Contacts

The IXP Manager Contacts feature allows you to record and manage contacts on a per customer basis including:

name / position / email
phone / mobile
notes
roles (billing / technical / admin / marketing)

If the roles are not shown when you are editing / adding contacts, ensure you copy the following file to a local version:

cp ${IXPROOT}/config/contact_group.php.dist ${IXPROOT}/config/contact_group.php

The latest version of the automatic installation script takes care of this but older versions did not.

Contact Groups

INTRODUCED: 20130410 - V3.0.9 (sponsored by LONAP)

Contacts can be assigned to multiple arbitrary groups. A group is defined by:

a group type (e.g. Marketing Preferences);
group options (e.g. Email, SMS, Mail, ...); and
a description (e.g. how the contact would like us to communicate marketing materials with them).

You define the group types in config/contact_group.php such as:

return [
    'types' => [
        'ROLE'                   => 'Role',
        'MARKETING_PREFERENCES'  => 'Marketing Preferences',
    ],
];

To activate this feature, you just need to create the configuration file. From the root directory of IXP Manager just:

cp config/contact_group.php.dist config/contact_group.php

Note that Role is a default option and should not be removed.

In these examples, ROLE will be entered in the database column and Role will be displayed in the interface.

Group options can then be added / edited / deleted via the web interface. This can be reached by clicking Contacts in the left-hand side menu and then the sub-menu option that appears called Contact Groups.

Creating / Editing / Deleting Groups

A group is defined by:

a name (e.g. beer);
a type (e.g. Likes); and
a description (e.g. Contacts in this group like to drink beer).

You define the group types in config/contact_group.php.

In these examples, ROLE will be entered in the database column and Role will be displayed in the interface.

Groups can then be added / edited / deleted via https://www.example/com/ixp-manager/contact-group. This can be reached by clicking Contacts and then Contact Groups in the left menu.

Assigning Contacts to Groups

Assigning contacts to groups is done in the contact add / edit page.

Exporting Contact Groups

Contact groups can be exported using the artisan command, for example:

./artisan contact:export-group --type=ROLE --cid=1 --format=csv

where the possible options are (from ./artisan contact:export-group --help:

$ ./artisan contact:export-group --help
Usage:
  contact:export-group [options]

Options:
      --type[=TYPE]      Contact group type (e.g. ROLE)
      --name[=NAME]      Contact group name (e.g. beer)
      --format[=FORMAT]  Output format - one of json (default) or csv [default: "json"]
      --cid[=CID]        Optionally limit results to given customer id

Help:
  Export contacts based on group information

Special Group: Roles

The default sample configuration file (config/contact_group.php) and the database seeds create a ROLE group type populated with groups Admin, Billing, Technical and Marketing. There is a dedicated form element when editing contacts for any groups defined in the Role type.

If the role type is removed from the configuration, the form element for the contact's roles will not be shown.

Historical Perspective

IXP Manager of pre-April 2013 had separate contacts and users which - at the time - we felt was quite confusing. LONAP sponsored a rework of this in 2013 to merge the concept of users and contacts with login privileges. Strangely, this actually caused more confusion and also was a developer nightmare with hacked in code to handle the database tables in multiple places. As such, in 2019 with release v4.9, this was undone and contacts and users are now separate entities again.