Contacts are people outside your organisation: they are assigned objects and sent receipts, but never sign in themselves. If a service provider or partner works with you permanently and should take out and return their objects themselves from now on, turn the contact into a user. You do not have to create the person again.
Opening a contact, Convert to user, choosing access and confirming the conversion
Before you start
There is no dedicated permission for the conversion. You need access to the Contacts area – admins and owners have it in the standard roles.
Steps
- Under Contacts, open the contact.
- Click Convert to user at the bottom.
- The Convert to user form opens. First name, last name, email, job title, phone number and company are taken over from the contact; you can keep editing them after the conversion.
- Under Access, define where the person may log in: Can log in via browser on computer/smartphone and/or Can log in at the terminal. Both switches are off at first.
- As when adding a user, further fields appear: with browser access the Email becomes mandatory and the person receives an email with a link to set their password; with terminal access you can Generate one-time PIN for terminal access under PIN. Also choose the Roles and the Location access – both mandatory. Unlike when adding a new user, location access starts out empty here: select locations or switch on Access to all locations, otherwise the form cannot be saved.
- Optional: assign a Login Tag.
- Click Convert to user. Log+Key confirms the conversion and opens the new user’s detail page. The history records it as Contact converted to user.
The fields match the form for new users – details in Adding users.
What happens next
The person disappears from Contacts and is listed under Users from now on – Log+Key carries on the same entry instead of creating a copy. Objects assigned to the contact come along: they are listed on the user detail page under Taken objects, and the history continues the events under the same name.
Tip: limiting permissions for external people
For external people, a dedicated role with few permissions is worthwhile. The permission Only Own Objects shows a role only its own take-outs, and with Location access the person sees only the objects of the permitted locations. How to create such a role is described in Managing roles and permissions.
Related guides
- Contacts – contact or user?
- Adding users
- Handing objects to external people