Contact properties provide the ability to append custom details to your contacts. For example, you can sync values from your other operational systems with iService so agents can use variables to insert account numbers of other frequently used values into responses. You can create an unlimited number of contact properties in your tenant. Since property names are referenced in iService variables, they must be unique across all of your iService segments.
Contact properties are managed in the Segment Settings page of iService and are available for inclusion in agent responses and custom forms using the $value command. Select your segment from the settings menu (1) and then select the Contact properties tab (2).
To create a new contact property, click New Contact Property and enter a name for the new property. Then complete the following information.
1 - Property Name – This name will be the label that is displayed within the Contact or Organization page. The order of the values will determine the order in which they are displayed within the iService interface in the Contact and Organization pages.
2 – Value Type - Select the type of detail that should be associated with this new property. If the property will be a list selection, choose that list from the drop down menu. These lists are created at the Tenant level within the Additional Details tab. See Tenant Configuration for additional information about creating lists. If the property will contain free form text, just select Text.
3 - Shared Property – If you want all users of iService to view these contact properties, regardless of their access to this segment, then select the Share Property checkbox. Otherwise, leave this box unchecked and only agents that have explicit access to this segment will see these values within the contact and organization details.
4 – Multi-Line Values – A multi-line property generates a text box in which multiple lines of text may be entered.
5 – Allow Multiple Values – This attribute will place a [+] next to the property allowing agents to enter multiple values. For instance, a property of type phone number might allow several different numbers to be entered.
6 – Has Descriptions – If the value allows multiple values, it might be desirable to provide a description for each value. For instance, an additional detail for types of phone numbers might be created with values of Home, Office, and Mobile. This additional detail would be selected in item 7 – Value Description Type. The list of Additional Details is enabled in item 7 when the Has Description box is checked.
7 – Value Description Type – This is a list of additional details created in Admin Tools > Additional Details. The list will be used as the description for the Multiple Value property.
8 – Contact Viewable – If the property is contact viewable, it will be displayed to the contact in their My Account page.
9 – Contact Editable – If the property is contact editable, it can be edited by the contact in their My Account page. This value is only available when the Contact Viewable option is selected.
10 – Agent Settings – If the property is an agent setting, it will display within the Admin Tools > Agents > Agent Settings page. Note – these are essentially contact properties that only appear within the Admin Tools > Agents page. They are values that can be assigned to agents only and are helpful for organizing and describing agents. These values are searchable from the Customer Info > Search page.
11 – Tenant Default Value – This value is used for agent settings only. It should be left blank in most cases.
Care should be taken when deleting contact properties. Any contacts that have this value assigned will lose their history of the property since it is eliminated from the iService database when deleted. Deleting properties is a two step process: Evaluate the impact of deleting and then confirm deletion.
When you click the Delete Contact button, you will get the following dialogue.
1 – Number of contacts with property – This is the number of contacts in the iService database that have a value set for this property. Clicking on the number will open a search showing all contacts that have a value set.
2 – Contact properties that use this property – The values from a contact property can be used as the Description List (drop down menu) for another contact property. This allows you to create a custom drop down of descriptions for a multi value property. Similar to 1 above, this hyperlink will provide a list of those properties that will be impacted by deletion.
3 – Interaction properties that use this property – Similar to 2 above, the list of values can also be used in the Description (drop down menu) for an interaction property. This hyperlink will provide a list of those properties that will be impacted by deletion.
4 - Service Levels that use this property - A hyperlink is provided for any service levels that use the property.