In the Dialog Insight app, a project is a database that contains your contacts, your messages and the results of your sendings and campaigns. In a project, the profile structure for your contacts is presented with fields. Your company account may host one or several projects. Each project can only have one contact list. However, it is possible to create, for one project, multiple groups to divide the contact list (see Creating a Group of Contacts).
In most cases, you'll have a main project for all your main contacts and maybe some others, to manage contacts for other purposes, such as draws or contests. For example, you could have a project for employees, and another for your newsletter subscribers, as the information to collect differs for these two groups. A common example is a project for leads and another for contacts.
Before Starting
It is recommended to carry out some actions to optimize your deliverability before creating a project. See the deliverability checklist.
Step 1: Set the Basic Structure of the Project
Start by creating a new project and fill-in the required info: 
Under the Identification section, specify the name and labels of the project. The name is the ID of the project, as the label identifies the project for users in the available languages (we will add languages in a further step).
Email | Client or member number | Other |
| The Email field will be the primary key of the project. | The ClientNo field will be added as the primary key. | In the next step, you will need to define the field you wish to use as the primary key of the project. |
| Any choice you make, the Email, FirstName, and LastName fields will be added as default. The Email field is always required. The FirstName and LastName fields are not required. After the project creation, the primary key is locked, and it is impossible to set any fields as required. | ||
What is a primary key?
Each project has one primary key (composed of one or several fields). Normally, you will use only one field, but you may use more than one, depending on your needs. The primary key prevents the existence of duplicate contacts in your database and ensures that a contact does not receive the same message twice. If there were the same contact twice, the system would keep the first occurrence of that contact in the import file and ignore the other occurrences. The email address is most commonly used as the primary key, but you may choose any other field, such as a client number or a combination of fields. Some other fields might be set as required, so these fields must be filled when a new contact is created. Defining the required fields and primary key from the beginning is recommended, as there are some constraints to modifying the fields after the project is online (when the tables are built).
Step 2: Add a Data Structure (optional)
Under the list of generated fields, at the bottom of the page, there is an option to create a data structure, depending on your goals:
Choose among the 3 options:
The system will generate tables according to your choice.
• Events: Ticket, Event, Admission, Transaction.
• Retail business: Cart, Item, Product, Transaction.
• Other (custom): No table will be generated. You need to create one for yourself.
Make sure to choose your template correctly from the beginning! It might be complicated to change it later.
Step 3 - Add Project Fields
In addition to the default fields of the app, you may add fields, as many as you need, to hold all the information about your contacts. Fields are embedded in sections, which allow you to group similar information and help you keep a clear structure in your project. You may organize the fields and sections as you want by dragging them to the desired location.
Step 4 - Define Field Availability
Decide which fields are to be displayed on various pages of the application (field availability), as you might not need to display all fields everywhere.
Step 5 - Edit Default Configurations
If you wish to use other languages in your project, you have to set the available languages. This will impact some elements of the application, like the fields you add.
Select the time zone to be used in planned mailings, automated tasks and marketing automation scenarios. The default will be applied if you do not change the time zone. You will get Montreal time for the Canadian platform and GMT for the European platform.
For more info, read the article on project's configuration.
Step 7 - Build the Project
This is the final step, where the project structure is generated. Once the structure of the project has been defined and all the fields to be included in the project are set in the desired format, the project must be built so that data is compiled and the project becomes available. Click on Build tables by getting first to Project fields:
The only times you need to build tables are when the project is created or when the list of contacts has been deleted and you want to reuse that project. Once the tables of fields are built, the project's status changes to online
and is ready to be used. You can see the status by clicking on All projects.
Results
Congratulations! You now have a project that allows you to add contacts, send messages and create campaigns. Before sending messages, it is recommended to configure the authorized senders as well as the consent centre and to add Dialog Insight to your whitelist.