Best Practices > Assigning every Firm Member to all Contacts & Events

Assigning every Firm Member to all Contacts and Events

We do not recommend that every Firm Member be assigned to all Contacts on all Events. You will find that it makes your workflow cumbersome, provides no benefits, and results in performance degradation. There are other ways of managing access to the thousands of Amicus Contacts in your firm database.

Contacts

Amicus automatically assigns all Contacts on your Files to you, so you can be sure of always having them in your list. And of course you will always have all your personal Contacts. But the list of all Contacts for everyone in the firm can be immense. On a day-to-day basis you rarely need this larger, more cumbersome list. Working with a huge list of names you do not know slows you down, and slows the software down as well.

If you need to select a Contact that is not in your list, simply use the QuickFind feature. The Select People dialog has a QuickFind button that lets you find any Contact in the firm instantly. So you can get names when you need them, but they are not in your way when you don't. Or if you have a need to view a list of all firm Contacts, perhaps for reporting requirements, mass e-mailing, or document assembly, your Security Profile can be set so you have a button in your People Index that lets you view either just your own Contacts or all Firm Contacts.

Amicus Attorney has been designed to optimize performance around normal day-to-day workflow. That means it brings in lists of items like Contacts in their entirety, so that you have everything at your fingertips. This works well for lists of up to a few thousand items. But when lists grow beyond that, it starts to place a lot of demand on your server, especially for lists that are used as often as Contacts. Multiply this by everyone in your firm and you could find that assigning every user to every Contact will slow down your server. Server processing affects all users.

And remember, using accurate Firm Member assignments will result in more accurate data and better record tracking.

Calendar Events

It is not necessary to assign all Events to everyone, especially if they use the Outlook/Exchange or Google synchronization. This would reduce the value of your calendaring system, and potentially could affect performance for all Amicus users.

The Amicus Calendar provides the ability to look at anyone else's calendar—selected individuals or those in a group or even the entire firm at once. You will see all their Appointments. If you are on any given Event, are assigned to the File it relates to, or created the Event, you can see all its details. If not, you can see that someone is booked but not why. This privacy restriction reflects what the vast majority of our customers have asked for.

If you need to see everything in someone else's Calendar, even if you are not assigned to the Appointments, just open their Office. There are settings that easily allow everyone to access everyone else's Office—or you can set up secure individual access if you prefer.

On the other hand, putting everyone on every Event makes it impossible to see who is really responsible for the Event. This dramatically reduces the value of the system. And it can impact performance, especially if using third-party links such as Outlook.