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Add, edit and archive contacts

Most contacts arrive on their own. This article covers the ways people get into Swimlane, what you can change on a contact, how archiving works and why there is no delete button.

How contacts get into Swimlane

  • Your LinkedIn conversations. Everyone you talk to becomes a contact automatically when your inbox syncs.
  • Imports. On the Lists page, New Import opens the import sources (post engagement, profile visitors, recurring imports…). Each import fills a list.
  • Invitations you receive. The people who invite you are kept as contacts.
  • A CSV file, for people you already track somewhere else.

There is no form in the app to type a single contact by hand.

Import a CSV file

  1. Open Lists in the main navigation and click New Import.
  2. In the Import tab, choose CSV Import, then drop your file or click Choose file (CSV, 10 MB maximum).
  3. Map the three columns Swimlane needs: LinkedIn URL, First Name and Last Name. Rows missing one of them, or with an invalid LinkedIn URL, are counted as invalid.
  4. Type a List name. If a list with exactly this name already exists, the contacts are added to it. Otherwise a new list is created.
  5. Click Start Import.

A CSV contact only carries a name and a LinkedIn URL. Before using it in a campaign, fill in its profile and connection degree: select the imported contacts and choose Bulk Actions → Enrich with LinkedIn (it counts against your daily profile scrape limit). A campaign's connection request step skips contacts whose connection degree is still unknown.

One contact per LinkedIn identity

Swimlane matches people by their LinkedIn identity. When a conversation, an import or an invitation brings in someone who is already in your workspace, the existing contact is updated rather than copied, and an import adds its list to the lists they already belong to. In a CSV file, a row whose LinkedIn URL already exists in your workspace is counted among the duplicates and skipped.

If you still find two records for the same person, see Merge duplicate contacts.

What you can edit

Profile fields (name, headline, photo, company, job title) come from LinkedIn and can't be typed over. Refresh them with Enrich with LinkedIn (see The contact record: what Swimlane keeps and how it stays up to date). What you control:

  • Notes. In the contact's Info tab, type in the Notes field. It saves as soon as you click outside it. In Inbox tables, the note icon on a row opens the same note with a Save button. The note is visible to everyone in your workspace.
  • Tags: see Organise contacts with tags.
  • Lists: see Create and manage lists.
  • Pipeline stage: see Move contacts through a pipeline.
  • Reminders: see Set reminders to follow up.

Archive a contact

Archiving sets someone aside without losing their history.

  1. Open the contact.
  2. In Info → Quick actions, click Archive.

To archive several contacts at once, tick them in a contact table, open Bulk Actions, choose Archive and confirm.

Once a contact is archived:

  • They disappear from the Inbox Messaging view and from All Members, Relations, Contacts, No tag and the Sent invitations view. Their conversation is listed under Conversations → Archived.
  • They are taken out of every campaign. New enrolments skip them, and a contact already in the middle of a sequence is paused where they stopped.
  • They no longer appear in the dashboard's People to interact with list, nor in the ⌘K / Ctrl+K search.
  • They still appear in the tables of the Lists page.
  • The archived state applies to your whole workspace. An import that finds them again doesn't unarchive them.

Unarchive a contact

Open the contact, for example from Conversations → Archived or from one of your lists, and click Unarchive in Quick actions. A contact paused in a campaign picks up again from the step where they stopped.

Deleting a contact

The app has no delete button for contacts: archive them instead, which keeps the conversation and activity history. Deleting a list doesn't delete its contacts either. If you really need to remove a record, the public API can delete a contact (see Swimlane public API reference).

Good to know

  • Contacts, notes, tags and the archived state are shared with your workspace. Your reminders and pipelines stay personal.
  • Bulk actions don't include unarchive: unarchive contacts one at a time from their record.

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