Online technology makes it easier than ever to connect with international supporters. Gathering contact information for these supporters is vital, so we include country fields and international formatting for phone numbers and addresses on all our contact records. These fields can be used as search criteria when doing a quick look-up or creating a list so you can readily see who is coming to you from outside the United States.
Formatting for international addresses and phone numbers
Adding an international address or phone number to a record is straightforward but there are a few things you should know about how we format and validate the information.
When adding an international address from Main Menu > Quick Add New Contact or from the Addresses section of the contact record, you will see a dropdown for Country that lets you choose from a standardized ISO list of international locations.
When choosing a US address, the default is to use input validation using the Postal Service Standardization. This will alert you if a street address or city does not match the zip code you enter. There is also an option to display the address as entered, with no validation. This might be necessary for unusual postal addresses or addresses that do not appear in the US Postal databases.
When entering a country other than the US, there is no validation for the data you enter but you are prompted for a Postal Code and State/Province. These are plain text fields, so be sure to double check your data entry here to ensure accuracy.
Phone numbers can also be entered in international formats. To enter an international phone number from Main Menu > Quick Add New Contact or from the Phones section of the contact record, you'll use the flag icon to open the dropdown menu with the list of possible countries. This will automatically add the prefix code for that number and show you the suggested formatting for the rest of the number.
With phone numbers, we provide input validation on numbers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Input validation ensures that you have the correct length of numbers in the field and it helps prevent data entry errors.
For all other countries, we add the appropriate dialing prefix as a pre-pend, but the phone number will not be formatted in any specific way. This is a plain text field, so be sure to double check your data entry for these numbers.
Searching for international contacts
Searching for contacts with international addresses or phone numbers is very simple. Use Create A List > Addresses or Create A List > Phones and use the Country dropdown menu to select contacts with international addresses from the country you want to include.
For more help searching or creating lists, see How do I create a list?.
Exporting records with international contacts
When exporting your search file, a country field is included by default in any export that includes contact addresses.
If your export type includes phone numbers, you will see an option to include the International prefix or country code for each phone type by using Customize Export. On the Phone Type export, this is a simple checkbox to include these fields. With the Standard Text Export, you can add these as additional fields from the dropdown menu.
Viewing reports with international addresses or phone numbers
You can include international addresses or phone numbers in your reports. These will appear much as you expect. All phone numbers will have a dialing prefix before the number except for numbers from the United States and Canada.
Creating bulk uploads with international phones and addresses
You can include international addresses or phone numbers in bulk uploads.
Addresses are fairly straightforward to add. Use the Mapping Template to match the Country field to the correct column in your file. Remember that our system will only do validation on US addresses.
When adding records with international phones, you can automatically add the correct country code and dialing prefix to your records using the Apply Value to All Records option if all of your records are from the same country.
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In the case where your file has contacts from mixed countries, you will need to make sure you have a country column which you can map using Choose Columns from Data File.
You can then choose the corresponding country code for each of the countries appearing in your file.
For more about Bulk Upload Wizard, read our Bulk Uploads Overview.