When you design a query in the CRM area, you do not have to start from scratch. Rhythm gives you eight ready-made starting points for common CRM reports, and each one starts with its own default columns. Five starting points also include extra columns from your address types, phone number types, and communication types.
This article explains what each starting point includes and where it has limits. For help designing and running the query, see Design and Run a Query.
Prerequisites
- You need access to your account's query tools to use any starting point.
- To use the Engagement Scores starting point, your account also needs the Member Engagement add-on and the supported reporting configuration described below.
The Eight Starting Points
| Starting Point | One row per | Default columns | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contacts | Contact | Name, organization name, email address, preferred address city and state | Use this for the most common CRM reports. It includes related columns for the contact's organization and that organization's parent organization. |
| Organizations | Organization | Name, type, parent organization name, address city and state | Includes the organization's parent as a related column. Organization directories also use this starting point. |
| Contact Communication Preferences | Contact per communication preference | — | A contact who opted in to three communication types and out of two appears as five rows. This starting point only includes contacts who belong to an organization. |
| Contact Activities | Activity recorded on a contact | — | A contact with five logged activities appears as five rows, with the contact's fields repeated on each row. This starting point only includes contacts who belong to an organization. |
| Organization Activities | Activity recorded on an organization | — | Use this for organization activity reporting. It is intended to work the same way as Contact Activities, but for organizations. |
| Organization Contacts by Role | Contact per contact role | Name, organization name, contact role, email, preferred address city and state | A contact who holds four roles at their organization appears as four rows. |
| Organizations and Contacts by Role | Organization per related contact role | Name, type, parent organization name, contact role, contact name | Organizations with no contacts still appear once, so you can find companies with nobody in a given role. |
| Engagement Scores | Engagement score record | Date, contact name, total score, previous year score | Review the warning below before you rely on this starting point. |
Five starting points can also show a contact's or organization's memberships: Contacts, Organizations, Contact Communication Preferences, Contact Activities, and Organization Activities. These membership columns include two text columns, Chapters and Sections, which list the names of the chapter and section for the membership.
Warning
These membership columns can include more than one Membership relationship type, not only principal memberships. If a CRM report's membership total does not match a Membership query for the same group, limit the CRM query's criteria to principal memberships so the two reports are comparable.
The contact profile's Emails tab shows email activity for that one contact, but it is not a query source. Fields shown there, such as the email's subject line, are not available as query output columns through any of these starting points. Email addresses for a member come from Contacts or Organizations records, not from the membership auto-renewal billing-run failure export. If you need contact details for people in a failed billing run, look them up in Contacts or build a separate CRM report instead.
Extra Columns on the Contacts Starting Point
The Contacts starting point can include additional columns from your account's setup, beyond its base fields.
| Source | Columns added |
|---|---|
| Each address type you have defined | Ten columns per type: Line 1, Line 2, Line 3, City, State, Postal Code, County, Country, Latitude, and Longitude. Each column uses the address type's name in its label. |
| Each phone number type you have defined | One column per type, labeled with the phone type's name. |
| Each communication type you have defined | Four columns per type: whether the contact is enabled for it, their subscription email, when their subscription status was last updated, and their subscription status. |
These columns appear automatically after you define address types, phone number types, or communication types. You do not need to turn on an additional setting.
Warning
Latitude and Longitude are supplemental geocoding values, not guaranteed parts of every address. Rhythm does not always determine them for a contact's preferred address, so some contacts have a blank Latitude or Longitude even when the address itself is complete.
Warning
The "Subscription Last Updated" column for a communication type is known to use the contact's own last-updated date, not the date that specific communication preference changed. Because it may not reflect what the label suggests, treat it as approximate.
Warning
Rhythm does not currently expose a bounced-email indicator you can query or report on. You also cannot query or report on whether sent emails were delivered or opened across contacts; those statuses are visible only one contact at a time, on the individual contact record.
You can also add an Image URL column to a Contacts query, which outputs a link to each contact's photo. This gives you photo data in an export as a URL you can open or embed elsewhere, not as the image file itself.
