Working lists are folders that end users can create and manage in the Web Client. They are typically used as temporary collections of contacts associated with a particular task. Working lists normally are accessible only to a limited number of users – they are almost never available to all users.
Examples of working lists include the following:
- A call down list of people that a particular user or work group in your organization needs to contact in a given week.
- A list of employee candidates a particular department is interviewing for a position.
- A personal project for a professional that requires more functionality than what is available with his or her My Contacts list and categories.
- Lists for other departmental projects, such as a list of employees involved in planning office events.
- Lists for some events that don’t necessarily need to be marketing events – such as events organized by a particular department rather than the marketing department.
The key distinguishing features of working lists are the following:
- They are usually temporary in nature – most working lists are only needed for a short time. If the list needs to be kept in the system indefinitely (such as the list for a yearly event), it should probably be a marketing list or a contact type.
- They are specific to an individual or a small group of users. If the list needs to be available across the entire organization and represents a key means of categorizing contacts, it should probably be a contact type.
- They always appear in the Web Client for any user with at least read access to the list. You cannot block them from the Web Client. If you need a folder that should be available only in the Windows Client (perhaps to store behind the scenes information), you should create an administrative folder instead.
- They cannot use Data Change Management. Instead, they use access rights to determine who can add and change the contacts on the list. Note that the access rights work differently for working lists than they do for the other classes of folders. For details, see Web Client Security for Working Lists.
- They are the only class of folder that users can create in the Web Client. Contact types and marketing lists can only be created using the Windows Client.
Users can use the Working Lists page to see a list of the working lists they have access to read. For details, see Managing Working Lists in the Web Client.
You can change the term used for working lists throughout InterAction. For details, see Change Terms Used for Contact Types, Working Lists, Marketing Lists.
You can use the Windows Client to push a working list out to the Frequently Used Working Lists for end users. For details, see Adding Folders to Users' Frequently Used Lists.
Users in both the Web Client and the Windows Client can add list-specific information such as phones, addresses, and activities to a working list. For details, see “List-Specific Information in Working Lists,” later.
A working list can include contacts that can only be viewed by users with access to the list. For details, see Working List-Only Contacts (Sourcing Contacts in Working Lists).
The following sections describe managing working lists in the Windows Client and the Web Client:
- Managing Working Lists in the Windows Client
- Managing Working Lists in the Web Client
- Web Client Security for Working Lists
List-Specific Information in Working Lists
Users in both the Web Client and the Windows Client can create and edit folder-specific information for working lists. Since working lists are presented as lists rather than folders in the Web Client, this information is referred to as list-specific information.
The following types of information can be list-specific:
- Additional fields
- Phones
- Addresses / Electronic Addresses (including designating a mailing address)
- Notes
- Activities (For activities, list-specific is called regarding a working list. For details, see About Folder-Specific and Global Activities.)
For most of these items, making the information specific to the working list restricts the information to only users with Read access to the working list. For example, if you add list-specific notes to the list Ed’s Call List, only users with read access to Ed’s Call List can read those notes.
The only exception to this rule is activities. When creating an activity regarding a working list, the user can determine who is allowed to view the activity. For details, see Access to View Activities.
Working List-Only Contacts (Sourcing Contacts in Working Lists)
Users can source contacts in working lists. This means that the contacts are only available within the working list – they are not part of the full firm list of contacts. This is useful in the following situations:
- You have contacts you need to track for a short period of time, but it doesn’t make sense to include them in the firm list.
- You have contacts that need to be shared among the group using the list, but should not be available to everyone in the organization for security purposes.
Working-list contacts appear in the Web Client with a different icon next to the name, as illustrated in the Person Overview page. There are several limitations for contacts that are working-list specific:
- You cannot include them in any other lists in InterAction when using the Web Client. For example, you can’t add a working list-only contact to a marketing list.
- You cannot add them to your own user list (My Contacts).
- You cannot use the Web Client to promote them to the firm list. Note however that a Windows Client user can promote a working list-only contact to the firm list. Web Client users can send change requests to a data steward to make this change.