Adding Emergency and Pickup Contacts (Additional Contacts)

Remember when we said everyone in BigSIS gets a Person Record? Well, that’s not entirely true. There are a couple of small exceptions and Additional Contacts are one of those exceptions. The reason being is that there are some folks whose information you may want to include in a Person’s Record, but they aren’t exactly people associated with your school. For example, if Dolly is a student, and her neighbor, Ed, is listed as an emergency or pickup contact, you may not want to create a Person Record for Ed since he’s only tied to your school because he’s Dolly’s emergency or pickup contact. You would only ever need Ed’s information if something happened to Dolly.

For this reason, we separate emergency and pickup contacts from Permanent Contacts (e.g., parents/guardians, siblings, etc.). To further that, you can list whomever you’d like as an Additional Contact whether they are an emergency or pickup contact and you can customize their relationship with the student(s). Last, but not least, you can have as many Additional Contacts for a student as you want.

Here’s how you enter Additional Contacts into a Person Record. 

From the People Table:

1. Select and Edit the appropriate person record.
   (Right-click and "Open image in new tab" to enlarge)
2. The General tab will be selected already. Click Additional Contacts > click the New button.
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3. Complete the form on the Add Contact screen. 
   • You can choose to add this new contact to just this Person Record, OR to All Individuals in the Household.
     PRO TIP! If you add this contact to All Individuals in the Household you will be adding this contact for each child in the household.
     Click here for an example of adding a new person. Click here for an example of adding an existing person. 
     
   • Select whether the Emergency Contact is a New Person or Get info from existing person.
     • If a new person: Then a person record will not be created for that contact; however, the contact will be added to the Person’s Record you’re working with as an Additional Contact.
     • If an existing person: Then you can type the person’s name and use their pre-existing Person Record to populate those fields.
   • Select the person’s Relation Type.
     PRO TIP! Whereas relationships in a Person Record cannot be manipulated, here you can add whatever relationship you want. Just type it into the list and click Enter.
   • Complete all other fields as necessary and then click the Save and Back button.