The Create a contact in Autotask action attempts to find an existing contact in Autotask by using the email address provided by the client. If one is found, this contact is associated with the scheduling request; if not, TimeZest will create a new contact in Autotask, and associate that with the scheduling request.

This action is available when your TimeZest account is connected to Autotask.

The new contact handling determines the exact logic that TimeZest uses when creating a contact, if a matching contact cannot be found in Autotask.

If the Create a new contact and company mode is selected, TimeZest will create an entirely new contact and company record in Autotask, using the data entered by the client when they schedule.

If the Create a new contact in a catch-all company mode is selected, TimeZest will create a new contact record, but will associate it with the selected company, as specified in the catch-all company field. If this option is used, TimeZest will not ask the client for the company name when scheduling - just their name and email address.

If the Reject if matching email address not found mode is selected, TimeZest will prevent the client from scheduling, and display an error message to them indicating this.

If the Reject if matching email domain not found mode is selected, TimeZest will search for any other contact in Autotask which has the same email domain (e.g. the part of the email address after the '@') as the email address entered by the client. If one is found, TimeZest will create a new contact record, and associate it with the same company as the found contact. If a matching email is not found, TimeZest will prevent the client from scheduling and display an error message to them indicating this. The use case for this mode is creating shareable URL links which can only be used by employees of existing customer accounts, even if they haven't interacted with you before.
​
This last option will also automatically reject any email addresses where a free email domain (e.g. Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) is used.

TimeZest will skip executing this action where all users who are being scheduled have a calendar other than Autotask set as their writeable calendar. This is to avoid the situation where an orphan contact is created in Autotask for appointments which are otherwise only need to exist in Office 365.

TimeZest will skip executing this action where there is already a contact associated with the scheduling request - for example, when a scheduling request is requested from the pod, and TimeZest already knows the contact from the ticket there.

TimeZest will also skip executing this action if there is no longer a Autotask integration connected to your account.