Contact Status

Contact Status

Contact Data Expiration

All contacts in your Membership Toolkit Account have a Contact Data Expiration Date. When a user creates an account or an inactive user logs in and verifies their family's information, a data expiration date is set for that family's record. You can set this date by going to:
  • Admin > Account Settings > Dates & Times
  • Edit the "Contact Data Expires" field.
*Most schools and parent organizations set their user data expiration date for June 30. This allows them to assure that all of the information in their system is current and it provides them with a current permission to publish form.

Contact Statuses & Definitions

1.  Active - current in the system. Once the Contact Data Expiration Date is reached the contact status becomes outdated. Account Owners can determine how many days contacts will be outdated before becoming Inactive. Go to Admin > Account Settings > Dates & Times > Contact Inactive Interval.

2.  Outdated - A contact status is outdated once the contact data expiration date is reached. This status allows organizations to know which contacts were previously active and need to update or confirm their information. Organizations can customize how long a contact status will be Outdated before it is made Inactive. Once that time period expires, the contact will automatically be moved to Inactive (recommended) unless you make a different selection under your Account Settings.
Outdated contacts' information will still be included in your directory
.
When a contact is Outdated, they will need to log back in to their account to become Active again and they will need to confirm or update:
  • parent & student information
  • permission to publish information
3.  Inactive - not active/current in the system. All of their information, including past sales & shopping cart information, is still available.

Volunteers that are Inactive will show up as "stale" to current volunteer forms and Contact information will no longer be presented in the directory.

When a contact is Inactive, they will need to log back in to their account to become Active again and they will need to confirm or update:
  •  parent & student information
  •  permission to publish information
*Sales, information, and volunteer forms will not load until they have completed these two steps.

4.  External - These are Guest Users who have checked out on a Guest Form.

5.  Cancelled - This status must be selected by an Admin and essentially means that you want to remove this contact from your database.  It is used for families that are no longer associated with your organization or that have duplicate contact records in the system. These contacts will:
  • not show up on any reports.
  • have pending orders removed.
  • be removed from all volunteer opportunities.
  • not show up in your "search" results on the dashboard.
  • previous orders remain on the record and they remain attached to the form report and ordered items report.
When an Admin changes a contact's status to Cancelled, they will then be presented with the question: "Add emails to Do Not Contact list?"

Selecting "Yes - add emails to the Do Not Contact List" will add all email addresses associated with this contact to the "Do Not Contact" list, preventing any emails from reaching this contact. This should be reserved for contacts who request themselves to be removed from all communication from your organization.

They can become Active again if they log back into the system. At this time they will be given the opportunity to take their emails off of the Do Not Contact list.
If you have a family that has duplicate contact cards in your database:
  • Choose which contact card should be their active contact card.
  • Update the second contact card to "Cancelled."
  • Select "No, do NOT add emails to Do Not Contact List."

Editing A Contact's Status/Expiration Date

All contacts in your Membership Toolkit Account have a Contact Data Expiration Date. When a user creates an account or an inactive user logs in and verifies their family's information, a data expiration date is set for that family's record.

To view this information, go to People > Contacts, then select the family's record you wish to view or type their name in the Search field on the Dashboard.

On the Contact Information tab you will find the family's "Contact Status" at the bottom right. Select the Edit button. There you can manually change the contact's status or change the date when their data will expire.

Once this date passes, the contact will move to the "Outdated" status until the next time they log in to the system. They will then be asked to re-verify their information and their status will return to "Active".



Editing Contact Expiration Dates in Bulk

If you need to update the Contact Data Expiration Date of multiple users at one time:
  • Go to People > Parent List.
  • Use the "apply filter" button to filter the list for the contacts you wish to update. (In most cases you will be editing all Active contacts to a have a new expiration date or all Outdated Contacts to become Active again.)
  • Select All or Select Individual Contacts to update.


  • Use the "update checked..." button to select your new Contact Data Expiration Date in the Data Expires field.
  • Click the "Update" button.


Setting Contacts to Outdated or Inactive

During the Year End Transition process, Admins should plan to reset the Contacts by moving all Active Contacts to the Outdated status. For steps on how to do this, go to the Year End Transition Articles in our Knowledge Base.

After a Contact's status has been set to Outdated or Inactive, the next time the Contact logs in to your site, their record is automatically switched back to Active. All of their past shopping records will be available. They will be required to confirm the following:
  • Update parent information
  • Update student information
  • Update publish preferences and permission to publish
If you want to have all Contacts automatically set to Outdated or Inactive on a certain date, Admins with Account Owner status can:
  • Go to Admin > Account Utilities.
  • Select a date. If you want to set all of your contacts to Outdated/Inactive at one time, use today's date. Or, if all new accounts in the last 2 weeks are good, and you only want to set contacts from before then to Outdated/Inactive, choose a date 2 weeks ago.
  • Select Outdated or Inactive from the drop down menu, then hit "Go."


Setting Contacts Back to Active

For organizations with an "Opt-Out" policy, Account Owners can set all contacts back to Active Status at the end of the Contact Interval period. (The default for this setting is Inactive.)

We recommend updating this setting BEFORE your contacts expire for this year.
  1. Go to Admin > Account Settings > Dates & Times.

Ignoring the Outdated Interval

You also have the option to adjust your settings to "Ignore" the shift from Outdated to Inactive once the number of days in the specified Interval has been reached.
  1. Go to Admin > Account Settings > Dates & Times. (Account Owners only)
  2. Changes to this option will only apply if you are still within the Interval period.

Student Status

Student Status is important because many forms and reports are dependent on this information. Keep in mind:

  • Forms that are set to present as "one per student" will only be presented to Active Students.
  • Inactive students no longer show up in the Directory.
  • Parents can only delete/remove a student from their record IF there have been no sales connected to that student.

Making Students Active/Inactive

There are two ways to make students Active/Inactive.

1.  Admins can go to People > Students > Select Student Name > Update Checked. You can update the student's status, grade level, and teacher. You can do this for one student or for a group of selected students all at once.
Example #1:  If you have a class of 5th graders that have graduated from your school, you can update their status all at once. To do this, filter your list of students to show all of the 5th graders. Click the check box above the list to select the whole list. Update the checked records by changing their Status to Inactive. If you have an Alumni option for the students' Grade, it would be a good idea to select that as well. Please note, once you Update the records, it cannot be undone! 

Example #2:  If your school has to hire an additional teacher after school has already started, you can filter the students by that grade level, select the ones that will be in the new class, then update the teacher for those students all at once.


2.  Parents can go to their list of Open Forms and select the Parent and Student Information or Family Information Form. Choosing "Next Step" at the bottom of the first page will take them to the Student page. Here they can make their student "Inactive" if they are no longer a current student or choose to "Reactivate" their student. They can also add new students to their account.



Remove Student
In some cases, parents will see a "Remove Student" button on their student form. The "remove" button is presented if the student has not been associated with any forms (forms that are set Per Student) that have been submitted. Once a student is associated with a form, they're on the record permanently, because otherwise removing them would cause other data to become invalid. The "remove" button is there to fix mistakes (such as I accidentally created a duplicate student.)

In the case of a line item being set Per Student, the form should be set Per Family, therefore it is attached to the family record. Only the line item is attached to the student and therefore doesn't tag the order or the form. If a parent were to remove the student after this type of purchase, his/her name will still present on the order as well as the form report, provided you set to "show data associated with order." 

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