Feature Update: Adding, Replacing & Prioritizing Contact Addresses

We're excited to announce updates to TextIt's contacts module. The contacts module, which comprises all logic related to the people who interact with your account via a channel, allows you to assign them any number of attributes, including the individual's name, phone number, and any other information pertinent to your use case. What's more, each contact's attributes can be updated in real time as they interact with your workflows, or through our contacts API endpoint, which can update values using information provided by any of the other web services your organization might be using. 

Added Flexibility - Contact Addresses

Each contact has an address, or URN, to which messages from your TextIt account are sent. Addresses represent the ways in which you can connect with each contact. The most common address type is a Phone Number, though a contact can also have a Twitter Handle, Telegram Identifier, Email Address, and any External Identifier you wish to add. Before, contacts were limited to one address per address type, though they could be assigned multiple address types. Now, each contact can be assigned multiple addresses of the same type - meaning you can now assign multiple phone numbers to a single contact. This addresses the concerns of users who deploy in countries where contacts frequently change phone numbers to take advantage of rotating airtime deals, or possess dual SIM phones or even multiple phones. In these cases, a contact's addresses can be prioritized, in which case they'll appear on a contact's profile page in the order in which they're prioritized:


Additionally, only a contact's prioritized address will appear in the contacts tab view: 

Adding and Prioritizing Addresses

To accommodate these changes, we've restructured the settings menu in each contact's profile page:


The "Edit" option brings up the new Update Contact dialogue, which is where you can add and edit each contact's default fields, including their names, groups, and addresses:


The Add Connection menu provides an input for you to add connections of all types. One connection can be added at a time; multiple connections will need to be added one at a time. 

The upward-pointing arrows to the right of the address fields are what you'll use to prioritize your contact's addresses. TextIt recognizes the topmost address as the priority, which is an important indicator for outbound messages. Let's assume your account has phone, Twitter and Telegram channels connected and you send a message to 3 contacts, each with a different address priority. The channel that corresponds with each contact's address priority will send them the message. That is to say, you'd have 3 channels processing 1 send message request; your Twitter channel will send to those with a Twitter address priority, your Telegram channel will send to those with a Telegram address priority, and so on. Otherwise, channel priority behavior remains the same: A contact's address type priority will dictate which channel type will send messages to the contact. If you have multiple channels of the same type connected to your account, the channel that the contact last initiated contact with will be prioritized. Contacts can be locked-in to a relationship with a specific channel (they'll only received messages from this channel) under three conditions: 
  1. You have multiple channels of the same type connected to your account. 
  2. The contact's address type priority corresponds with the channel type (e.g. phone number) that possess multiple channels (e.g. multiple phone numbers).
  3. The contact initiates contact through an incoming message.

Custom Field Editing 

With the Update Contact dialogue now exclusively dedicated to editing a contact's default fields and addresses, custom fields have been given their own dialogue. Whereas custom fields can be created via the "Manage Fields" button on the contacts tab, they can now be manually updated via the settings menu in each contact's profile: 


Simply replace the existing value and click "Ok": 


Of course, contact fields can also be edited via a workflow containing an Update the Contact action. 

Contact Imports & Exports

Contacts can be imported with multiple address types, but only one address for each type: 

Contact addresses can be added via an import, so long as the UUID column contains the UUID(s) of the contact(s). Contact UUIDs can be obtained by exporting your contacts or using List Contacts request in the API Explorer: 

Replacing Addresses

At this time, contact addresses may only be replaced via the Contacts API Endpoint or a contact’s profile page as outlined above.

As always, if you have any questions about what's possible or suggestions on how to make things easier, let us know! Look out for additional updates in the coming weeks.