The contact profile number shown in the console is available in a Contacts query as the Number field, and the same field name is available in a Registration query. For the contact's name, the Name output field can show an older or different stored value than the contact's current name fields. Use Full Name when you want the name plus credentials, or use First Name and Last Name separately when you want to leave credentials out. You can also query Credentials on its own.
For organization-related address reporting, use a contact's current organization address fields instead of the contact's work address fields. A contact may choose not to link their work address to their organization, or may keep a different address there, so the work address fields are not a reliable substitute for the organization's own address.
Tip
There is no single required file template for a contacts import. To build one, create a Contacts query with the fields you want to bring in, download it as a spreadsheet, and use that exported layout as the basis for entering the new contact data before you import it.
Tip
To manually review new contact or organization accounts, save a query filtered on the record's system creation date. For portal users, Portal - Last Login Date can also help because it populates once the person completes contact creation and logs in. To check the prior week's accounts, update the date range each week, using a start date on or after the period's first day and an end date before its last day.
Query results for partner-related reporting depend on whether the partner data is actually populated on the source records. If an expected partner-related field is blank across many results, check the contact or organization records before assuming the query itself is wrong.
Warning
Login-related fields on a contact or organization query, such as a last-login date, have been reported to only reflect logins recorded after a 2024 fix. A record with only earlier login history can show blank in the query even though its Security tab shows a login, so treat a mismatch between the two as a sign of the historical gap rather than a data error. Portal login information shown through Contacts query reporting was corrected around the same time; treat login-related values from before 2024-01-10 as potentially unreliable.
Why Engagement Scores May Fail
The Engagement Scores starting point appears for every account, whether or not the Member Engagement add-on is active. It also depends on a reporting capability that is not turned on for every account. If your account's reporting configuration does not include the newer per-account resolution feature, this starting point fails when you run it. Instead of returning an empty or partial result, it shows a message about being unable to find resolution logic for the Engagement Scores type.
If you see that failure, engagement score reporting is not available in your account's current configuration. Contact Rhythm Support to ask about enabling it. Turning on engagement scoring itself, described in Turn On Engagement Scoring, does not resolve this on its own because the query starting point depends on a separate reporting setting.
Even when the starting point runs, its organization-related columns are known to be unreliable. The starting point's definition does not cleanly separate contact and organization results, so verify a sample of the organization columns before you rely on them.
Related Content You Cannot Filter Out
Organization Activities, Contact Activities, Organization Contacts by Role, and Organizations and Contacts by Role each create multiple rows for a record, with one row per activity or role. A report from any of these starting points repeats the same contact or organization fields on each row for that record because the query is representing multiple activities or role assignments for one record.
If a scheduled query export shows what looks like duplicate rows, check for duplicate contact records in your account before assuming the schedule ran twice or the query is broken. Duplicate source records, not the scheduled query mechanism, are a common cause of that pattern.
Permissions
You need the query permissions granted for a CRM starting point to use it, just as you do for any other query type. For more about how query access works, see Design and Run a Query. You do not need to configure anything specific to make a starting point appear. All eight are available to every account that can use the query tools, subject to the Engagement Scores limitation above.
Validation and Errors
| Message contains | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Unable to find resolution logic for query type: rolodex:engagement-scores | Your account's reporting configuration does not support this starting point yet. | Contact Rhythm Support. |
| Empty parent organization columns on Contact Communication Preferences, Contact Activities, Organization Activities, Organization Contacts by Role, or Organizations and Contacts by Role | A known limitation affects how these starting points connect to parent organizations. | Build a separate query starting from Organizations if you specifically need parent-organization data. |
| The preview does not load, or the query fails to run, after adding Admin Contact - Email Address, Admin Contact - Name, or Admin Contact - Phone Number as criteria on an Organizations query | These built-in organization fields have been reported to cause this error when used as query criteria. | Remove the Admin Contact field from your criteria, or contact Rhythm Support if you need it working in your account. |