BuildersAI keeps your company’s address book for you: the merchants, subcontractors, clients, architects, building control and plant hire firms you deal with. Save them once and they are there to ring from site, to email or invite from a task, and to log calls against. There is no need to keep them in Outlook or on your own phone.
A contact is not a person on a project. A contact has no login, no access to anything and costs no seat. Adding one gives them nothing and sends them nothing. Somebody on a project’s People list has an account and sees the job. The day a contact needs the job too, you give them access (below), and nothing about them has to be typed again.
Where the book is:
- In a browser, for an owner or admin of your organisation: click the BuildersAI logo at the top left to reach All projects, then People in the “Across your projects” panel, then People again. Contacts are listed with everybody else your company deals with, each badged Contact and reading “Contact only, no login”
- On the phone, for anybody who works on the company’s projects (administrators and members): Contacts in the project’s side menu (☰)
- Followers (clients, visiting subcontractors) do not see the book. A project that is not in a company has no book, only the people on the job
Saving a contact (browser):
- On the People list, press Add. The form is headed Add someone
- Type a name, and an email address if you have one. A contact needs no email: the scaffolder you only have a mobile number for is fine
- Leave what they can access on Nothing yet, just a contact, which is where it starts. The line by the button says “They will be a contact: no login, no access, no seat”
- Fill in their details: company, trade and phone, all optional. Then press Add
To add more, open the … on their row and choose Edit their details: company, contact name, What they are to you (supplier, subcontractor, client, designer or architect, building control, inspector, HSE, plant hire, consultant or advisor, utility, other), trade, phone, email, website, address and notes.
On the phone, an owner or admin of the organisation can do the same from All projects, People: Add a contact, Add someone and Import are at the top. The side menu’s Contacts screen is for finding and ringing people, not for adding them.
Importing a list (browser):
- Export your suppliers as a CSV file from your accounts package or a spreadsheet
- On the People list, press Import, then Choose a file. Up to 500 contacts at a time
- Under Which column is which, check how your columns were matched (company, person, what they are to you, trade, email, phone, website, address, notes), and change any that are wrong, or set one to Not imported
- Check the first few rows as they will be saved, and the list of rows that will be skipped, each with its line number and reason
- Press Import. Nothing already in your book is changed: a contact whose email address you already have is left alone and reported
Finding somebody: the search box finds a name, a company, a trade or part of a number, so typing “plumbing” finds City Plumbing without remembering the name. In the browser the chips narrow the list to Everyone, Your company, On projects or Contacts. On the phone the chips are Everyone, On this job, Have a login and Contacts, and the people on the job you are on come first, then everyone else.
Ringing them from site: on the phone’s Contacts screen, tap a number to ring it. It works with no data, as long as you have a signal to call on. When you come back to the app it asks How did that go?: Spoke to them, No answer or Left a voicemail, with a line for what was said. Save records it against the job, and Not now records nothing.
The contact log: on a project’s People page in the browser, Contact log lists every call recorded on that job: who, when, the number, how it went and what was said. Log a call adds one by hand (who from your directory, or a typed name, which way, how it went, what was said). A task has its own Calls section with Log a call in the browser, and Call somebody about this on the phone. A record cannot be edited: remove it and write it again. Administrators and members see the log; followers do not.
Putting a contact on a job: on the project’s People page, under Others on this job, a project administrator presses Add from contacts, ticks who, and can say what each is doing here. That lists the client, the architect or building control for everybody on the job, and still gives them no access. Taking them off the job leaves them in your book. A contact put on the job as a Client is shown on the job’s Home, under the site’s address, with their number and email to tap, for the job’s admins and members.
Where else contacts appear: choosing who to email from a project (see the “mail” topic), sending a calendar invitation from a task (see the “task_invitations” topic), and logging a call.
Giving a contact access: open the … on their row and choose Give them access (only for a contact with an email address). The same form opens with everything already filled in: choose a place in the company or a role on each project, and press Add. From then on they are a person, they are emailed, and they may use a seat. See the “organisation_people” and “team_management” topics.
Your own details for a colleague: a person with an account keeps their own name and number. Your company can keep its own record beside it (the firm they come from, the number you actually ring, what you call them), which only your organisation sees: click their name on the People list and press Add details (or Edit) beside their contact details.
Archiving and deleting: Archive, from the … on the row, takes somebody out of every picker and keeps the record and the calls logged against them. Archived at the top shows them, and Put back in the directory restores one. Delete removes the contact for everyone in the organisation and cannot be undone; it is for somebody who has asked to be forgotten.
Who can do what:
- Owners and admins of the organisation add, edit, import, archive and delete contacts
- A project administrator puts contacts on their job, and logs calls
- Members read the book on the phone, ring people and log calls
- Followers see none of it
Or ask me: I cannot read or change your contacts book yet. To find a number, use the search on the People list or the phone’s Contacts screen.