included in the organizations reminder email.
- This selection is primarily relevant for events on the Plus & Pro packages with contact management in the Portal enabled.
-
Owner - Controls the contact type that receives the organization owner role.
- Only one owner can be designated per organization.
- The number of contacts per contact type in GA should be set to 1 for the selected type.
- If no contact type is defined, the Company Contact listed in the company record is set as the org owner.
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Default - Controls which contact type the system assigns to new users when added to an organization.
- This selection is only relevant for events on the Plus & Pro packages with contact management in the Portal enabled.
- If there is no contact type defined, the General contact type will be associated.
Understanding the Organization Owner Role
In the Event Portal, companies from GA are referred to as Organizations, and Contacts from GA are referred to as Members. Each organization can have multiple members, but only one owner.
- The owner role receives greater access to modifying data in the Portal, which then syncs back to and updates in GA.
- How the system determines which company contact receives the organization owner role varies depending on the event package purchased for your site and configured settings discussed with your Project Manager.
- Ideally, you’ll want to ensure the Org Owner role is assigned to the contact type responsible for managing the online booth profile.
Although members can modify company data by updating profile fields, filling out required forms, or creating digital content listings, the Owner has additional privileges, including modifying the contact types associated with members, or contacts, associated with their organization.
When contact type management is enabled for events using the EMM Plus & Pro packages, Site Admins and Org Owners manage contacts via the Organization Members block. This block ensures users can update type assignments and manage visibility settings.
Managing Contacts via the Organization Members Block
When enabled for events on Plus and Pro packages, Contact Management via the Organization Members block allows exhibitors the capability to manage contacts autonomously.
Following recommended best practices and understanding how the actions taken in EP affect data located in GA is critical to ensuring your data stays clean as your exhibitors manage their contacts.
Setting Up the Org Members Block
Our Best Practice for positioning the Org Members Block recommends adding it to two pages:
- the exhibitor hub page (Default Page Name: Exhibitor Hub, Default Page URL: /exhibitorhub)
- the exhibitor profile page (Default Profile Page Name: Exhibitor, Default Page URL: /exhibitors/exhibitor/:organization_id)
Placing it on the exhibitor hub page strengthens the one-stop-shop experience by allowing easy access for exhibitor contacts to manage the users associated with their organization.
Placing it on the exhibitor profile page helps improve attendees' awareness of the contacts they'll meet when visiting the exhibitor's booth at the event.
The A2Z team recommends directing exhibitors to their Hub Page to edit and manage their company contacts. When configuring the block settings, select the Display Assigned Contact Types and the Show create item button checkboxes. This recommended best practice:
- Promotes the one-stop-shop experience for your exhibitors.
- Encourages them to edit and manage users associated with their company.
- Allows them to easily distinguish between their assigned role for the company and your records.
- Offer org owners and members the ability to add new contacts directly from their hub page.
When placing the block on the public booth profile page, the A2Z team recommends hiding the contact type labels to prevent exhibitors from adding new members. When configuring the block settings, leave the checkboxes to Display Assigned Contact Types and the Show create item button de-selected. This recommended best practice:
- Disables attendee visibility of the contact's assigned role on the exhibitor's public booth profile.
- Ensures exhibitors can only add new contacts from one central location on their Hub page.
Managing Contact Types
Updating Assigned Contact Types
● The system does not allow exhibitors to de-select all contact type checkboxes or disassociate all contact type options from an individual user. If this is attempted, the system will return a green Success alert and the most recently assigned contact type remains assigned.
● If the number of contacts is set to 1 for the contact type in GA, the system disassociates the second user from the company in both GA and EP.
Instruct exhibitors to uncheck the undesired contact type from the first assigned org member and replace it with the General Contact type. After editing the first member, the exhibitor can re-assign the desired contact type to the second org member.
Editing Contacts
Review existing company contact information in the Event Portal by clicking Edit from the Org Member Block.
- Toggle the Hide from Profile radio button to show or hide the contact's visibility on the exhibitor's public booth profile.
- Site Admins and Org Owners can modify general user information, including the user's name, e-mail address, phone number, and address fields. Updates made to these fields sync back to Global Admin upon clicking Save.
- Modify assigned contact types by selecting the appropriate checkboxes.
Managing Contact Visibility
Toggle the Hide From Profile radio button to remove or display company contacts on the exhibitor's public profile.
- Instruct exhibitors to hide contacts who will not be present at the booth during the event but may need access to the Portal and Hub page to manage the profile or complete other administrative type duties such as billing or marketing.
- Encourage exhibitors to display individuals who can be contacted for additional information about their company and who will be onsite managing the booth at the event.