I have read enough here to know I am not alone among new users in finding the Contact vs. Organization metaphor that DayLite uses maddeningly confusing.

Just for starters, for Contacts you can specify Category, Keywords, and Tagline. When a Contact is linked to an Organization (and only then, as far as I can see) you can specify Role Type, under which you can further specify Title and Department.

Over in Organizations, you can specify Category, Keywords, and Tagline again, PLUS Industry, Type, and Region.

This means there is a STAGGERING number of permutations and combinations for identifying and then finding any given person (who almost inevitably is going to be linked to an organization).

And we haven't even gotten into the "Extra Fields" (where we find a Priority pulldown list) and what can be done with them!

Does anyone know of a discussion, article, or explanation that lays out CLEARLY how the whole Contact/Organization thing works and how to utilize it, preferably with some real world examples drawn from different industries/applications that will allow the non-technical reader to grasp how the program's (apparently) extensive capabilities will work for them?

It seems to me there is a crying need for this.

This is just my approach, rather than a comprehensive solution for everyone:

I generally use Organizations when I have multiple contacts at the same company. This allows for the company address and phone to automatically show up in each individual contact's info, which is very handy.

The disadvantage of Organizations is that as data objects they don't co-exist in the same lists as Contacts, so you lose the at-a-glance visual convenience of seeing everyone in one place. Ergo, for small companies or organizations where I only have one contact, I generally will put a note in the "Tagline" field indicating organizational affiliation.

Hi Kelly

Can you tell me more about how you plan to use Daylite, and what industry you're in? I will be able to add some more information to the separation.

Basically, though, the idea is that contacts represent human beings, and organizations represent companies, institutions, and so on. People have job titles, and work in departments, but that might not explain their "role" at the company. For instance, I may know someone who is Sales Manager in the Marketing department at Acme Inc., but to me (and my business) he is the Decision Maker. Or, he might be the Point of Contact role, or he might be something else entirely.

Essentially, someone's role depends on YOUR business, and your perspective of that person with regard to any project, opportunity, or organization she's involved with. However, someone's job title and department are dependent on THEIR business.

There shouldn't be too many combinations for finding a given person: You should simply search (Apple-F) for the name or the name and the company name, or some other identifying details. Or, if you know what company someone works for, but can't remember their name, just search for the company. And so on...

Let me know what you think.

I own a small publishing company and the main impetus for switching to DayLite from ACT was to kick our publicity and promo efforts into high gear.

I have loaded a small subset of my database (@ 150 contacts) and noticed the problems that the contact/organization divide creates (at least for me). So I want to hold off on adding more until I have a good grasp of HOW to enter them, so that down the road I don't have to go back and rejigger everything.

Since you've been kind enough to offer some suggestions, how would you handle newspapers and magazines? Should I enter the newpaper/magazine as an organization with the Category "Newspaper" or "Magazine" and the various people I deal with there as Contacts with the Category "Travel Editor," "Business Editor," "Features Editor", etc? What then of Role and Department?

How would you suggest I keep on top of radio shows where, typically, there both a staion name and a show title and the show has both a host(s) AND a producer and maybe a Guest Booker as well?

Of course, beyond publicity, we have authors, printers, research resources, libraries (where author's might give talks), distributors, wholesalers, bookstores, etc. to keep track of.

Bookstores present another challenge: I just booked two author tours, with a lot of bookings at Barnes & Noble stores. Now B&N may be one organization, but in this application, each store might just as well be an independent entity. So how best to enter then for easy reference later?

Sorry to ramble on so much, but it serves to illustrate why I am feeling a bit overwhelmed and leery of jumping right in and trying to make it up as I go along.

Kelly

If I can jump in, this is what I would do:

Each newspaper/magazine as an Org, and use Groups to classify them as ‘Newspapers’ or ‘Magazines’; Contacts at each one have a Role of ‘Editor’ with Departments of ‘Travel’, ‘Business’ or ‘Features’. I’d keep Category for future use, and leave it blank for now (and see below).

