Contacts represent the individual people you do business with — usually associated with an Account. The platform asks for surprisingly little; the friction comes from your org's page-layout and validation choices.
- Open the Contacts tab
App Launcher → Contacts. You can also create a Contact from an Account's related list (the most common pattern, because it auto-links the Account).
- Click New
Top-right of the list view. From an Account, use the Contacts related list's New button to skip the Account lookup step.
- Enter Last Name
LastName is the only platform-required field. Even single-name people (e.g., "Madonna") need something here — many orgs use a placeholder convention.
- Link an Account
Account is technically optional but virtually always required by org policy. Contacts with no Account become "private" Contacts and are sharing-restricted.
- Fill business fields your layout demands
Title, Email, Phone, Mailing Address — page layouts usually mark these as required even though the platform doesn't. Look for the red bar.
- Save
Save commits the record. Duplicate-management rules fire here against existing Contacts/Leads (typically by Email).
The only platform-required field. FirstName is optional.
- Contacts without an AccountId are "private" — visibility follows the orgwide default for Contact, which is often Controlled by Parent and breaks down without a parent.
- Email is not platform-required, but most orgs make it required via page layout because it's the join key to Marketing Cloud, Pardot, and outbound campaigns.
- Lead-to-Contact conversion creates a Contact with the Lead's data — don't double-create. Search Leads first.