Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Create a view in CRM 2011 that shows Connection Role fields

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Posted on by MICHAEL KATSEV

I am trying to create a contact view that displays Connect To: field from the Connection roles.

For instance, show all the contacts that have the role of AAA, including their parent account (Employer) name.

While showing the contacts is not a problem, I cannot get the employer name field to show in the view.

Thanks in advance!

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CRMInnovation.com on at

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Michael,

I might have lost you with the initial reference to the Connect To, but the parent account name as a column heading can be added by Add Columns, Select Record Type Parent Customer (Account) and then select the Account Name field.

Jerry
Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP
CRM Innovation
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MICHAEL KATSEV on at

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Sorry for the confusion.

“Connect To” field is the one that I am interested in.

In my view, I need to show all the contacts that match a certain role, let’s say, “Volunteer”, and display in which organization (CRM Account) they volunteer.

Obviously, none of these contacts are employed by these organizations, each of them may or may not have an employer.

So, the ideal result would look like this:

John Smith, AVP of Marketing, Some Big Manufactor (Parent), Inc., 123 Main Street, NY, NY, 10001, Volunteer, Great Not-for-Profit Organization (Connect To)

I see it as a challenge because 'Connections' entity seems to have limitations. It doesn't apprear in the navigation, there is no Advanced Find for it, etc.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

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JukkaNiiranen 2,609 on at

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The basic principle in CRM views is that if there could be multiple values for a given attribute per each row, you can't display it in a view. For example, if a contact can volunteer in multiple different organizations at once, you wouldn't be able to reflect the organization names in a contact view, due to the 1:N (one to many) nature of the relationship.

Depending on the situation, you might be able to achieve the required functionality by using a custom entity instead of Connections (due to the limitations you already mentioned). If you'd use a new "intermediate entity" that has lookup fields to both contact and account (assuming that's where you store the organization data), then you could create a view for this entity that contains all the columns you listed. Instead of contacts you'd be presenting the data in a view for this custom entity. Because both the contact and account are parental records to the child custom record, you can select fields from either of those entities to be shown in the view for the custom entity.

Connections are great for recording ad-hoc relationships between different records, but for structured data with a specific use case (like volunteer management) creating a custom entity can often result in a better user experience for CRM users. It's easier to show them in the navigation menus, create dedicated subgrids on entity forms, set lookup fields to the correct entity type instead of the user having to always select them etc.

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CRMInnovation.com on at

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Michael,

Now that you have provided more details the answer is that you can't display fields in a many to many relationship in Grid views. Connections is a many to many relationship. The next choice is to create a report using the report wizard or via SQL SRS.

Jerry
Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP
CRM Innovation
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MICHAEL KATSEV on at

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Thank you for everyone's comments and suggestions.

I was "afraid" that I would need to go in the direction of a custom entity.

While I will try a custom report option, I will have all the functionality needed with a custom entity.

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Helpful discussion - though old is still relevant.

thank you,

harihar

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