Radio Stations would be Organisations, while talent would be Contacts and have Roles of ‘Host’, ‘Producer’ and ‘Guest Booker’, and Departments named after each show. That way a single Contact could have a Role of Producer on one show/Department, and the Role of Host on a different show/Department.

Each Bookstore would be an Org, maybe titled by the Location (e.g. B&N—New York); that way each has it's own physical address and linked Contacts (staff). Each member of staff at a store would be a Contact with Roles of ‘Manager’, ‘Employee’, etc., maybe with Departments of ‘Non-fiction’ or ‘Fiction’, as appropriate. If needed, you could use a Group to manually lump together all the Barnes & Nobles stores for easy reference.

Think along the following lines:

Physical location, building or company = Org.
Person = Contact.
Role = Job that Contact does at the Org.
Department = Group of Contacts with an Org (e.g. Show, magazine section or store department).
Group = Arbitrary linking of a number of Orgs or Contacts into conceptually similar things (e.g. particular chain of stores, or magazines on a certain subject).

I reserve Categories for things like ‘Customer’, ‘Supplier’, ‘Potential Suppliers’, ‘Family’, ‘Friends’, etc. Groupings of things that can be Organisations and/or Contacts, in other words.

HTH

Kelly

You're right, the number of permutations for classifying people *can* be large. But, you don't have to use every box on the screen! For example, I rarely use Department or Tagline, and in fact haven't found much use for Keywords yet.

But, and this is why Daylite knocks the spots off most other contact management software, it *frees* the link between people and organisations. If you have a record with 1 person + 1 organisation, what happens when that person also does something else? You create two records: person A + org X and person B + org Y. But there's no way of telling that person A = person B! And what if person A and person B have the same name but are different people. How do you know?

So, you create a database with Contacts (i.e. people) on the one hand, and Organisations as separate entities. You then can link the two in whatever way you like, and define each link as a Role, which you can classify into types (set in Preferences) and give it a label (i.e. a job title). This means I can now cater for John Smith who is a Director of 3 charities, Chairman of his family business, treasurer of the Rotary Club, acts as consultant to 2 of my clients, and sits on the local school's board of governors. So he is one Contact, but linked to 8 Organisations with clearly defined roles, and there's no confusion about this being different people. If I'm looking at any of those Organisations, I'll see his name and the Role.

In your world, I imagine you have contacts who are Editor of one title while writing for others, may have a guest spot with a radio station and have authored books for a publisher. Well, maybe that's pushing it a bit, but Daylite copes easily with complex industries and business relationships.

All the Categories and Groups stuff just helps you keep some order as the number of contact records grows, and enables you to filter or target certain types, e.g. for direct marketing purposes. Fortunately, those are flexible enough for you to start with a basic set (or none at all), and to add them each time you think "it would be great if I could keep a track of this bunch of people".

Other advantages of the Contact/Organisation approach are the Organisation-wide view of activity, particularly important when you've got several people on your side contacting several people on theirs. With one click you can see everything that everyone has said to the other.

Hope this helps give some more perspective to the whole thing.

Nick

Wow! Thanks Andy and Nick. This is very helpful.

I hadn't even gotten to Groups yet, let alone thought of using that to identify categories of contacts.

Most of the contacts I have put in DL so far are contacts at Orlando area attractions (for a guidebook we publish). Would it make more sense to assign them to a Group called "Orlando Area Attractions" or use the category pulldown under Orgs to do that?

Kelly

I’d use a Group. Look 5 years down the line, when you might potentially have dozens of such guidebooks; if you were to use a Category the pop-up menu would become very unwieldy.

As I explained, I keep Categories for very general classes of objects, such as Clients or Suppliers, where that’s the only thing they have in common.

Cheers

Kelly

It’s worth thinking about Groups as more fluid classifications of things, that can come and go, or help you organise things conceptually.

Some of my Groups, for instance, include ‘Xmas Cards’ (which contains every Contact to whom I usually send an Xmas card), FSB (which contains both Orgs and Contacts with membership of the Federation of Small Businesses), WAUK (Contacts who are on an email list of that title with me).

