Linking Contacts and Users

ChurchDesk now treats users and contacts as one connected profile. Every user automatically appears in the People module as a contact, and contacts can be used across more of the platform, for example, added to groups and used in rotas. This removes the long-standing confusion between "a user" and "a contact": a person is simply a person, used in different ways depending on what they do in your church.

What this changes for you

• Users now appear in People, so you can message and filter them like any other contact.
• You can create users without an email address and activate them later.
• Contacts can be added to groups and used in rotas, even without a login.
• A contact and a user can be linked into a single, connected profile.

Three ways a connected profile is created

1. Create a user and link them to an existing contact, or let a new contact be created automatically.
2. Promote a contact to a user directly from their contact profile.
3. Add a contact to a group, which creates a limited user for them.

Content

• Rights and roles
• Users in the People module
• Draft users
• Linking a user and a contact
• How linked profiles work
• Unlinking and merging
• Adding contacts to groups
• Changes to the Volunteer role
• Create a User from Contacts
• Imported users and contact limits

Rights and roles

• Organisation administrators and user administrators: Can create and manage users, link and unlink contacts, edit the details of draft users, and manage a user's group memberships and group leader status directly from the user profile.
• Group leaders: Can add a contact as a group member, which creates a user for that person. These users are limited to the Volunteer role and can only be added in the parishes the contact already belongs to.
• All users with People access: See linked users in People and can message them. When linking, they can only see suggested contacts from the parishes where they have People access.

Users in the People module

Every user is now also a contact, so users appear in the People module alongside everyone else.

• A small blue dot on a row shows that the contact is linked to a user account.
• A new Roles column shows the roles each linked user holds.
• In the user list you can also see who are group leaders and which groups they lead.
• The user profile also includes a Groups section, where administrators can add the user to groups and set them as a group leader without leaving the profile.

Because users now appear in People, you can include them in filters, lists, campaigns and messages just like any other contact.

Draft users

A draft user is a user who has been set up but cannot log in yet. Draft mode lets you build your entire organisation, users, groups and rotas, before anyone receives an invitation or notification. Additionally, draft users allow you to set up accounts without an email address while maintaining the ability to include them in groups or rotas.

Creating a draft user

1. Go to ChurchDesk Settings > Users and create a new user.
2. If you leave the email field empty, the person is created as a draft user and cannot log in.
3. If you add an email, you can still choose to keep them as a draft until you are ready to activate them.

Editing a draft user

For draft users, administrators can edit details such as first name and last name directly from the profile.

Draft users in rotas and events

Draft users are now visible in the rota dropdown, so you can add them to a rota even though they cannot yet log in. They can also be added to calendar events through the book users field.

Keep in mind:

• Draft users do not receive rota notifications or emails, because they cannot manage their own notification settings. They can still receive messages from the People module.
• This supports draft mode: you can build your whole organisation and be sure no one is notified until you choose to activate them.

Linking a user and a contact

When a user and a contact refer to the same person, they can be joined into one connected profile.

Suggestions when creating a user

When you create a user and start typing a name, ChurchDesk suggests existing contacts you may want to link to the new account. The suggestion list also shows the person's age (taken from the date of birth on the contact profile), which helps you tell apart people with similar names or contacts that have no email.

Promoting a contact to a user

You can also start from a contact and promote them to a user from the contact profile. You choose the login email, and you can create them as a draft or an active user. Promoting now keeps the link between the contact and the new user.

Finding contacts across parishes

By default, when linking you can only see suggested contacts from the parishes where you have People access.

In ChurchDesk Settings > People there is a setting that lets user administrators see contacts from all parishes when creating a user, so they can match the right person. This affects the suggestion field only. Not what you can see in the People module. The setting is enabled by default.

How linked profiles work

A linked profile keeps the user account and the contact connected, but the two are not merged into one record.

Data is not synced

Linking does not automatically sync data between the user account and the contact profile. For example, changing the name on the contact does not change the name on the user account. This keeps it clear that the People database owns the contact data.

Two emails and the primary email

A linked contact can have two email addresses:

• One from the user account – this cannot be edited from the contact profile. For a draft user, a user administrator edits it; for an active user, the person edits it themselves.
• One from the contact profile.

You can set one of them as the primary email. The primary email is the address used for messaging – for example, the one that receives newsletters.

When a form submission or a donation comes in, ChurchDesk tries to match it against both emails, so it is still linked to the correct existing contact.

Deleting a linked contact

A contact that is linked to a user cannot be deleted. You first need to delete or unlink the user.

Unlinking and merging

Unlinking

A user administrator can unlink a contact from a user account. Unlinking does not delete either record. Because every user must always have a linked contact, ChurchDesk automatically creates a new contact from the user's data when you unlink.

Merging

When you merge duplicate contacts, you can now see which user account each contact is linked to.

• If only one of the contacts is linked to a user, you can merge them as usual, and the merged contact keeps that linked user.
• If both contacts are linked to user accounts, merging is not allowed, because user accounts cannot be merged.

Adding contacts to groups

Group membership works from your contacts, not only from existing users.

1. Open a group and go to Members.
2. Click Add member and choose a person from the list. Active users are marked with a tag; everyone else is a contact.
3. When you add a contact who is not yet a user, ChurchDesk prompts you to create a user for them (draft or active).

Users created this way by a group leader are limited:

• They can only be given the Volunteer role.
• They can only be added in the parishes the contact already belongs to. These parishes are pre-filled, but the group leader stays in full control and can remove any that do not apply.

Create a User from Contacts

You have a contact in the People module that you want to invite as an active user in ChurchDesk? 
All you have to is to click on the contact's name in the overview so you get to their profile overview. To the upper right, you will see a button that says Create as a user. 

Imported users and contact limits

Because users now appear as contacts, the total number of contacts in your database will increase. The contact cap is not changing – linked users count towards it, and only a very small number of customers are affected by their limit. A person is always a contact now, so users are never excluded from the count.

For customers who were imported via Kaplan, the previously generated placeholder emails are removed and those users are moved into draft mode to repair the data. Their imported contacts and users are linked automatically.

Keywords: one profile, linking contacts and users, link user contact, draft user, draft mode, create user without email, activate user, promote contact to user, unlink contact, merge contacts, primary email, two emails, blue dot, roles column, group leader create user, volunteer role, parish access, view-only, rota draft user, notifications, contact cap, contact limit, Kaplan import, People module, users, contacts

Updated on: 01/07/2026