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Add a contact
Add a plan manager, coordinator, clinician or other contact to the directory.
Last updated · 10 November 2026
You create directory records from the two contact views. Use Professional contacts for plan managers, support coordinators and clinicians, and Contacts for nominees, guardians, family, advocates, government, provider partners, emergency contacts and others. The form is the same in both; what differs is the contact type you choose.
Switch to a contact view
Go to Records›Directory and use the icon toggle at the top right of the panel to switch to Professional contacts or Contacts. The Add contact button then appears at the top right (it needs your role to have permission to create directory contacts; if it doesn’t, the button doesn’t appear).
Complete the form
Select Add contact to open the drawer. Fields marked with a red asterisk are required. Choose the Contact type first, because it decides which extra fields appear (for example Business name, Relationship, or Acts as plan manager) and whether Email is required.
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Swipe across the enlarged image to read each part of the screen.
Unsaved example: Riley is a support coordinator, so Acts as plan manager appears. No leaves that separate responsibility off.
| Field | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Contact type | Yes | Choose first. Options: Nominee, Guardian, Support coordinator, Plan manager, Clinician, Provider partner, Emergency contact, Family, Advocate, Government, Other. |
| Status | Yes | Active or Archived. Defaults to Active. |
| First name | Yes | |
| Middle name | No | |
| Last name | Yes | |
| Relationship | No | Shown for personal types (nominee, guardian, family, emergency contact). Other shows Role or relationship. |
| Business name | No | Shown for non-personal types except Other, which uses Role or relationship. |
| Acts as plan manager? | Yes when shown | Appears only when the type is Support coordinator. Defaults to No. |
| Phone | No | Validated as an Australian phone number if you enter one. |
| Conditional | Required for plan managers, support coordinators and clinicians. Optional for other types, but validated as a proper email address if you enter one. | |
| Preferred contact | Yes | Phone, Email or SMS. |
| Participant link | No | Link the contact to one of your participants (see below). |
| Address | No | One search box: start typing and choose the match, which fills in the suburb, state and postcode for you. If the lookup can’t find it, select Enter address manually underneath and the field splits into Address, Suburb, State and Postcode. Search for an address instead takes you back, with the whole address line already in the box. |
| Notes | No | Free text. |
Note
If something is missing or invalid, saving fails and the form shows a message such as “First and last name are required.”, “Contact email must be a valid email address.” or “Contact phone must be a valid phone number.” Fix the field the message points to and select Add contact again.
Save the contact
Enlarge screenshot
Swipe across the enlarged image to read each part of the screen.
Review the email, contact preference and participant link before Add contact. This example is an unsaved draft, and no message has been sent.
Select Add contact at the bottom of the drawer. You see the toast Contact saved., the drawer closes, and the contact appears in the view you are in.
Why plan managers, support coordinators and clinicians need an email
These three types are the ones OneForce Care treats as reusable across participants: from a participant’s own Contacts tab you can pick an existing plan manager, support coordinator or clinician instead of retyping them (see Participant contacts). Reusing a contact creates its own linked record rather than sharing one, so the same person can end up as more than one row in the directory, one per participant they support.
To recognise these as “the same” contact, for example so Professional contacts lists them once and each copy’s Linked to tab shows every participant they are linked to, OneForce Care matches rows first by email, then by phone, then by name, business name and contact type all together. Email is the most reliable match (people share phones, and names collide), which is why it is required for plan managers, support coordinators and clinicians specifically. Leaving it off makes the same person harder to recognise as one contact across your participants.
Editing one participant-linked copy does not update the other copies. Before changing contact details, check which participant the open record is linked to.
Link a contact to a participant
To connect a contact to a single participant, set the Participant link field on the form and save. After saving, reopen the contact; a saved contact’s drawer shows two tabs, Details and Linked to (with a count of linked participants). Open Linked to to see every participant the contact matches by the same email/phone/name rule above, with each row’s participant status, contact status and contact type. Selecting a linked participant opens their profile (or a summary panel, depending on your access to Participants).
Enlarge screenshot
Swipe across the enlarged image to read each part of the screen.
Separate saved example: Taylor’s plan-manager record is linked to Mavis. This is not the result of saving the Riley draft above.
Tip
To link the same plan manager, support coordinator or clinician to several participants at once, add them from each participant’s own Contacts tab and choose the existing contact there, rather than repeating this page. See Participant contacts.
Edit or archive a contact
In the Professional contacts or Contacts view, select a row to reopen it on its Details tab. If your role can edit directory contacts, make your changes and select Save contact. If your role can only view (no edit permission), the drawer shows an alert reading “Read-only. Your role does not have edit access.” and the fields are disabled; if you also have delete rights you still see an Archive contact button, otherwise the drawer has no action buttons at all.
To remove a contact, select Archive contact at the bottom of the drawer. Read the confirmation, type archive in lowercase and select Archive contact. You then see Contact archived. Select Cancel to keep the contact.
Note
Archiving sets the contact’s status to Archived rather than deleting it, so it drops out of the active list but its history is kept.
Choose the contact fields
For a plan manager, choose Plan manager before entering the name. Business name identifies the organisation; First name and Last name identify the contact person. Enter their valid professional Email, choose Preferred contact, and use Participant link only for the participant this contact copy belongs to. Leave Status as Active for a current contact.
Preferred contact records a preference and does not send a message. Choosing Email does not fill in the Email field for you. For a personal contact, use Relationship to explain the connection, such as sister or guardian, rather than putting that description in their name.
Prepare a professional contact
Have the person’s name, role and correct professional email ready. For the coordinator example above, First name is Riley, Last name is Chen, Business name is Rivergum Support Coordination, and Email is riley.chen@example.com. Acts as plan manager? is No because this example only provides coordination. Use real contact information in your workspace. Search Professional contacts before adding them. For example, choose Plan manager, enter the named contact and business, their email and preferred contact method, and link them to the intended participant if applicable.
After Contact saved., search for the contact and reopen Details and Linked to to check the result. If you saved a professional contact while viewing Contacts, switch to Professional contacts to find it. The chosen type determines its view.
Use Save contact to correct a phone or email. Check the participant link before changing it, because the open row is one contact copy. Archiving is for retiring a record, not correcting a typo. The archive confirmation requires archive and there is no ordinary restore action after archiving. Cancel the prompt if you selected the wrong copy.