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Finding people — and seeing who knows them

This is the most common thing anyone does in ClientVerse: you have a name, and you need to know whether the firm already has a relationship with that person, who holds it, and how warm it is.

By the end of this page you will be able to find a person, read their record properly, identify who at the firm knows them, and judge whether that relationship is strong enough to ask for an introduction.

Everything here is Core. No Modules licence is required.

1. Find the person

The search box at the top of any page is the fastest route. Click it, type part of a name, and results appear grouped by object as you type — Contacts, Accounts, and anything else matching. Press Enter to see the full result page, where a left-hand panel lets you narrow to just Contacts.

Search matches on more than the name. A partial email address or a phone number will find a contact, which is useful when all you have is a forwarded message.

If you would rather browse, open the Contacts tab and pick a list view from the dropdown beside the list title. The list views available are Salesforce's standard set:

List view Shows
Recently Viewed What you have opened lately — the default when you land on the tab
All Contacts Every contact you have access to
My Contacts Contacts you own
New This Week / New Last Week Recently created records
Birthdays This Month Contacts with a birthday in the current month

Note. ClientVerse does not add its own Contact list views in this release. If your firm has views like "My Clients" or "Key Relationships", an admin created them — they are not part of the package, and they will not be the same at another firm.

Your firm may also have Global Search, a ClientVerse search page. It searches several objects at once. You can narrow the results with filters, switch between a table and cards, and save a search to re-run or share with colleagues.

You may not see it. An administrator has to set Global Search up and place it on a page before anyone can use it. It is not the search box at the top of the page. If a colleague mentions it and you cannot find it, ask your ClientVerse admin.

Accounts vs Contacts

  • An Account is an organisation — a client, a prospect, a referral source.
  • A Contact is a person, normally linked to an Account.

Your firm may call these "Companies". Renaming Account to Company is a common implementation choice and both ClientVerse reference orgs use it, so the nav item reads Companies and the record page says Company. The package does not ship the rename, so a stock install says Accounts. Either way it is the same object, and this guide uses the Salesforce name.

If you are looking for a person, you want a Contact. Searching the company name and opening the Account is the slower path, because you then have to find the person in a related list.

2. Read the Contact record

The Contact record page is dense, and knowing its shape saves a great deal of clicking. Every ClientVerse Contact page has the same three areas.

The highlights panel (top)

Always visible, whichever tab you are on:

Name · Account · Title · Phone · Last Contacted Date

Last Contacted Date is the one worth training your eye on. It is the single quickest read on whether this relationship is live or dormant.

The tabs (middle)

Seven tabs, in this order:

Tab What is actually on it
Details The full field detail — contact information, addresses, admin and system fields
Relationships Classification History, and Connections — who at the firm knows this person
Work History Account Relationships — the organisations this person is or was attached to
BD Activity Opportunities involving this contact
Engagement Content Sends, List Memberships, and Campaign History
Profile Professional Profiles — biography and background records
Alumni Details Alumni overview fields, and contacts for whom this person is the primary contact

Only the first five tabs are visible. Profile and Alumni Details sit behind a More dropdown at the right-hand end of the tab strip — easy to miss entirely if you are looking for a contact's biography and conclude the firm does not capture one.

The Engagement tab is where to look for "has marketing already emailed them?" — it holds what the firm has sent this person, which lists they are on, and their campaign history.

The sidebar (right)

  • A record card summarising the contact
  • The Activity panel — log a call, send an email, create a task, all without leaving the page
  • Contact Tags

Above the tabs sits the Classification Picker, a ClientVerse component for assigning classifications — practices, industries, regions, offices — directly on the record. See Classifications for what those mean.

3. See who at the firm knows them

Open the Relationships tab. The Connections related list answers "who here already has a relationship with this person?"

A Connection is a relationship signal between one of the firm's people and an external contact, derived from your firm's relationship-intelligence system (ERM) — typically by analysing email and calendar traffic, not by anyone typing it in. That is what makes it trustworthy: nobody had to remember to record the relationship.

Each Connection tells you which internal person is connected and carries a Relationship Strength score.

Read the Connections list before you reach out cold. Finding that a partner already speaks to this person monthly changes your approach entirely — you ask for a warm introduction instead of sending a cold email that, at best, duplicates an existing relationship and, at worst, undercuts it.

