Associate a contact with a public user

Citizen Access manages contact information about public user accounts as reference contacts associated with public users.

When a public user registers or adds a new contact to his account, if the new contact is a close match with an existing reference contact in the agency, he can confirm whether to associate the reference contact with his account. Otherwise, Citizen Access creates a new reference contact and associates the new reference contact with the public user account.

Each public user account must have approved association with at least an enabled contact to remain enabled and active.

Citizen Access gets the information about the reference contacts that relates to a public user account, and uses the information in various places:

  • The auto-fill field in page flows for adding contacts lists the reference contacts and licensed professionals and owners that relate to the user account.

  • The following places or fields apply the contact name if there is a single reference contact relating to the public user, or the public user login ID if there is none or more than one reference contacts relating to the public user:

    • Logged in as field in the Citizen Access website

    • Delegate user name and inspection requester name

    • UserID parameter for payment API

    • $$UserName$$ parameter in email configuration

      • Note: The following variables are no longer available in email configuration: $$FirstName$$, $$MiddleName$$, $$LastName$$, $$businessName$$, $$state$$, $$city$$, $$address$$, and $$zip$$$ parameters.

  • The following places or fields always apply the public user login ID:

    • Public user information passed to EMSE functions or events

    • Created by, Uploaded by, and Modified by fields in applications

    • Uploaded by, and Modified by fields when users upload scores

    • There are some changes to the following fields in the public user accounts and their associated contacts:

  • These fields are no longer available: Pager, Preferred phone, User role.

  • These fields hide by default: Mobile phone and Receive SMS messages.

  • The Preferred channel field lists the options configured in the standard choice CONTACT_PREFERRED_CHANNEL. By upgrading to the current version, the previous hard-coded preferred channel options are merged to the options in the standard choice CONTACT_PREFERRED_CHANNEL.

For additional information about associating a contact with a public user, see Configure contact associations.