What is a Preferred Name?
A preferred name is the name a contact would like to be called, when this is different from their legal first name. For example, someone whose first name is Robert may prefer to go by Bob, or someone named Elizabeth may prefer Liz.
Recording this in Street means that when you send correspondence to that person, it uses the name they actually go by - rather than defaulting to the name on their formal records.
Adding a Preferred Name
You can add a preferred name when creating or editing any person from the 'preferred name' field. This field is optional so can be left blank if the person is happy to be addressed by their first name.
How Preferred Names Appear
Where a preferred name has been recorded and is different from the person's first name, it will appear in brackets next to their full name throughout Street - on contact cards, search results, and property page bars. This makes it easy to see at a glance what name to use with them.
Using Preferred Names in Correspondence
Preferred names are available as merge tags in document and correspondence templates, just look for the 'preferred name' merge field.
Note - Where a preferred name has not been set, these merge tags will fall back to the person's first name automatically so your templates will always produce a sensible result without needing extra conditions.
These merge fields mean you can personalise your communications so the contact is always addressed the way they prefer.
Street is constantly being updated. This can mean that some of these articles become slightly out of date. If you spot something that looks a little bit different to your Street account, please let us know on the live chat so we can get it updated.