If the Connections list is empty

Empty does not necessarily mean "nobody knows them". Check the ERM Review Status field on the Details tab, which is one of:

Status Meaning
Pending Review Captured but not yet approved into the relationship picture
Promoted Reviewed and active — the normal state
Private The internal person marked this relationship private; it is deliberately hidden
Suppressed Excluded from the relationship picture
In Admin Queue Awaiting an administrator

Two related flags on the same tab explain most surprises: ERM Privacy Flag and ERM Suppressed. A partner may have chosen to keep a relationship private — which is a feature, not a fault. If a contact looks unconnected but you are confident the firm knows them, that is the first thing to check.

4. Judge how strong the relationship is

Finding a connection is not the same as finding a useful one. Several fields on the Contact help you judge, and they sit in the Engagement Insights section.

Field What it tells you
Engagement Score A numeric measure of engagement
Engagement Level High / Medium / Low — the score bucketed
Previous Engagement Level What it was before, so you can see direction of travel
Contact Health Score A calculated overall health measure
Last Contacted Date When anyone at the firm last made contact
ERM Relationship Count How many internal people have a relationship with this person
Single Threaded Calculated — the firm's relationship rests on one person

Previous Engagement Level is the field most people overlook. A contact at Medium tells you little on its own. A contact at Medium whose previous level was High is a relationship cooling off, and is worth attention now rather than at the next review.

Single Threaded is the one to act on. It means the entire relationship depends on one individual. If that person leaves the firm, retires, or changes practice, the relationship leaves with them. Single-threaded relationships at important clients are a standing business-development priority — they are exactly where a second introduction pays for itself.

Engagement Score and Contact Health Score are calculated by your firm's configuration, so the thresholds behind High / Medium / Low are a local decision. Ask your ClientVerse admin what the bands mean at your firm before treating a number as authoritative.

5. Where else does this person sit?

A senior contact has usually been at several organisations, and the firm may have known them at each. The Work History tab shows Account Relationships — the link between this person and the organisations they are connected to.

This matters because the relationship follows the person, not the company. A general counsel who moves from one client to a prospect takes their view of your firm with them. Work History is how you notice that the "new prospect" is someone the firm has acted for twice already.

The Alumni flag and Alumni Details tab cover the other version of this: people who used to work at the firm. Firm alumni in client-side roles are among the warmest routes into an organisation.

6. When one client is really several accounts

Large clients rarely sit in a single Account record. A multinational may appear as a parent plus a dozen subsidiaries, each billing separately. ClientVerse gives you two ways to see the whole picture:

  • Account hierarchy links accounts to a parent, so you can roll up to "everything we do for this group" rather than one legal entity at a time.
  • Client Groups let the firm define a grouping that does not follow the corporate structure — a consortium, a family of funds, or a set of entities the firm manages as one relationship.

If revenue or matter counts look lower than you expect, check whether you are looking at one entity rather than the whole group.

7. Client Locator

Client Locator finds clients by location or address — useful when you are travelling and want to know who else is worth seeing while you are in a city.

You may not be able to reach it. Client Locator ships as a component that an administrator has to place on a page; the package does not put it on any page for you. If you cannot find it, it has not been added at your firm — ask your ClientVerse admin to add it to a Home, App, or Account page in the Lightning App Builder. It supports choosing which address to use (Billing, Shipping, or Client Address for accounts; Mailing, Other, or Client Address for contacts).

Troubleshooting

"I can see the contact but no Connections, and ERM Review Status is Promoted." The firm may genuinely have no captured relationship with this person. Connections come from email and calendar analysis, so a contact who has only ever been met in person, or added by import, can be legitimately connectionless.

"A tab is missing." Tab visibility is controlled by permission sets. If a colleague sees a tab you do not, that is an access question for your ClientVerse admin — see the Admin Guide.

"The Engagement fields are blank." These are populated by configured automation. Blank usually means the relevant rollup or scoring has not been switched on at your firm rather than that the contact is disengaged.

"I found two records for the same person." Duplicates happen, particularly after an import. Do not fix them by deleting one — you lose the history attached to it. Ask an admin, or a data steward if your firm has one, to merge them; see Record Merge.