Contacts are viewers that you have given certain permissions to (the most basic being the ability to view videos in your Wistia account).
Contacts can also be given permission to download content, upload new videos, or invite other viewers on a project-by-project basis. All contact activity is recorded and viewable within the “User Sessions” portion of Wistia Stats.
When to use contacts:
- When you want people to view content privately within Wistia
- When you want to be able to track viewing of your content (in your Wistia account)
How to Create a Contact
While there are several ways to create a contact within Wistia, the easiest way is to simply share a project with someone. To do this, you will need the person's email address. Directions on sharing a project via email can be found in the Private Sharing doc article.
When you share a Wistia project with an individual (or group of individuals), the contacts are automatically created in your account if they did not previously exist.
Alternatively, contacts can be created without sharing projects. To do this, choose the "Contacts" item in the Account tab on any page in your Wistia account. This will take you to your "My Contacts" page.
From here, choose Create Contacts from the menu. A dialog will appear that will let you either create a single new contact (the "New Contact" tab) or create many new contacts simultaneously (the "Advanced Add" tab). Choose whichever method is appropriate based on the number of contacts you want to create. Simply enter the requested information and hit .
Note
Contacts created in this manner will NOT have access to any content and must be explicitly shared on projects in your account.
How to invite a contact to view your content
Directions on sharing a project with a contact via email can be found in the section: Private Sharing doc article.
How to view statistics for a contact
If you have shared video with a contact, please see the Statistics for user sessions doc article to learn how to view viewing statistics for that contact.
How to remove content access for a contact
As mentioned in other sections contact access to content is controlled on a project-by-project basis. As a result, if a contact is shared on multiple projects, you will need to remove them from each project individually or delete the contact from your account entirely.
To remove a contact from a project, go to the project page and select "Manage permissions" from the Project Actions menu. This will bring up the permission management dialog. To remove the contact, click the trashcan icon on the far right-hand side of the line for that contact. This will completely remove the contact's access to the project materials.
Finally, click the "Update Permissions" button on the dialog to save the change.
How to change permissions for a contact on a project
Access to content for a contact is controlled at the Project level. To learn how to change permissions on a Project for a Contact, please see change permissions for users on a project.
What are contact groups?
Contact groups are collections of contacts that can be managed and treated as a
single user for the purposes of controlling access and permissions on projects.
Hundreds (or even thousands) of users can be added to a contact group. Then, by
simply sharing a project with that single group, all of the users in the group
will be given access to a project. This makes working with large numbers of
users with similar content access and permissions much easier.
As another example, let's say there are three projects that make up new employee training for a company using Wistia. Furthermore, let's say that the company's Wistia manager had created a "New Hire" group which had been shared on the projects with specific permissions. Now, when the company hires a new employee, they can simply add the new contact to the "New Hire" group and the new contact will have access to all of the appropriate content.
How to create contact groups
Contact groups are created and managed from the Contacts area of the Wistia application. To get to this area, choose "Contacts" from the Account tab on any page in your Wistia account.
There are two main ways to add contacts to a contact group. If you want to add existing users to a new or existing group, select the users you wish to add to the group by checking the box next to their name on the "My Contacts" page.
Once you have selected all of the desired contacts, choose "Add to group" from the Actions menu. You will be prompted to enter a name for the group you would like to add the contacts to. This can be either a new or existing group.
Once the group name is entered, press the "Add to group" button. This will complete the process. Now the entire group can be shared on projects just as you would share an individual contact.
If you wish to create new users and add them to a group as a single action, choose "Create contacts" from the Actions menu. On the dialog you are presented, two tabs will be shown. Select the tab which reads "Advanced Add". A list of email address (comma or line break separated) can be entered into the Contacts area and the group name (new or existing) is entered into the box labeled "Add to group".
When completed, click the "Create contacts" button and all of the contacts will be created and immediately added to the group. Don't worry if some of the contacts in your list are already contacts in your account, they will only be added to the group (no duplicate contacts will be created).
Can a contact be invited in such a way that they don't need to set a password?
Yes. By default, when a project is shared with a contact, the contact will be required to choose a password if they have never logged into Wistia before or enter their password if they have previously logged in to Wistia.
To share a project with a contact in a manner that doesn't require a password, choose "Share project" from the Project Actions menu. Then, uncheck the "Require invitees to enter password" box in the permissions section.
Fill out the rest of the information on the form as appropriate and then click the "Share" button.
The person shared will receive an email with a link to the project. When they click this link, they will not be required to login; rather, they will be taken directly to the project page where they will be able to view your content. The users activity will still be tracked and tied to their contact information in your account. Their activity can be viewed in the User Sessions section of the Stats.
How can a contact change their password?
Yes. Contact credentials within Wistia are self-managed, which means that the contact chooses their own password and the user resets their own password if it is forgotten. If a contact forgets their password, they can click the "Forgot your password?" link on your Wistia account's login page.
The contact will then be prompted for their email address (which is also their Wistia login). Once the "Reset Account" button is pressed, an email will be sent containing a link which will allow them to set their password again.
The contact's old password will work until it is reset which prevents others from locking a contact out by resetting the contact's password. Finally, because the email address is used as the login, even if a third party resets a contact's password, they will not receive the email containing the new link to set the contact's password.
