Comparing Your Contacts with the Firm's Contacts

In addition to reviewing updates for your contacts, you can also compare an individual contact with the firm’s version of the contact at any time. This presents the information side-by-side and lets you copy information from the firm to your contact and vice-versa.

When you compare the contacts, you may note differences in the following situations:

  1. The contact has pending updates waiting to be reviewed. These are changes that others in your organization made to the firm’s version that you have not yet reviewed. You can either compare the contacts, or use the Review My Contact Updates dialog box as described in Reviewing Updates to Your Contacts.

    The Web Client alerts you to contacts with pending updates in several ways, including a link on the Home page, a link on My Contacts page, and a different icon for the contact ().

  2. You previously reviewed updates for the contact and chose not to accept the firm’s change. At this point, your version and the firm’s version are now different.

  3. You updated one of your contacts, but that change was rejected by a data steward in your organization. In this case, your change is removed from the firm’s version of the contact, but your version is not changed. Your version and the firm’s version are now different.

  4. You updated one of your contacts, but your firm’s Data Change Management rules require that the change be reviewed before the firm’s version of the contact can be updated. In this case, your version of the contact is updated, but the firm’s version is not changed until the review takes place.

In all of these cases, you can display the differences in the Compare Contacts dialog box.

Comparing a Contact

[A] The information from your version of the contact and the information from the firm’s version are presented in side-by-side in these columns.

[B] You can use the Copy buttons to copy your version to the firm’s contact, or vice-versa.

Compare Your Version of a Contact with the Firm's Version

  1. Display the Contact Overview page for the contact.

  2. Choose View > Contact Differences to open the Compare Contacts dialog box.

  3. If there are any differences between the contacts, your version of the information displays on the left and the firm’s version displays on the right. You can use the Copy buttons to copy your version to the firm’s contact, or vice-versa.

  4. Choose Save to save your changes and close the dialog box.

What Fields Does the Web Client Compare When Displaying Differences?

Your version of a contact has fields for name, address, phone, and email information. These fields match fields on the firm’s version of the contact. If the information in one of the fields on your contact is different from the information in the corresponding field on the firm’s version, that is considered a difference that is displayed in the Compare Contacts dialog box.

The following fields on your contacts match with fields contain differing information:

  • Title
  • First Name
  • Middle Name
  • Last Name
  • Suffix
  • Goes By
  • Company
  • Job Title
  • Department
  • Business Address
  • Business Phone
  • Business2 Phone
  • Business Fax
  • Business Mobile
  • Business Pager
  • Business Email
  • Business Web Site
  • Business Assistant Name
  • Business Assistant Phone
  • Home Address
  • Home Phone
  • Home Fax
  • Home Email

For more about the information stored with both types of contacts, see Name Information and Addresses, Phones, and Electronic Addresses .

How is Comparing Contacts Different from Reviewing Contact Updates?

The InterAction Web Client provides two different methods for comparing your version of a contact to the firm’s version:

  • Review My Contact Updates
  • View Contact Differences

Both methods show you the information for your contact and the firm’s version side-by-side. However, the purpose of these two features is different:

  • Review My Contact Updates is only available when there are new updates to review. New updates occur when others in your organization change the firm’s version of the contact. Once you have reviewed the updates for a contact and either accepted or rejected the changes, the contact has no more updates available to review.

    Also, the Web Client notifies you when you have new updates to review with a link on the Home page and the My Contacts page.

  • View Contact Differences is always available. This options shows you any differences at the present moment. These differences can occur for several reasons. For example, if you rejected a change made by someone else, your version and the firm’s version will be different. For a list of situations that can cause differences, refer back to Comparing Your Contacts with the Firm's Contacts.