Think of ‘Contacts’ as just being shorthand for the entire collection of business names, addresses (physical office address, PO Box, construction site, etc.), email addresses, phone numbers, and the people that are related to your project.

In Crows Nest, like most CRM systems, a business is an entity that more often than not, has many people, addresses, phone numbers, and other attributes associated with it. This relationship (cardinality) between the business (think: brick-and-mortar) and these other entities is called a one-to-many relationship (1:N).

So, simply put, a business can have one or many contacts (think: people) that work at the business, as well as multiple addresses, phone numbers, emails, etc.

Some businesses specialize in a very niche industry, while others specialize in providing a broader range of products and/or services. In Crows Nest, we use a variety of dimensional datasets to identify and segment businesses and contacts by:

• Roles - Use roles on the 'Business' form to connect employees from your organization to the business based on their relationship with the company. For example, a Sales Representative from your organization may be linked to a business as the Account Manager handling and RFQs.

• Title (think: Superintendent, Project Manager, Engineer, Architect, Controller, etc.)

• Labels - Can be used to segment, filter, and sort businesses. A couple of examples are:

  • Using labels to identify what industry the business is in (think: industries, such as General Contractor, Architecture, Metal Fabricator, Lumber, Hardware, manufacturer, etc.)

  • Or, for identifying what sector(s) the business specializes in, such as Residential, Multi-family, Commercial, Corporate, Civil, Cultural, Hospitality, Entertainment, Health & Sciences, Education, etc.

Chances are, you have much of this ‘Contact’ information available throughout your organization. It may live in a CRM or bulk-email-service provider such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Dynamics 365, NetSuite, Omnisend, Constant Contact, or Mailchimp to name a few. How about your accounting system such as Sage, QuickBooks, or Xero? Regardless, the more of this data you can export, the better. Crows Nest can import your contact information from any comma-separated-values data file.

Adding a Business

Businesses and contacts can be added to Crows Nest independently of one another. However, because businesses often have multiple contacts associated with the organization, we’ll start this tutorial by adding a business and we’ll cover how to add contacts further down the page.

1. From the Business form, click ‘Add new business'.

2. In the pop-up, enter the name of the new business.
   (Note: The business name will likely appear on an RFQ, an Invoice, an RFI, or a Proposal. So, use the formal name of the business, rather than shortening or abbreviating it. There’s a separate field for storing a shortened name, nickname, or abbreviation.)

3. Click ‘OK’.
   
   

   Open

   

   Businesses from on the ribbon menu

4. Click the link in the ‘Abbrev. Name:’ field.

5. Enter an abbreviated name or nickname (allowing for a narrower column than the business' full name on forms & reports where space is limited).

6. Click ‘OK’.
   
   

   Open

   

    

7. Right-click in the address panel.

8. Select 'Edit' from the context menu.

    

9. Enter the Street Address, City, State/Province, and Postal Code.

10. Click ‘OK’.
    
    

     

11. Right-click in the ‘Labels’ panel to add labels that will help you with segmentation, grouping, sorting, and searching records throughout Crows Nest.

12. Select items from the list. Note: you can repeat steps 11 and 12 to add multiple labels. Right-click in the list of labels to add a new label.

13. Type or copy-and-paste the URL of the business' website from your web browser.

14. If you have an account with the company, you can enter it here for easy reference when procuring materials and supplies.

15. Right-click on Other Address, Phone, Email, or Contacts to add additional information.
    
    

Adding a Contact

We started by adding the businesses. Now we’ll add contacts to Crows Nest. As part of the process, we’ll cover how to associate the contact with a business.

Begin by navigating to the Contacts from the ribbon menu.

1. Click ‘Add new contact’.

2. Enter the first name, last name, and job title.

3. Click the green next to ‘Business’ to open the ‘Select a Business’ pop-up window.

4. Select the business that the contact is associated with. Note: Use the Search field or ‘Filter by Label’ to narrow down the list as it gets longer.

5. Click ‘OK’.
   
   

    

    

6. Click the green next to ‘Phone’ to add a phone number.

7. Click the green next to ‘Email’ to add an email address.

8. Click the green next to ‘Address’ (Optional - to add an address for the contact if other than the business' address).

9. Click ‘OK’.
   
   

    

10. To add additional phone numbers, email addresses, addresses, or Businesses to the contact, right-click on the folder.

11. Click ‘Add’.
    
    

Adding Contacts and Businesses to your Project

Once you’ve created a new project, it’s time to associate all of the people and companies that are related to it in one way or another.

Associating Key Contacts and Key Businesses ensures you have all the necessary names, phone numbers, and email addresses for your project at your fingertips whether using the desktop application, or the Crows Nest Mobile app.

Begin by navigating to the ‘Contacts’ tab on the Projects form from the ribbon menu.

1. Select the project you want to add contacts to.

2. Right-click in the Key Contacts/Businesses panel to open a pop-up context menu.

3. From the context menu, Click ‘Add Key Business’.
   
   

    

4. Select the project you want to add.

5. Click ‘OK’.
   
   

    

6. Select a label from the list of Keys. (Note: right-click to add, rename, or delete keys from the list)

7. Click ‘OK’.
   
   

    

8. Repeat the process with Steps 1 and 2 above, but now, select ‘Add Key Contact’.
   
   

    

9. Select a contact from the pop-up list of contacts.

10. Click ‘OK’.
    
    

     

11. Select a Key label from the pop-up list of labels (note: right-click to add, rename, or delete labels).

12. Click ‘OK’.
    
    

     

13. Repeat steps 1-12 to add as many key contacts and key businesses as necessary to provide your team with information at their fingertips.

14. Right-click ‘Addresses’ to add one or more addresses associated with your project. This is where you want to store your project’s site address(s).

15. Click ‘Add Address’.
    
    

     

16. Provide a Description for your address, such as, “Site”.

17. Complete the address (Note: Provide complete, accurate addresses whenever possible, so the addresses map accurately.)

18. Click ‘OK’.
    
    

19. Right-click an address to bring up a pop-up context menu where you can choose ‘Get Directions’, ‘Copy to Clipboard’, ‘Edit’, or ‘Delete’.

20. Select ‘Get Directions’ from the pop-up context menu and Crows Nest will launch a browser window to map the address, or if working from the mobile app, will launch your default mapping app.
    
    

     

     

21. To add additional phone numbers, email addresses, or create email groups, right-click ‘Phone’, ‘Email’, or ‘Email Groups’.
    
    

Importing Contacts from another Project

If you have a new project and all of the contacts and businesses are the same as another project in Crows Nest, you can import them from the other project. Depending on the number of businesses, contacts, and ‘Key’ businesses/contacts there are, this can save you considerable time.

1. Right-click in the ‘Key Contacts/Businesses' panel or right-click ‘Phone’, Email, or Email Groups to open a pop-up context menu.

2. Click ‘Import from Project’.
   
   

    

3. To Delete any attribute, simply right-click, and;

4. Select ‘Delete’.