Create or Edit a Contact

You can create new contacts or edit someone's current record from within the Contacts Admin area of Stison. 

Navigate to the Contacts menu item and then click on the sub menu: Contacts. From here you can either edit an existing contact by clicking on their name or create a new one by selecting the Create New button.

In either instance you will be faced with a new screen that will either be filled in with details or ready for you to add new information in.

The minimum information that you can add to this screen is their First Name and Last Name. The rest is technically optional.

The type information at the top is important if the contact is a Customer or a Contributor as it allows them to appear in the correct areas in the Publishing Management system. You should also check the Production Section if you wish them to be able to be added to a production schedule, or the Royalties Section if they are to be a Payee [Note Contributors will automatically appear in Royalties]. 

You have the option to add a photograph and other rich content, including biographical information, titles and qualifications, a range of contact details including email addresses, phone numbers, websites and mailing addresses. As you are probably going to be generating AIs from your system, then using the options in this screen will be valuable.

You have the option to allocate an 'internal name' to contacts. Stison will use the internal name throughout the system, but in the contact record, their 'official' name will remain the name entered in the 'First name' and 'Last name' fields. To access this field, select the blue arrows by the 'Last Name' field, and more fields will open up:

To add a contributor biography, navigate to Notes/ Conferences and click on the second tab called Biographical Note, as shown in the following screen shot:

Beneath the Notes/Conferences section, you also have the ability to further organise your contacts by more specific tags. This will offer a second layer of contact categorisation on your system, as shown in the screenshot below:

You can add these items to your system via General - Tags in your main Stison menu.

Don't forget to click on Create or Update when you are finished in order to save the data. Once you've clicked Create, the system will expand into further tabs. Follow the instructions for how to Expand the Information About Your Contact.

The following screen shot demonstrates what this part of the system looks like with some useful data filled in, including a photograph of the contact.

Tips and Tricks

Aliases: You can now save a contact under an Alias, and indicate what their real name is within the contact record. To do so, enter the Alias in the 'First name' and 'Last name' fields. Next, open the 'More Details' field, check the 'Alias / Nom de Plume' field, and fill out the 'Real Name' field.