A contact is the person or client you're collecting documents from. Contacts don't need a docEvault account — they access their requests through a link, not a login.
Adding one
Go to Contacts and add a new contact with a name, email, and optionally a phone number.
Add a phone number only if the contact has agreed to receive text messages. Consent is required before docEvault will text them — see SMS reminders and consent for what counts as consent and how to record it.
If your firm has more than one team member you will also see Assigned to. The assigned person is told about that client's activity — uploads, items marked not applicable, deadline warnings, texts that could not be delivered — alongside whoever created each request, so an attorney still hears about a matter a paralegal set up on their behalf. It changes nothing the client sees. Left blank, it defaults to whoever added the contact, and the contact's page shows who it is.
The contact detail page
Open a contact to see every request you've sent them, their message history, and their status at a glance. This is usually the fastest way to answer "where did we land with this person" without digging through email.
Once a contact has more than one request, two controls appear above the list:
- Status chips narrow the list to Needs Review (files waiting for your review), Awaiting Documents, Overdue or Completed, with a count on each. They use the same rules as the dashboard cards, so a request can appear under more than one. A chip only shows when at least one request fits it, and the choice resets when you open another contact.
- Sort orders the list by Most Urgent (the default: soonest deadline first, finished requests last, the same order as the dashboard table), Due Soonest, Due Latest, Newest or Oldest. Your choice is remembered in that browser for every contact.
Both work alongside the Created By filter and on the archived list.
Archiving and deleting
There are two ways to get a contact out of your active list, and they mean different things. Both are in the ⋯ menu at the end of the contact’s row on the Contacts page; on a contact’s own page, Archive is the box icon beside Edit.
Archive when you're done with someone but want the record kept. An archived contact and their requests stay fully readable, drop out of your counts and lists, and can be restored with one click. This is the right choice if you have retention obligations or might need the file again.
Archiving also means the client is done: their automatic reminders stop, and every portal link they hold stops working, so they can no longer upload or sign until you restore them. Because of that, docEvault asks you to confirm before archiving. Nothing is deleted, and restoring brings the links and reminders back exactly as they were.
Delete when the record shouldn't exist. Deleting a contact also takes their active requests with it. It isn't instant or final: the contact moves to Recently Deleted on the Contacts page, where you can restore them — requests and all — for 30 days. After that they're gone for good.
A note on shared phone numbers
The same phone number can legitimately belong to more than one contact — a shared office line, a spouse, a vendor who works with several of your clients. docEvault allows this rather than forcing phone numbers to be unique.
One consequence worth knowing: if someone replies STOP to a text, the opt-out applies to that phone number. If that number is on more than one contact record, all of them stop receiving texts.