As a community user who likely belongs to one or more communities — each with dozens or even hundreds of other members — it's likely that you will meet people with whom you want to connect and remain in contact.

This is simplified in your community by your being able to invite other community users to be one of your personal Contacts (as described in this article).

Your Contacts display on the Contacts page (accessible via the My Connections tab) of your personal community Profile. There, you can manage your Contacts, as described below in View & manage your Contacts.

Understand Contact relationships & notification messages

First: It's important to note that you do not, technically, "add someone as a Contact." You have to send a request to a community user to become a Contact and that user has to accept your request. Otherwise, a Contact relationship is not established between two community users.

• Refer to Contact requests, below, for information on how to send a Contact request.

NOTE: Users will not be notified of Contact requests if the Participation Emails setting in their profile (My Account tab > Email Preferences) is toggled to No. This must be set to Yes in order for a user to be notified of Contact requests.

Second: When a request is accepted, the Contact relationship that is established is automatically a two-way, reciprocal relationship.

• Refer to Reciprocal Contacts, below, for detailed information on the effects of a Contact relationship.

Contact relationships notifications

The actions that are involved in a Contact relationship between two community users has various notification messages, and these differ for each community user.

The following table details the notifications that are sent to each user (e.g., Joe and Missy) for each step.

Benefits of Contacts

When a community user agrees to be one of your Contacts, that user is added to your Contacts page, where you can:

• easily access that user's profile,
• quickly send messages to that user,
• share profile information that is hidden to other community users, and
• otherwise manage your connection to that user, as described below in View & manage your Contacts.

Profile information visibility

It's important to remember that the community users who have accepted your Contact request might now be able to view some of your profile information.

This is based on the settings that you configure for your personal profile on the Privacy Settings page under My Account.

• Any field that is set to My Contacts (e.g., Address Lines in the image below) will be visible to your Contacts when they visit your profile. This information is hidden to all community users who are not Contacts.

Manage profile-information visibility for Contacts

You can manage the visibility of your personal information on your profile on the Privacy Settings page.

• If there is information in your profile that you want visible to your Contacts only, set its field to My Contacts.
• If there is information in your profile that you do not want visible to your Contacts, set its field to Only Me or Members Only.

NOTE: When you set a field to Members Only, the associated information displays on your profile to logged in members of the community, irrespective of whether a member is one of your Contacts.

Learn about these privacy settings in the Privacy Settings section in Manage your Profile Preferences.

Reciprocal Contacts

IMPORTANT: After a Contact request has been accepted, that "Contact relationship" is automatically reciprocal — irrespective of who initiated it.

The Contact relationship does not exist while the request is pending. It is established, and the reciprocity applied, only after the request has been accepted.

The reciprocity

After the request is accepted, each user is added to the other's Contacts list.

Any profile information that is set to My Contacts (refer to the previous section) is visible to the other user in the relationship, regardless of which user initiated the request.

Example

1. Joe sends a contact request to Missy.
2. Missy accepts the request.
3. Missy is added to Joe's My Contacts list and Joe's profile information (that is set to My Contacts) is visible to Missy (assuming other privacy restrictions don't apply).
4. Joe is added to Missy's My Contacts list and Missy's profile information (that is set to My Contacts) is visible to Joe (assuming other privacy restrictions don't apply).

Remove a Contact

If either Contact clicks a Remove Contact button, the Contact relationship is severed for both users and the profile information-visibility permission is immediately rescinded.

Contact requests

When you want to add someone as a Contact, you have to get their permission; it is not a "click-&-done" action.

NOTE: This policy allows all community users to self-manage their connections with other community users.

There are several places throughout the community where you can initiate contact with other users; each of these is detailed in the sections below.

Send a Contact invitation

All of the community pages described below have an Add as Contact button.

When you click this button and click Send on the popup, a "contact request" message is sent to the user's community inbox; the request is automatically placed in the user's Contact Requests folder.

The recipient must accept the invitation in order to be added as one of your Contacts.

Let's look at the community pages from which you can send an invitation.

User profiles

You can access user profiles a number of ways.

Typically, wherever a user's name displays in the community (e.g., content they've contributed or a network you both belong to) their name is a hyperlink to their individual community profile.

• Click the Add as Contact button to send the Contact request.

Pending requests

After you have sent a request, the Add as Contact button changes to Contact Request Pending for you. It retains this label until the user either accepts or rejects your Contact request.

• Click the button to access two options in the dropdown. Click:
  • Resend to resend your Contact request.
  • Cancel to withdraw your Contact request.

Remove Contact button

After a community user has been added as a Contact, the Add as Contact button changes to Remove Contact for you.

• Click the button to remove the user from your Contacts list and sever the Contact relationship.

Member Directory (entire site)

After performing a search of community members, the results display in a list on the page.

• Click the Add as Contact button for one or more users to send the Contact request. The "Contact request sent." confirmation message displays.

Members page (per community)

Connecting with members of a specific community is easy because all of a community's members are listed on its Members tab.

• Click the Add as Contact button for one or more users to send the Contact request. The "Contact request sent." confirmation message displays.

Discussions and Libraries

Discussion threads (and replies) and Library Entries are other community features from which you can request a Contact connection.

• Click the Actions button and select Add Contact to send the Contact request.
  • "Contact Request Pending" now displays below the Actions button.
  • The Actions button dropdown now has only the Resend option.

View & manage your Contacts

You can view and manage your Contacts on your profile's My Connections > Contacts page.

On this page, you can:

• Click the Export button to download and save a list of your Contacts.
• Click the sort and filter dropdowns to customize the list display alphabetically and to filter the list.
• Click a user's linked name (or right-click for new tab and new window options) to visit their profile.
• Click the Send Message button to send an internal message to their community inbox.
• Click the Remove Contact button to remove the user from your Contacts and sever the Contact relationship.

Suggested Contacts

Your My Connections > Contacts page might also suggest people for you to connect with.

These users are grouped under People You May Know and you can:

• Click the Request Contact button to send an invitation as discussed in this article.
• Click the Ignore button to remove the suggested user from your list.

Related articles

• Learn about the other pages that are available under the My Connections tab of your profile in View your Connections.