Who can use this feature?
System & User administrators only
Your organisation on Qwil Messenger is composed of two user types Staff and Clients with Contact Books that are used to connect users to each other. You, as an administrator, are the one creating the contact book on the phone so that your clients know who they can start a chat with.
A Contact Book is the address book of each client. Both staff and clients can belong to many contact books. In practice, you will create at least one contact book per client or client relationship. Just like your coverage model, not all staff see all clients and not all clients can contact all staff. This is key for privacy.
Do refer to our Guide to onboarding your users to Qwil Messenger for further details on how to replicate your coverage model in Qwil and understand the relationship between staff, contact books and clients.
What to expect?
- To import the contact books you will need to populate and upload an Excel Template (in CSV format) to our system. It is easy to do and will save you time.
- Staff are not required to be in a contact book when first invited as they can search the directory. Staff can only see a client contact if they are in a contact book with them to ensure privacy at all times.
- For Clients, a contact book per client or relationship has to be set up with at least one active Staff user in it. This means that the staff user must have accepted their invitation before you can invite a client.
Tip: To go faster, you can create one Contact book per client. Simply complete the Client CSV and for the Contact Group CSV paste in the client's full name "Robert Brown" as group name and "RobertBrownGroup" as group identifier. Paste in First name and Last name from your completed Client CSV in a separate spreadsheet in columns A and B. Add a column C with formula =A1&A2&"Group", then paste it in the Contact Group CSV in column A and B. You should have as many rows in the Client CSV and Contact Group CSV.
- Later on, you can update which users belong to each contact book if required and even change the name of the contact book.
- If you prefer watching a video and learn everything there is to know in 25 minutes, click here.
Populate and upload your contact books Excel (CSV) file
When you upload your contact books you can also add staff users to each contact book using the Excel (CSV) file. You should add at least one staff member to each contact book so you can invite clients in the next step. We recommend adding staff to the contact book using their email. See the table below for further details.
- From your desktop, click on the admin menu.
- Click on Contact books.
- On the top right-hand side click on Import.
- Download the CSV Template.
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Populate the CSV template. Make sure you put the following values in each of the columns as per the example and the explanation in the table below:
Make sure there are no spaces or special characters in Group Identifiers (i.e. '-() etc) i.e. Patel Group becomes PatelGroup (case sensitive) or John Smith-Parker Group becomes JohnSmithParkerGroup. If easier, initially create one Contact Group per client using their FirstnameLastname as Group Name and Identifier from the Client CSV you created (see tip above).
Here you can add the staff users to each group using their email (column F) or identifier/ UUID. You must include at least one staff member per group. The staff you add to each group will become the contact of the clients you will invite next. - Upload your populated CSV using the Select file button.
Tip: You can select the checkbox "Ignore entries with identifiers already in use" to avoid creating duplicates. If you do not click this checkbox and you try to upload a duplicated record you will see an error.
- Once you have uploaded your file click Import.
- Click Done. Your contact books will be created.
Note: You do not need to add all your staff to contact books. You can always update your contact book memberships later on.
Important - Wait until your staff users have accepted their invitation.
You must wait until your staff users have accepted their invitation to join Qwil Messenger before you can invite your clients to the platform. This is because clients must belong to a contact book where there is at least one active staff user.
You can review all your pending invitations by using the filter on your staff users list.
There is the option to upload a different CSV file for the client relationships that each staff user covers - this means that you do not need to wait for each and every one of your staff users to accept their invitation before you can start uploading your clients.
You will get an error code indicating the row where it applies - this could be extra space in contact groups identifier or if that group exists.
What is next?
You always update which users belong to each contact book if required. This can be done manually see Add contact book members, or it can be done with an Excel CSV file see Import contact book memberships.
You are now ready for step 3 and importing clients. Because of the way Qwil Messenger replicates your client relationships, you need to follow a specific order when adding groups and users: