Archiving contacts

Over time your contacts list fills with inquiries that went nowhere. Archiving tidies it without losing anything.

What archiving does

Open the contact, choose Archive contact from the three-dot More actions menu at the top of their record, and confirm. The dialog says what it does: it keeps the history and hides this contact from active lists.

You'll be asked for a Reason, which starts as "No longer active". It's for your own records. It has to be at least three characters long.

Everything about them stays. Their bookings, invoices, documents, messages and notes are all still there, and their money still counts in your finance report.

What an archived contact can't do

Their record opens with an Archived contact notice reading "Hidden from active lists. The history stays." While a contact is archived:

• Their details can't be edited
• You can't create a proposal, booking, invoice, contract or questionnaire for them
• You can't send them a message

You can still read everything, and you can still add, edit and delete contact notes. If you need to change a phone number or send them something, restore them first.

Restoring

Change the status filter to Archived or All contacts, open the person, and choose Restore contact in the Archived contact notice at the top of their record. That notice is the only place the button lives, because an archived contact has no action menu. They return to your active list exactly as they were.

If someone comes back after two years, restore rather than creating a new contact. Their history is worth having.

You can't delete a contact

There's no delete. Archiving is the way to get someone out of your list.

Contacts are attached to invoices, payments and signed contracts, so the record stays.

You can't merge two contacts

If the same person exists twice, CoreHue can't fuse the two records into one.

What it does instead is warn you before it happens. When you type an email address into the Add contact form that an active contact already uses, a Possible matches panel appears with a Use contact button. Taking it is how you avoid duplicates in the first place.

Your list marks the ones that slipped through. A row whose email address is on more than one contact says "Also used by another contact".

If you already have duplicates, pick the record with the history worth keeping. Copy anything useful off the other one before you archive it, because archived contacts can't be edited. Then archive the spare. Its history stays intact and out of your way.

Keeping the list clean

Some habits that help:

Archive dead inquiries in batches. Once a quarter, filter to leads, look at anything untouched for six months, and archive.

Take the duplicate warning seriously. Ten seconds there saves the mess above.

Archive rather than avoid. A contact you're leaving in the list because you're not sure is a contact making your list less useful.