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Directory — Transactions

Overview

The directory is the central catalog of external contacts — people at customer companies, supplier organizations, or both. Other modules draw from this catalog to populate recipient fields and auto-address automated emails, making it a shared dependency across sales, procurement, and project workflows.

For the record lifecycle, see: Workflow.

Note

This transaction follows the standard record list layout. See: Common Features

Directory

The directory list (/directory) is the single screen for all contact management. All actions — create, view, edit, and area management — open as modals inside the list page. There is no dedicated contact detail route.

What you will see

The Company column adapts to a contact's type: for contacts of type Both with links to both a customer and a supplier, both company names are shown separated by a slash (e.g., Acme / Global Supply). For contacts linked to only one entity, only that name appears.

What you can do here

Contact type and entity linking

When creating or editing a contact, the Contact type field controls which linked entity selectors are active:

  • Customer — shows the customer company selector only.
  • Supplier — shows the supplier company selector only.
  • Both — shows both selectors simultaneously.

The selected company or supplier is what appears in the Company column and determines which entity the contact is associated with for downstream use in other modules.

Manage areas

The Manage Areas button (top right, requires edit permission) opens an embedded area catalog manager. Areas are a shared catalog: changes made here affect all contacts assigned to that area across the system.

Inside Manage Areas, each area has an Include emails for this area in setting with three options:

  • Do not include — contacts in this area are not added to any automated email.
  • Quote recipients — contacts in this area are automatically included in email drafts for quotes sent to customers.
  • Supplier PO recipients — contacts in this area are automatically included in email drafts for supplier purchase orders.

This setting is the mechanism by which SARA auto-populates email recipients in other modules. Currently two routing targets exist (quotes and supplier POs), but the system is designed to support additional targets in the future.

Note

Area email routing only takes effect if the contact has an email address. Contacts without an email are included in the area but do not generate recipients.

Connections to other modules

  • Customers — contacts of type Customer or Both are linked to a customer company record. Customer records in turn reference directory contacts for designated roles (purchasing contact, accounts payable, billing, plant access, HR contact, legal representative).
  • Suppliers — contacts of type Supplier or Both are linked to a supplier record.
  • Quotes — the "Attention to" field on a quote is a selector from this directory. Contacts in areas set to Quote recipients are auto-added to quote email drafts.
  • Supplier POs — contacts in areas set to Supplier PO recipients are auto-added to supplier PO email drafts.
  • Projects — project records reference directory contacts for the project's attention-to contact.

Permissions

Permissions

Access and actions are permission-driven. See: Permissions