Issues with Contact Database Field Editing and Permission Control

Rachael F.

·May 15, 2025 04:37 PM·

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Hi, I woke up this morning to one of the fields in my contact database having been deleted. There's two problems:

1.
There's no audit trail to see when this happened/how
2.
I checked your help content and it says managers can create and edit fields on people but I just validated with a coworker who has contributor access that they can also add and delete fields in the contacts. This is very problematic for us and we want to lock it down so ONLY managers can add or edit fields in Contacts.

My main questions:

1.
Is there any way to recover the data we lost?
2.
Is this a bug or is the help content wrong?
3.
How can we lock down field editing permissions on contacts immediately?

6 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Benjamin H.
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Hey Rachael F., can you check to see if the contact field is in workspace trash? https://dovetail.com/help/restore-deleted-things-from-trash/
Benjamin H.
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Erin C. can you please look into the second point regarding field permissions?
Erin C.
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Hi Rachael F. - appreciate this is definitely not ideal to wake up to! As Benjamin mentioned - for immediate recovery, can you please check your trash. In the meanwhile I will work with the team today, as this does appear to be a bug, to implement a fix and have your contacts locked down to just managers. I'll share back once we have an ETA on this fix.
Erin C.
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Hi Rachael F. I've spoken with the team and this is actually a fault in the help doc! The ability for managers and contributors to be able to edit is consistent with how the access levels work across the rest of the product. We are, however, adding an extra level of access controls for contacts, which would allow you to lock it down for different user groups. We expect this to be in product in the next few weeks. In the meanwhile, if you need an immediate solution, you are able to restrict access to contacts. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, we will update the help article. I will also provide an update once we have the access control for contacts in product.
Rachael F.
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Thanks, Erin! I though I responded to the trash question via the in app chat, but I did check and the information isn't in the trash. Any options to recover that data would be really helpful - thanks!
Erin C.
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Sorry to hear that Rachael F. - I'll check in with the team (and the app chat) to see about the trash issue!

Benjamin H.
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Hey Rachael F., can you check to see if the contact field is in workspace trash? https://dovetail.com/help/restore-deleted-things-from-trash/
Benjamin H.
·
·
Erin C. can you please look into the second point regarding field permissions?
Erin C.
·
·
Hi Rachael F. - appreciate this is definitely not ideal to wake up to! As Benjamin mentioned - for immediate recovery, can you please check your trash. In the meanwhile I will work with the team today, as this does appear to be a bug, to implement a fix and have your contacts locked down to just managers. I'll share back once we have an ETA on this fix.
Erin C.
·
·
Hi Rachael F. I've spoken with the team and this is actually a fault in the help doc! The ability for managers and contributors to be able to edit is consistent with how the access levels work across the rest of the product. We are, however, adding an extra level of access controls for contacts, which would allow you to lock it down for different user groups. We expect this to be in product in the next few weeks. In the meanwhile, if you need an immediate solution, you are able to restrict access to contacts. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, we will update the help article. I will also provide an update once we have the access control for contacts in product.
Rachael F.
·
·
Thanks, Erin! I though I responded to the trash question via the in app chat, but I did check and the information isn't in the trash. Any options to recover that data would be really helpful - thanks!
Erin C.
·
·
Sorry to hear that Rachael F. - I'll check in with the team (and the app chat) to see about the trash issue!