Entering Custom Contact/Person Types

If your Filevine environment uses custom Contact/Person Types, you may not see them in the static dropdown list inside Zapier when creating or updating a contact. We are currently working on populating these lists dynamically by fetching the types dynamically from your Filevine. Until this feature is released, you can still assign them by entering the values manually in your Zap.

Follow the steps below enter custom Contact/Person Types in the Filevine-Zapier connector.
 

👤 Step 1 — Locate the Contact Type(s) Field in Zapier

When configuring a Filevine step in Zapier--typically found in the "Create Contact" action, you may encounter the "Contact Types" field (see screenshot below). In this field, you will see a list of built-in, static options—these do not include any custom contact types you may have added to your Filevine environment.

Figure 1. Screenshot of Zapier when configuring a Filevine step for the “Create Contact” action, showing the "Static" Contact Type dropdown options.

🔎 Step 2 — Find the Exact Contact/Person Type Name in Filevine

In Filevine:

1. Open any contact (click the pencil icon to edit the contact).
2. Click the plus (+) symbol next to the list of the contact's types to the right of the contact's name.
3. From the contact type dropdown list, locate the type you want to use in your Zap—including any custom types your org has created. You will enter this name exactly as shown (including spaces and capitalized letters) in the next step. Do not save any modifications to the contact's types unless you intend to do so.

➡️ Important:
Enter the name exactly as it appears in Filevine, including spaces (e.g., Preferred Vendor). Spacing and capitalization must match or Filevine will not recognize the value.

ℹ️ Note that you can also find the list of contact types in your Filevine account under: Advanced > Contacts Setup > [Choose your Org] > Click the "Types & Labels" tab > Contact Types.

Figure 2. Screenshot in Filevine showing the list of available contact/person types, which includes custom contact types specific to the Filevine environment, shown after clicking the + button in the Edit Contact card.

✅ Step 3 — Enter the Custom Type Manually in Zapier

Back in Zapier:

1. Click the three-dot menu ⋮ to the right of the Contact Type(s) dropdown.
2. Select Custom.
3. Type the contact type name exactly as it appears in Filevine (including spaces and capital letters) after clicking in the box where it says "Enter text or insert data", ignoring the "Insert data for Contact Types" dynamic popup box.
4. Click anywhere outside of the box to save the custom type.

You can repeat this process to add multiple types.

Figure 3. Screenshot of Zapier showing how to enter custom contact types into the "Create Contact" action.
 

Figure 4. Screenshot of Zapier showing where to enter the custom contact type, eg. "Insurance Company".

➡️ Reminder: The Zapier connector cannot currently fetch custom types because it was not yet added into the connector. We plan to release this feature sometime in the near future so the connector will populate the list automatically.