Market Area Visibility: Who Sees What – eSUB Fusion

User Personas: Admin | Project Manager | Field User

Market areas group your projects and people by region or line of business. Once assigned, they quietly control what each signed-in user can see and select across eSUB. Contact lists, crew and employee pickers, Time Management, and Scheduling all narrow to the market areas you share with the records you are looking at.

This article explains how that visibility is calculated, where it applies, how many market areas to assign, and what to check when a record you expect to see is missing. To create market areas and assign them to records, see Market Areas.

Use the links below to jump to a topic:

How Market Areas Work
How Unrestricted Records are Labeled
Where Market Area Scoping Applies
- Other behaviors to know
Choosing how many Market Areas to Assign
Troubleshooting: Why can't I see something?

How Market Areas Work

Each record type holds market areas differently:

How a user's assigned market areas determine which projects, contacts, and crew members they can see.
A version of this can be found as a downloadable PDF at the bottom of this article.

How Unrestricted Records are Labeled

A record that is not restricted to any market area is labeled rather than left blank, so an empty Market Areas field never looks like missing data:

Users, Crew Members, and Contacts: the logs show a green ALL MARKET AREAS chip in the Market Areas column, and the same chip appears on View User, View Crew Member, and View Contact. These records are visible to everyone.
Projects: the Projects log shows a green GLOBAL chip, and Project Info shows the chip followed by "Accessible in All Market Areas". A global project is visible in every market area.
Dropdowns: the first entry in the Market Areas picker is ALL — All Market Areas on user, crew member, and contact records, and GLOBAL — Accessible in All Market Areas on projects. Selecting it clears any market areas already picked and leaves the record unrestricted.

Where Market Area Scoping Applies

Contacts: the Contacts log and every contact/correspondence dropdown show only contacts in your market areas, plus contacts with no market area.
Crew and employee dropdowns: Daily Reports crew selection, Scheduling crew filters, General Info pickers on Change Orders, Purchase Orders, Pay Applications, Submittals, RFIs, and Project Team, and email recipient selectors across documents.
Time Management: Crew View, Project View, Download, and exports show only time for crew members and projects in your market areas.
Scheduling: the schedule board, Projects filter, and Crew Members filter narrow to your market areas, and time off can be scoped to a whole market area.
Purchase Orders: the Vendor drop-down lists only AP Vendor contacts in the project's market area that you can also see.
Users and Crew Members logs: the logs list only people in your market areas, plus people with no market area, and show a Market Areas column when your organization uses market areas.
Granting project access: on a user record's Access Level tab, two filters apply at once. You see only projects you can reach yourself, narrowed again to the market areas of the user you are editing. This makes it impossible to grant someone access to a project outside their own market areas. Projects with no market area are listed for everyone, and access already granted to projects no longer listed is left untouched when you save.
Activity Stream: the activity feed shows only activity you can see under the same market-area rules, so posts from projects and people outside your market areas do not appear.
Market Area settings: users scoped to specific market areas see Market Areas management in Settings as read-only. Managing market areas remains an Admin task.

Other behaviors to know

Project context narrows further. When you open a picker on a project, the list is also limited to that project's market area. A contact you can normally see will not appear on a project whose market area they do not share.
You keep access to projects you create. When you create a project, you are assigned to it immediately, so it appears in your project list right away. Your own market areas are not copied onto the project. A project's market area is set on the project itself, and a project left without one stays visible in every market area.
Some changes apply at next sign-in. Scheduling picks up market-area changes the next time the affected user signs in. If a change has not appeared somewhere else, signing out and back in is the first thing to try.

Choosing How Many Market Areas to Assign

There is no single right answer. More assignments mean broader visibility; fewer mean a more focused, less cluttered view. Use the table below to decide per record:

Choice	Pros	Cons and what to watch
Assign a user several market areas	They can see and select projects, people, and time data across every area they cover. Right for regional managers and floaters.	Longer lists and a busier schedule. The more areas a user has, the less the scoping helps them focus.
Set a user to ALL MARKET AREAS	They see everything, with no risk of a hidden record. Right for admins, executives, and payroll.	No focus benefit at all, and no guardrail against editing work outside their region.
Assign a contact or vendor several market areas	The contact is findable on projects in every assigned area. Fewer "why can't I find this vendor?" questions.	They appear in contact lists for teams that may never use them.
Set a contact or vendor to ALL MARKET AREAS	Visible and selectable everywhere, on any project. The safest default for shared vendors.	Contact lists grow for everyone, which is what market areas exist to prevent.
A project's single market area	Keeps the job in front of the team that runs it and drives the project-context filtering above.	Projects hold only one market area. If crews from several areas share the job, their contacts and crew must be in the project's area (or unassigned) to be pickable on it.

For vendors and other contacts used across regions, assign them to every market area where they work, or leave them unassigned. Reserve single-area assignments for genuinely local contacts.

Troubleshooting: Why can't I see something?

Why can't I find a contact or vendor on my project?

Two filters apply at once: the contact must share a market area with you, and on a project the list also narrows to the project's market area. Check the contact's Market Areas field. If it does not include the project's market area (and is not set to ALL MARKET AREAS ), add that market area to the contact or set the field to ALL MARKET AREAS .

Why can't I see a project or crew member in Scheduling or Time Management?

The project or crew member belongs to a market area you are not assigned to. Ask your Admin to add that market area to your user record, then log out and back in. Also note that in Time Management, a crew member in your market area will not bring in their time on projects outside your areas.

I changed market areas and nothing happened.

Have the affected user log out and back in. Scheduling picks up market-area changes at the next sign-in, and a fresh sign-in is the quickest way to rule out a stale session anywhere else.

Why don't I see a Market Areas column or filter?

Market area columns and filters only appear when your organization has two or more market areas defined. Some filters also hide when you have fewer than two market areas to choose from, since there would be nothing to filter.

Why did I get a "Contact Already Exists" message?

You tried to save a contact whose email already belongs to a contact in a market area you cannot see. eSUB will not create a duplicate. Instead, the dialog offers to assign the existing contact to your market area(s), keeping its current assignments intact.

Record	Market areas it can hold	Where you assign them
Project	One, or GLOBAL	Project Info, or the Market Areas > Assign Projects section in Settings.
User	One, many, or ALL MARKET AREAS	The User's record or the Market Areas > Assign Users section in Settings.
Crew member	One, many, or ALL MARKET AREAS	The crew member record or Market Areas > Assign Crew Members section in Settings.
Contact (including AP Vendors)	One, many, or ALL MARKET AREAS	The contact's record or the Market Areas > Assign Contacts section in Settings.