Contacts

Goal

Named, durable groupings of people that survive a page reload and that teammates can work from; the objects described in Lists, rather than a view you rebuild each time.

Preconditions

Contacts in the account. Handing a list to colleagues additionally requires Team Edition running in the Public or Organization mode; in the Private mode the sharing controls are absent altogether. Which mode your workspace uses, and who may change it, is covered in Workspaces and roles.

Steps

1. Open the People page. The Lists panel runs down the left-hand side with a search box and a plus button; once anything has been shared with your team it splits into a Personal group and a Shared group.
2. Hover the plus button in the group you want and click it. The New list dialog opens with a placeholder name already filled in. Replace it (three characters is the shortest name accepted, and the name has to be free among your own lists) then confirm. Creating from the plus button in the Shared group publishes the list to the team at the same moment.
3. Put people in. Tick rows in the grid, click Move to lists, search for the lists you want in the pop-over, tick as many as apply, and click Apply. Adding this way is additive: memberships the person already has stay untouched, which is what lets one person sit in several lists at once.
4. Take people out. Tick the rows, click Remove from list(s), and pick the lists to detach them from. The contacts themselves are left alone.
5. Rename. Hover a list row, open its three-dot menu, and choose Edit. The same three-character minimum and the same uniqueness check apply.
6. Hand it over. Open the menu and choose Share. The row moves to the Shared group and every teammate sees it; the ones who did not create it see a small people marker and the tooltip Another team member's list, and no menu at all, so nobody else can rename or delete what you made.
7. Take it back. Choose Revoke from the menu of a shared list you own. It returns to your Personal group and disappears for everyone else, while the contacts keep every other membership they had.
8. Delete. Choose Remove and confirm in the Delete list dialog.

> Spreading an import across several lists is a separate control. On the Options step > of the import dialog, Split contacts hands the incoming rows out to the lists you > pick in rotation, and anyone who is already in one of those lists is left where they > are rather than being moved. See Import contacts.

What the interface does not spell out

• A shared name has to be free team-wide. Your own lists only have to be unique among your own, until you press Share. At that moment the name is checked against every list in the team, and a collision blocks the sharing with a message naming the list. Rename first, then share.
• Only the creator can delete a shared list. Other members are told they are not permitted to remove a list they did not create, even when they can see it and work from it.
• Deleting removes the grouping, not the people. The contacts stay on the People page with their fields, history and other list memberships. A list that a website-visitor rule was feeding does lose that connection, so check any rule pointing at it before you delete.
• A teammate with the page already open may not see a new shared list until they reload it. Sharing takes effect at once; a stale browser tab is what hides it.
• Every addition and removal is recorded. Each contact's Activity tab gains a line naming who moved them and when, which is how a disputed membership gets settled. See Use the contact card.
• Under a My-scoped permission, contacts owned by colleagues are quietly dropped from a bulk list action on the web, and the remaining rows are processed. The count you get back can therefore be lower than the number you selected.
• Nothing in the panel caps how many lists you keep, or how large one grows. The name length is the only limit the dialog enforces.

Expected result

The list appears in the panel with its member count, and clicking it filters the grid to its members. After sharing, it sits in the Shared group for you and for everyone else on the team.

Verification

Click the list in the panel and confirm the grid shows the people you expect. For a shared list, ask a colleague to reload the People page and confirm it appears in their Shared group with the people marker. To confirm an addition rather than a move, open one of the contacts you added and check the earlier list memberships are still on record.

What happens next

A list is a starting point for outreach: select its members and move them into a sequence, or point a sequence at it. Which of them actually start receiving messages is decided by contact enrollment. Lists are also selectable as a filter property, so you can combine membership with anything else in the builder; that pattern is on Filter contacts.

Common mistakes

• Pressing Share on a list whose name a colleague has already used. The action stops and the list stays personal; the message names the clash, and renaming is the way through.
• Assuming the same action behaves identically everywhere. Adding to lists from the web grid keeps existing memberships, while the same action driven from the Chrome extension replaces them: check which surface you are in before a bulk run.
• Deleting a list to get rid of its people. Nothing is deleted except the grouping; use the grid's own delete action if you meant to remove the contacts.
• Expecting a shared list to be editable by whoever opens it. Renaming, re-sharing and deleting stay with whoever created it.
• Building a one-off selection as a list when a saved filter would do. A list is stored membership that you maintain; a filter re-evaluates itself every time you open it.

Related

• Lists · Contacts
• Workspaces and roles · Permissions and roles
• Filter contacts
• Build a prospect list

Build with Reply

• REST API: docs.reply.io – list endpoints, including separate calls for adding members and for replacing them
• CLI: agents.reply.io/cli – scripted list maintenance