How to run Marketing Automation on 'global' contact?

Jack Handy asked on April 8, 2015 22:57

I'm importing contacts from a separate system and these contacts appear as global contacts. This work is done in code as part of a Kentico custom task.

I need to enlist these contacts in a Marketing Automation process (I'm currently using AutomationManager's StartProcess.

When I try to start the process for the user, I don't see any errors, but the process instance never happens (the contact does not appear in the list of process contacts). If I try to manually start a process for such a user in the UI, I can't. Because the user cannot be located by Select Contact after clicking Start New Process.

What is the correct way to kick off a process instance for a global contact? Or do I need to change the type of contact when I import it - and if so, in what way?

Thanks.

Correct Answer

Rui Wang answered on April 9, 2015 22:21

Hi Cj Contact has to be imported associating to a SITE in order to be processed. If it's just 'global', then you cannot locate it when you try to Start New Process as that's process is running associated with the SITE you are using at that moment.

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Recent Answers

Jack Handy answered on April 10, 2015 16:51 (last edited on April 10, 2015 22:34)

Thanks for your answer, Rui.

That's sort of the conclusion I came to - the Contact has to be associated with a site.

Could you help me understand the most direct way to achieve that in code? I see UserSiteInfo which depends on a USER instead of a contact. Am I looking in the wrong place, or is there another step or two the get from Contact to User?

Thanks again.

EDIT: This was actually straightforward. By setting the ContactSiteID on the ContactInfo, the Contact was correctly associated with a site and the workflow instance was able to properly start.

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Rui Wang answered on April 11, 2015 00:06

Glad to see that you have figured it out.

User and Contact in CMS are 2 different objects as one is for CMS and the other is for EMS. But they can be linked. https://docs.kentico.com/display/K8/Working+with+contacts#Workingwithcontacts-Linkingcontactswithuseraccounts

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