Contact methods

Define the contact fields users can fill in, and how a media type picks one of them to decide where each person's notification goes.

Where this page ends: the user form offers exactly the contact fields your media types need — a WeCom user ID, an internal IM handle, a pager number — and a notification rule that names people or teams knows which address to use for each of them.

What a contact method is

Every user has a phone and an email as fixed fields. Everything else — robot tokens, IM account IDs, anything your own integrations need — is a contact method: an entry in a list the administrator maintains, which then appears as a key users can fill in under Contact on their profile.

Part of an entry	Notes
Name	What users see in the dropdown
Identifier	The key the value is stored under, and what a media type refers to. Letters, digits, _ and - only
Enabled	Turned off, it disappears from every dropdown

Where to manage the list

Only Admin can edit it, from any of three places — they all open the same list:

• the link next to Contact in the user form (Organization → Users → Add / Edit). In the English UI it reads Please go to the settings page to add;
• the same link on your own profile page;
• the gear icon next to Contact in a media type's Variable configuration.

The list is also available as a page of its own at /contacts.

Click Add, enter a name and an identifier, keep it enabled, and save. Changes apply immediately; there is nothing to restart.

What a fresh install starts with

On a new v9 install the list is empty. Users will see no contact keys to fill in until you add the ones you need.

Installs upgraded from earlier versions keep the six built-in entries those versions created:

Identifier	Used for
dingtalk_robot_token	DingTalk group robot token
wecom_robot_token	WeCom group robot key
feishu_robot_token	Feishu group robot token
lark_robot_token	Lark group robot token
telegram_robot_token	Telegram bot token
mm_webhook_url	Mattermost webhook URL

Built-in entries can be disabled but not deleted, and their identifier cannot be edited. They date from when each person's robot token lived on their profile; in v9 the usual path is to put the robot token in the notification rule instead, as described in DingTalk / Feishu / WeCom.

How a media type uses it

A media type that sends to people — Callback, Script and the HTTP-based types — has a Contact dropdown under Variable configuration. It lists phone, email, and every enabled contact method.

When a notification rule picks users or teams for that media type, Nightingale takes each person's value for the chosen key:

1. A person who has not filled that key is skipped silently — no error, no retry.
2. The remaining values become $sendto / $sendtos in HTTP templates, or sendtos on a script's stdin.

So "why did this person get nothing?" starts here: open their profile and check that the key the media type uses is filled in.

A worked example: send by WeCom user ID

Say an internal service sends WeCom app messages and needs each recipient's WeCom user ID.

1. Add a contact method: name WeCom user ID, identifier wecomid.

2. Have people fill it in on their profile, or fill it in for them in the user form.

3. On a Callback media type, set Contact to WeCom user ID and send the list in the body:

   {"touser": {{ jsonMarshal $sendtos }}, "text": {{ jsonMarshal $tpl.content }}}

4. In the notification rule, pick teams as recipients. Everyone in them with a wecomid is included in one request.

Changing or removing an entry

• Disabling hides the key from the user form and from media type dropdowns. Values people already filled in stay on their profiles, and a media type that already points at the key keeps sending with it.
• Changing the identifier of a custom entry does not move existing values — they stay stored under the old key, and media types still pointing at the old key keep using it. Treat the identifier as permanent.
• Deleting a custom entry removes it from the list only; stored values are not cleaned up.

Next

• Where people's details are filled in: Users and teams
• Use the addresses in a request: Callback (generic webhook)
• Or in your own program: Script media type