Think along the lines of trade bodies, businesses within a certain catchment area, Contacts that are on a particular mailing list, or—in your case—Orgs that are listed in a certain book you are writing, etc.

You can use the Merge and Email commands to mass-mail all the members of a Group at once, making mailing-lists easy to manage.

Cheers

It’s also worth pointing out that an Org or Contact can only have one Category, so they should be something that is conceptually mutually exclusive; whereas a single Org can be a member of many, many Groups at the same time.

Anywhere you categorise an object where there is only one option (like the Category or Industry pop-ups) you need to pay very careful consideration that all the options in that pop-up are truly mutually exclusive. If in doubt, using Groups is a far better option.

Andy and Nick have provided some great feedback. FWIW, here are my two cents for your particular situation.

Organizations have their own special preferences for setting things like Industry and Type. I would customize the Type list to include Newspaper and Magazine. Contacts would have a job title and department, which is what title their employer has given them. That's what's on their business card. The role that they play, however, may be different. Generally roles are things that are important to YOU in your business, and that don't change from company to company. For instance, there is always a "Big Wig" role, but the job title might change from one magazine to another. Likewise, there is always an "Editor in Chief" but maybe the title is "Senior Editor" or "Managing Editor" or something, but the ROLE the person plays is really just E-i-C.

Radio shows: I would set up the station as an organization. And I would set up the show as one too. The two would be linked with a relationship that's something like "station of" and "show of," as in "Happy Morning is show of KX99.9." Then, the contacts would be people like "John Doe" (Name), "Producing Manager, Morning Shows" (Job Title), and would play roles like "Producer" in the show. Again, becuase a producer or guest booker's job title might change from station to station, but there's always a PRODUCER role, and often a GUEST BOOKER role.

We keep track of retail stores individually, here. So I would do the same thing. Like this: B&N Oakwood Mall. At those stores, there would be roles of "Manager," "Buyer," etc. but again, job titles might vary ... think "Senior Manager," "Senior Merchandising Manager" etc.

Remember, when it comes to roles: What's important is what the role means to YOU and your business. It's not uncommon for roles to be things like "Unimportant" and "Advisor" and "Decision Maker" so that when one gets a call from someone one can see if the person has any sway at the company or not. Job titles are far more irreleveant, usually. Another example, job title "Junior Designer" but role "Creative Director" on a particular project.

Excellent tutouring!!.
I have XWZ Org. that is my distributor, therefore, its Role is "Distribution"; the Org. has several linked contacts, from the pull down menu for a Contact I choose, say, "Quality Control", however, if I choose "Quality Control" for that Contact automatically the Role of XWZ Org. changes to "Quality Control", instead of remaining as "Distribution".
I know I'm doing something wrong.
All the best
Rodrigo
+++

An organization doesn't have a role on its own. It may play a role IN a project or opportunity, but it doesn't have a role on its own.

How are you choosing "Distribution" as the 'role' for XYZ Org.?

Many thanks for your quick response, Adam.
In Organisation Roles I choose what the Org. does in my case. With regards to XWZ it distributes for me.
Once again thank you

Kelly,

Regarding Orlando area attractions etc. It usually better to use Category for general characteristics that never change. For instance, we at Marketcircle have categories in our database that identify people who are "Customers" and "Partners."

Region (location) can be identified all kinds of ways. The best way to do what you're looking for is this:

The actual attraction is an Organization. With an Orlando address (obviously), and a type of "Attraction." (Type is part of what you can set up in ORganization prefs.)

Contacts are linked to these organizations, and have roles in them. Such as "Marketing Manager" or whatever makes sense.

To get a "list" of those, you don't need (and shouldn't use) a group. You should have two smart lists: One of them is a smart list in COntacts, with the criteria as follows.

Show me all contacts whose "ORganization Type is Attraction" and whose "Organization City is Orlando."

THis list will always stay up to date as you add new organizations that are ORlando attractions and link new people to them. IT wiull show you a list of all your contacts at those organizations.

THe second list you shoiuld have is a smart list in Organizations that shows you all the Organizations whose "Type is Attraction" and whose "City is Orlando."

HTH,