A contact’s roles describe what they do at their current organization, such as “Billing Contact” or “Voting Delegate.” This article explains where to find those roles, how to add a previous organization and the roles the contact held there, and what Rhythm records automatically when a contact’s organization changes.
See a Contact's Current Roles
On the contact’s page, the organization information panel shows Organization:, Title:, and Role(s):. Rhythm displays the role names from your Rhythm account’s role list, not raw identifiers.
Tip
Rhythm copies the role names shown here when you save the contact. If you rename a role later, contacts who already have that role keep showing the old name until you save each contact again.
If the organization’s type limits which roles are allowed, Rhythm only offers those roles when you assign them. The roles you can choose depend on the organization linked to the contact.
A query for contacts with a specific role checks only each contact’s current roles. Once you remove a role from a contact, including through the Portal, that contact no longer appears in query results for that role.
You may see one person listed as Created By and another as Last Modified By on the same contact record. That means one staff member created the record and another edited it later; it does not change the contact’s ownership, identity, or access.
Record a Past Organization
If a contact’s history with a previous organization began before you used Rhythm, or you need to correct that history, add the past affiliation directly:
- Open the contact’s page and find the organization information panel.
- Select Add a Past Organization.
- Fill in Organization (required), Start Date, End Date, Job Title, Role(s), and Notes.
- Save.
Result
The entry appears in the contact’s History table, with the most recently ended affiliation listed first. Each row has its own edit and delete controls, so you can correct or remove a past affiliation later without changing the contact’s current organization.
You can see this history on the individual contact’s record, but you cannot use it in query or report output. For example, you cannot build a query that lists every contact with their past organizations.
Warning
Saving a past affiliation saves the contact’s whole record, not just the history entry. If someone else changes the same contact at the same time, their change could be overwritten. This is unlikely in normal day-to-day use, but it is worth knowing when you and a colleague are coordinating edits to the same contact.
What Happens When a Contact Leaves an Organization
When you change a contact’s organization and save, Rhythm automatically adds a history entry for the organization, job title, and roles the contact held there, including an end date. You do not need to add that entry yourself. Past affiliations you add manually for pre-Rhythm history appear in the same History table, so you have one record of where a contact has worked and what they did there over time.
Tip
If you set a contact’s roles through a bulk update or import file instead of the Console form, use the Contact Role ID field, or a similarly named ID field, not the plain Contact Roles field. Mass Update can show both, and updating the plain Contact Roles field may appear to succeed without actually saving the role change. Enter each role’s ID in that ID field, separated by commas. When Rhythm saves the contact, it turns those IDs into a clean list of roles. See Mass Update Field Value Rules for the exact syntax bulk changes expect for a list-valued field like this one.
If It Fails
- A role you expect to assign isn't offered. The contact’s linked organization type may restrict which roles are allowed. Check the organization’s type, or link the contact to a different organization if that is the correction you need.
- A past affiliation's role shows no name, or an unexpected one. The role may have been renamed or removed since the history entry was recorded. Rhythm copies role names to history entries when they are saved, so check your Rhythm account’s current role list for the role that matches what you intended.
- You added a past organization, but something else you'd changed on the contact didn't save. Another edit to the same contact may have been overwritten. Check the contact’s other details and correct anything that reverted.