Using Find Contact

You can use the Find Contact option from anywhere in the Web Client. You can search for both companies and people.

  • To find a person, enter the name, phone number, or email address and choose Go. InterAction displays the matching contacts.
  • To find a company, enter the company name, phone number, or email address and choose Go. InterAction displays the matching contacts.

Tip: When opening most Web Client pages, you can immediately start typing a name in the Find Contact bar without needing to click in the field.

See the following topics:

Find Contacts by Name

You can enter a person’s name in any one of the following formats:

  • First Name Last Name
  • Last Name, First Name
  • Last Name, First Initial
  • Last Name (finds both people and companies)
  • ,First Name (finds all people with the first name)

Finding a Person by Name

You can enter a company name as normal text. For example, you would enter telenorth. You do not need to enter the complete name – for example, entering tele finds the company Telenorth. InterAction searches both the company name and the Also Known As name.

For more about company names, see What Happens When I Search by Company Name?.

For both types of names, if you are not sure how to spell the name, select the Sounds like check box. This will search for all names that sound similar to the spelling entered. Note, it is best to phonetically spell out the whole name of the company when using this option for finding companies.

Finding a Company by Name

Note that you can enter multiple names separated by the word “OR” to find all contacts with any of the specified names. For example entering “Tarnoff OR Roberts” would find both Jane Tarnoff and Ed Roberts.

Find Contacts by Phone Number

You can enter all or part of a phone number in the Find Contact box.

When entering a complete phone number in the Find Contact box, use the same format you normally do when creating new phone numbers in InterAction:

  • If you normally enter numbers without any formatting and InterAction automatically formats them as American phone numbers, then you can enter just the numbers to perform your search. In this case, entering 6305551212 finds contacts with the phone number (630) 555-1212. You don’t need to enter the parentheses or dash.
  • If you normally include the formatting for phone numbers when you enter them, and they are displayed using that formatting, then you need to use the same formatting when searching. In this case, you would need to enter the formatted number (630) 555-1212 to find it (i.e., with the parentheses and dash).

Note that the entry must be all numbers (0 through 9) for InterAction to consider it a phone number. If you include any letters, InterAction searches by name.

You can also enter just a portion of the phone number. For example, entering 555 would find contacts that have 555 as any part of their phone numbers, such as (480) 555-9695 or (617) 444-5557.

You can also use wildcard characters. For example, use the asterisk (*) to represent the unknown part of the phone number. Entering (630)* finds all contacts with a phone number that starts with (630).

When using wildcard characters, you should include the phone format. For example, entering just 630* will not find phone numbers that actually begin with (630).

When searching by phone number, InterAction finds all contacts with matching phone numbers. Note that the matching phone number might not be the primary phone that appears in the results grid. View the contact details for the contact to see all of the contact’s phones and addresses.

Finding Contacts by Phone Number

Find Contacts by Email Address

You can enter an email address in the Find Contact box to find any people and/or companies with a matching email address. When entering an email address, include the “at” symbol (@). Otherwise, InterAction considers the criteria to be a name.

You can use wildcards to search for partial email addresses. For example, you would enter *@telenorth.com to find all email addresses that have the text telenorth.com after the @ sign. All of the following email addresses would be considered matches:

  • jmatthews@telenorth.com
  • jtarnoff@telenorth.com
  • bwalters@telenorth.com
  • ajtarnoff@telenorth.com
  • “Jane Tarnoff” <jtarnoff@telenorth.com>

In contrast, searching for j*@telenorth.com would find email addresses that include a j followed by other characters anywhere before the @ sign and also have telenorth.com after the @ sign. For example, this would find the following:

  • jmatthews@telenorth.com
  • jtarnoff@telenorth.com
  • ajtarnoff@telenorth.com
  • “Jane Tarnoff” <jtarnoff@telenorth.com>

Note: Technically, the Web Client performs a contains search when looking for email addresses. This means that it finds any contacts with at least one email address that contains the characters you are searching for.

Note that InterAction only searches for email addresses; other electronic addresses (Web sites, FTP addresses, or other) are not included.

Finding Contacts by Email Address