Managing a Single Directory Contact
What's on This Page:
About Managing a Single Directory Contact
When you are inside the Directory Contacts tab, you can edit individual contacts by selecting the checkbox to their left.
When you select a directory contact, a menu opens to the right containing information about the contact.
Contact Attributes
The Attributes section contains editable contact information and information about whether the contact is globally opted in.
The following fields’ values (not field names) can be edited by selecting the current value:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Reference ID (External Data Reference)
- Phone Number
- Language
Under All Attributes, this section also contains Embedded Data saved to the contact. Here the values can be edited by highlighting or clicking into them.
Adding Embedded Data to a Contact
Sometimes, instead of just editing a value, you’ll want to add a whole new Embedded Data to the contact. Doing so is quick and easy.
- Select the contact.
- Navigate to Attributes.
- Click Add Attribute.
- Type a name for the Embedded Data.
- Click Add.
- Type a value.
- Click Add.
Lists a Contact Belongs To
The Lists section has every mailing list the contact is currently in. This section will display whether the contact was opted out, and gives you the option of changing this. You can also choose to just remove the contact from the mailing list.
Contact Statistics
The Statistics section contains information on the number of times the contact has been sent invites, and when.
- Last Invite Received: The date of the last invitation received.
- Last Response: The date of the last response the individual completed. Surveys started but not completed do not count here.
- Total Invites: How many invites the contact has received in total, regardless of list or distribution.
- Total Responses: How many responses the contact has given in total, regardless of survey.
- Response Rate: The percentage of the time that this contact responds to surveys they are invited to.
Touchpoint Timeline
When you click on a directory contact, you will be able to access a timeline of all the touchpoints with the contact. This is a great way to get a broad visual view of all the times you’ve contacted someone, and all the feedback they’ve provided.
The timeline is only viewable when you select one contact at a time; selecting multiple contacts will hide this feature.
Accessing the Timeline
Once you select the desired contact, the timeline will appear on the bottom-right, no matter what section of the contact information menu you are on.
Click a touchpoint icon to learn what type of touchpoints occurred on that date.
More details can be seen about each touchpoint when you open them up, as explained in the next section.
Opening up Touchpoints for Review
Click the arrow on the upper-right of a contact’s information menu to visit their touchpoints in greater detail.
Click Show Details to learn more about a touchpoint.
A survey invitation or a plain email will provide information on the survey sent, whether the email was opened, the date, and more.
A survey response touchpoint will actually show you the contact’s response! Scroll down through the response to read all the answers provided. Survey responses will also allow you to navigate back and forth between the stats for the Invite and stats for the Survey Response.
Contact Actions
Contact actions can be accessed by clicking the wrench next to a contact’s name in the menu.
These actions include:

Adding & Removing the Contact from a List
Adding a Contact to a List
- Select the contact(s) you wish to add.
- Click the options icon.
- Select Add to List.
- Select the list you wish to add them to.
- Click Add.
Removing a Contact from a List
Transactional Data
Say you are running a customer satisfaction program where you ask customers for their feedback after each time they visit your store. A single customer can fill out a customer satisfaction form many times, and you’re interested in seeing all of this data.
Typically when this data is saved as Embedded Data, every new response to the same field will overwrite the old data. However, the Transactional Data feature in XM Directory ensures that this data, while overwritten in the survey, is stored in one place for each contact.
Example: The customer Barnaby Smith is a contact in your directory. He has an Embedded Data field called Location equal to Provo, to indicate the store he just visited you at. While setting up your contact import automation, you decide that Location should be imported as field type Transactional Data, since Location changes often, and your goal is to have a historical timeline of customer interactions.
Over the following month, Barnaby visits your Lehi, American Fork, and Provo locations. Each time your contact automation runs, it uploads new info into the directory, but Barnaby’s Embedded Data value for Location remains Provo. Instead, when you view his Transactional Data using the steps below, you see dates and times when Location has been marked as Lehi, American Fork, and Provo.
Viewing Transactional Data
Transactional data is included with other Touchpoint Timeline information.
- Select the contact(s) whose transactions you wish to view.
- Click the arrow on the right.
- Any touchpoint labeled Interaction is a transaction.
- Click Show Details to learn about the values modified in this transaction.
- Fields will be listed on the days the transactions occurred. You will be able to look across transactions for changes.
Using Transactional Data
The following are links out to API documentation on Transactional Data.
Opt-out & Opt-in
Opting a contact out of the entire directory will prevent them from receiving any mailing from any list they are a part of. They also will not be able to receive emails sent to just them. You can reverse this at any time by opting them back in.
Once you’ve selected the contact(s) you wish to opt out or opt in, click the dropdown and select either Opt-out or Opt-in.
A warning window will ask if you’re sure.
Delete Contact
Deleting a contact from the directory removes them from the directory and all of the mailing lists they are in. Once you delete a contact, they are irretrievable.
Once you’ve selected the contact(s) you wish to delete, click the dropdown and select Delete Contact.