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folk data model

How to manage your data in folk

Updated over 3 months ago

Learn about the folk data model, to understand how you can best manage & leverage your data in your workspace.

In your folk workspace, in order to be able to work on your contacts, you need to add these contacts to groups. Contacts can be either people or companies. These contacts are available throughout your workspace and can be added to groups.

Groups are categories to organize different type of contacts to leverage them in different workflows (e.g., "Leads", "Clients").

From each group, you're able to:

  • Share the group with selected members

  • Create as many custom fields you want

  • Create table and pipeline views

  • Track relationships with contacts in this group with notes, reminders

  • Launch email campaigns to selected contacts of this group

What is a group?

Structure

A group is a database made up of contacts (people & companies).

In each of these groups, you have basic fields available such as emails, phone numbers etc... And you can create additional fields to customize the data to your needs. We call them custom fields, and they come in various types (text, number, select, multi-values, magic fields).

Each group has a common structure and will have its own settings depending on how you customize it.

Groups allow you to customize the visualization of your contacts, for both people and companies. You can select which fields to display and in what order. Each views come with its own visibility settings in order to allow you to be as efficient as possible.

There is no limit to how many contacts you can add in a group. A contact can also be added in several groups.

In each group, your database will have a default structure to start from:

  • Two views: "All people" and "All companies"

  • Native fields: for people and companies, such as name, emails, phone, etc.. These fields are shared across all groups. They correspond to data that allow to identify the contact.

  • Smart fields: for people and companies: these fields are automatically computed for you based on your data. For example, last date of interaction, team member with the strongest connection

Here is the list of available fields by default:

  • For people: 15 fields

    • Native fields: First name, Last name, Companies, Job Title, Description, Birthday, Gender, URLs, Emails, Phone numbers, Addresses

    • Smart fields: My last interaction, My total interactions, Strongest Connection, Groups

  • For companies: 7 fields

    • Native fields: Name, Email, Phone numbers, Addresses, URLs, Description

    • Smart fields: Groups

Considerations:

  • If a contact is part of multiple groups, editing one of these native fields in one group (see above) will update them in every group.

Customization

You can create custom fields in each group to add and track the relevant data on your contacts. Custom fields are proper to the group and are not shared across groups.

This way, you only track what matters regarding your current workflow.

Considerations:

  • Custom fields are unique to the group and are not shared across groups.

  • If you remove a contact from a group (who has custom data), the custom fields will be deleted.

  • If you add a contact to another group (who has custom data), the custom fields will not be shared.

  • In each group, you can create multiple views to segment and organize your contacts within the group.

Contacts

On your contacts' profiles, in addition to contacts' fields, you are able to track Interactions, Notes & Reminders.

Considerations:

  • Interactions (imported from your email sync, manually created or sent from folk) will be shared across all groups.

  • Notes and reminders added to a contact within a group will be attached to this group and not shared across groups.

  • If you remove a contact from a group (who has Notes & Reminders), the Notes & Reminders will be deleted.

  • If you add a contact to another group (who has Notes & Reminders), the Notes & Reminders will not be shared.

Campaigns

You can send an email (1:1 email, campaigns/sequences) to your contacts from a group.

In Messages section, you'll retrieve all the history of your sent campaign for each group you have access to.

Considerations:

  • Deleting the group from where the campaigns were sent will delete the history of associated campaigns.


If you delete a group, contacts will not be lost. However, custom fields, notes, reminders and campaigns attached to this group will be deleted.

What is a view?

A view is a customized way to visualize your list of contacts within a group.

In each view, you can apply the settings of your choice:

  • Choose to show People or Companies

  • Display contacts in a table or a pipeline view

  • Apply filters & sorting

  • Re-order, hide/display the fields of your choice

Applying these settings will automatically save and be applied in each view.

Considerations:

  • You can have unlimited views within your group.

  • All the changes applied to your contacts within a view will apply to all the views of your group.

  • If you remove a contact from a view, it will remove the contact from the group.


๐Ÿ’ฌ Do you have any questions or feedback? We'd love to hear from you! You can find the folk team via:

  • Live chat from your account (the ? button in the bottom right-hand corner)

  • Or send us an email

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