Each contact has a communications channel to which messages from your CommunityConnect account are sent. On the CommunityConnect platform, these channels are referred to as connections. Connections represent the ways in which you can communicate with your contacts. For all contacts, Connection is a default field, just like Name.
The most common connection type on the CommunityConnect platform is a phone number, though a contact can also have a Twitter handle, Telegram identifier, email address, etc. Each contact can be assigned multiple connections of the same type (e.g. multiple phone numbers).
Add or Edit a Connection
To add a connection to an existing contact:
Navigate to the “contacts” tab and search for the desired contact.
Click on the contact. Access the contact’s settings by clicking on the gear icon on the right, then click “Edit.”
Scroll down, and under “Add Connection,” select the connection type from the dropdown menu.
Input the connection information into the box and click “Save Changes.”
You can edit a contact’s connections via the same process. Once viewing the “Update Contact” panel, simply make any desired changes to the appropriate connection and click “Save Changes.”
Prioritize a Connection
If a contact has multiple connections, you can rank them in order of priority. The connections will appear on a contact's profile page in the order in which they're prioritized. In the example below, the contact’s phone number is set to highest priority, followed by their Twitter handle, then their email address.
Only a contact's prioritized connection will appear in the contacts tab view:
To change the priority of a contact’s connections,
Follow steps 1-2 above to access the “Update Contact” panel.
Click the upwards arrow next to the connection you want to move up in the rankings.
Click “Save Changes” once you have finished making changes.
Contact Connection Types & Channel Types
Each contact can have multiple connections of the same type (e.g. multiple phone numbers). In addition, each contact can have multiple connection types (e.g. a phone number and an email address). Each connection type is associated with a channel type. The table below maps each contact connection type to its corresponding channel type.
In a flow, when using the above contact variables (shown in italics), the connection that will appear is the one with the highest priority. For example, if a contact has several phone numbers associated with their account, using the variable @contact.urn will return the phone number that is set with the highest priority. In Jane Doe’s case, @contact.urn would return “tel:+13233754866.”
Additionally, by default, messages sent to Jane Doe will go to the phone number with the highest priority. However, if Jane Doe initiates an interaction with the CommunityConnect platform using her +497 number, that number becomes the default channel through which you will communicate with her. In other words, if you have multiple channels of the same type (e.g. multiple phone numbers) connected to a contact, the channel that the contact last used to communicate with the platform will automatically be prioritized.
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