We know you will often assign agent "owners" to Tern contacts or trips, so they can more easily plan trips. But in many cases, we know that your agency is technically the long term owner of that contact or trip. In cases where an agent leaves, you want to make sure they don't have the ability to remove your access to that contact or trip.

This article walks through Tern's 'agency-managed contact/trip' setting, which lets you lock down an agent's ability to remove your access to that contact or trip in Tern. We also have smart defaults to ensure any contacts/trips you create as an agency admin will be locked down automatically, and trips with bookings using your credentials are locked down automatically.

Any new contacts and trips created in Tern will be automatically shared with the agent's default agency. This means you'll have full access to view all contact/trip details, edit the contact/trip, and access their information in reporting.

For more information on contact collaboration, see this help center article.

You'll notice a "Agency-managed contact" toggle right below the agency sharing section, on all contacts shared with your agency.

On trips, you'll see the same thing

When this setting is enabled, the agent who owns the contact or trip can't remove your agency's access from that contact/trip. As an agency admin, you always have the ability to toggle it "off" for any reason.

By default, as an agency admin, any contact or trip you create will be "agency managed". In these cases we assume that these contacts/trips are owned long-term by your agency.

When importing contacts in bulk, you'll notice a new column for the 'agency managed' setting. If you leave it blank, we'll assume it should be ON (meaning all imported contacts will be 'agency-managed'. If you don't want this setting on for any reason, you can toggle it to "no".

We also have a smart default to automatically mark a trip as "agency-managed" after an agent marks an item as 'booked' through your credentials.

That way they can't remove your access to the trip, or delete the trip, after submitting the booking to you.

You will also see this toggle, to mark a contact as agency-managed. You may be instructed to do so by your agency owner, depending on how their ownership policies work.

If you or your agency admin has enabled this toggle, you won't see the ability to remove your agency's access from this contact. If you believe this was done in error, please contact your agency administrator.

By default, any new contact you create or import will not be 'agency-managed'. You'll see the option to toggle it on when creating new contacts.

By default, if you submit a booking with your agency's credential, we then prevent agency access from being removed from that trip. You also won't be able to delete the trip at that point in time.