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Followers give team members visibility into and management access to specific contact records. When a user follows a contact, they receive the same level of access as the contact owner — they can view conversations, edit data, and manage the contact’s record. This is especially important in accounts that use restricted data visibility, where users can only see contacts they own or follow.

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How followers work

  • A contact can have up to 10 followers in addition to its owner
  • Followers have the same edit permissions as the contact owner
  • The follower feature is most meaningful when Restrict data visibility to only assigned data is enabled for a user — without that setting, users can see all contacts regardless of follower status
  • Followers are visible in the contact header so every team member can see who is monitoring that record

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Adding followers to a contact

1

Open the contact record

Navigate to Contacts > Smart Lists and click a contact’s name to open their record.
2

Locate the followers control

In the contact header at the top of the record, look for the Followers icon (a people/group icon) next to the owner assignment area.
3

Add a follower

Click the Followers icon to open the follower dropdown. Select up to 10 team members from the list. Their avatars or names appear in the header immediately.
Add followers when handing off a contact to another team member temporarily, or when multiple people need to collaborate on the same account without changing the primary owner.

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Removing a follower

1

Open the contact record

Click the contact’s name to open their record.
2

Open the followers dropdown

Click the Followers icon in the contact header.
3

Remove the follower

Click the X next to the team member’s name to remove them as a follower. The change takes effect immediately.

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Setting up restricted data visibility

Followers are most powerful when combined with restricted data visibility. This setting prevents users from seeing contacts they neither own nor follow, which is useful in multi-team environments where each user should only work with their own leads.
1

Open staff settings

Navigate to Settings > My Staff and click the Edit button for the team member whose visibility you want to restrict.
2

Enable restricted visibility

In the user’s permission settings, enable Restrict data visibility to only assigned data. When this is turned on, the user will only see contacts where they are listed as owner or follower.
3

Save changes

Click Save. The setting takes effect immediately for that user’s next login or page refresh.
If a team member reports that they cannot see a contact they expect to have access to, verify that restricted data visibility is enabled for their account and then confirm they are listed as a follower (or owner) on that contact record.

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Bulk-adding followers

You can add a follower to many contacts at once using bulk actions:
1

Select contacts

In Contacts > Smart Lists, check the contacts you want to update.
2

Open bulk actions

Click the More dropdown in the bulk actions toolbar and select Add Followers (if available in your account).
3

Select team members and confirm

Choose the team members to add as followers and click Apply. All selected contacts are updated simultaneously.

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Difference between owner and follower

OwnerFollower
Assigned countOne per contactUp to 10 per contact
Data access (restricted mode)YesYes
Edit permissionsFullFull
Workflow “Assigned To” targetingYesNo
Receives task notificationsYesNo
Appears in owner-based reportsYesNo
Use the Owner field for the primary person responsible for the contact’s outcomes. Use Followers for anyone who needs visibility without taking ownership responsibility.

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Frequently asked questions

Followers gain data visibility rather than explicit notifications. To ensure team members are alerted to activity on a contact, use workflow triggers and notification actions to send internal alerts.
No. Each contact has exactly one owner. Use followers to give additional team members access without transferring ownership.
When duplicate contacts are merged, the followers from both records are combined on the master record, up to the maximum of 10 followers.
Yes. In the Advanced Filters of Smart Lists, you can filter by follower to see all contacts a specific team member is following.
Last modified on March 5, 2026