Syncing Contacts is a permission only Agency Admins have.
This article covers detailed instructions and tips for syncing your contacts with your AIPs once the data connection is established. For requesting the data from your AIPs, please follow the instructions listed on our Getting Started page.
What Does Syncing Do?
AgencyRoot provides the ability to manage prospects, convert them to customers, and when necessary, converge multiple AIP records into a single AgencyRoot record, and do all of this across multiple reinsurance years. Due to nicknames, and differences in how companies key their policy data, it is necessary to provide AgencyRoot a “link” between the AgencyRoot contact record and the company record.
When You Need to Sync
You will first be notified that you have contacts ready to sync on your dashboard, indicated by the orange bar. We also try to notify you via email when we get new data, but this is not always technically possible, so the orange bar is on your dashboard to give you a notification as soon as you login. Below, we have 330 already-synced contacts, and 171 that still need to be synced into AgencyRoot.
Contacts & Entities will need to be synced any time:
They are being added to AgencyRoot for the very first time.
Any change to their name occurs. This includes punctuation, prefix, suffix, and any difference in the middle name). AgencyRoot is not case-sensitive for matching names.
Their Tax ID or structure changes.
Contacts and Entities will sync automatically across AIPs and across reinsurance years provided their name and taxId does not change. It is ok to sync multiple AIP records to the same AgencyRoot contact (e.g. one company uses a middle initial and the other does not key it). You cannot sync multiple AgencyRoot Contacts to the same company record.
To begin the sync process, click the Sync Admin button on your Dashboard. This same screen is also accessible from Agency Admin > Sync Contacts.
Instructions for Syncing Contacts
Note entities are handled differently in the next section
When you arrive at the sync contacts page, you will see a list of your Company Contacts on the left, a sync status (Linked or Not Linked), and then either an input box or a matched AgencyRoot record.
If you’re adding this person to AgencyRoot for the very first time, just click Add New Customer. AgencyRoot will import the contact and create a brand new AgencyRoot record.
If this person exists in AgencyRoot (or you’re not sure), begin typing their name (first or last) in the box provided under AgencyRoot contact. If the contact exists, click their name, and then “Link Customer”:
Linking customers does NOT override any contact information you have for them in AgencyRoot.
Linking customers does NOT change the name in AgencyRoot. It is perfectly acceptable to link a “Joseph A Jones” from a company record to a “Joe ‘Big Joe’ Jones” record in AgencyRoot, if that’s what portly Joe likes to be called.
Linking customers can and should be done to ONE AgencyRoot contact in the event they have policies with multiple companies (same or different reinsurance years, doesn’t matter).
Instructions for Syncing Entities
You should finish syncing all of your contacts before syncing entities.
The process for syncing entities is similar to syncing contacts, but adds a step of specifying who the primary contact (individual) is for the entity prior to completing the add or sync process. Note how the Search box says “Search Contacts” instead of Search Entities, and that the “Add New Entity” button is disabled. You cannot add a new entity without specifying the primary contact person first.
After specifying the primary contact person, syncing entities is the same as syncing contacts above. You will either add the entity as a new entity, or sync it to a current entity:
Here, if New Ag Services is a brand new entity in AgencyRoot, we’ll just click Add New Entity:
Otherwise, if we need to sync to an existing entity or we’re not sure, we can search in the second entity box that comes up. We can then link this entity to an existing one by choosing the match, and then the green Link Entity button.
Instructions for Removing Duplicates
It will happen. You’ll click “Add New Customer” and then realize later somebody had already created a prospect record, or the individual has a policy with another AIP that was already added. Its ok!
Next to a linked contact or entity, click the 3-Dot Menu, and then “Unlink”. This will unlink the company record from the person you just created but you will still have a duplicate.
Go to the very top right search bar, and type in your duplicated contact name. You will likely get two identical search results. It is likely to be the second one that is the “duplicate”, but we recommend you check both records by clicking on them to make sure you’re about to delete the correct one! Keep in mind deleting an AgencyRoot contact record will remove all documents, workflows, and data associated with the record, so make sure the new duplicate is actually empty and that you’re not deleting a valid record.
Once you know which is the duplicate, under their name on the contact page, choose “Delete Contact” from the 3-dot menu.