Get contact to be associated with multiple accounts

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Posted on by Scott Nevin

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I have contacts setup in CRM that need to be associated with multiple accounts. I do not want to use connections as I want the contacts sub grid to show the contacts for each account, without having to click through the connections.

I have tried to add a new N:N relationship between Contacts and Accounts, but when I try and add an existing contact to a different account, I get the error "The record is already associated with another record"

How do I change the system to allow contacts to be associated with multiple accounts?

Thanks,

Scott

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Mahadeo Matre 17,021 on at

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Hi Scott,

The error "The record is already associated with another record" is coming only if you have 1:N relationship.

If you have N:N relationship between account and contact.. this error should not come..

It might be possible that you added 1:N relationship subgrid on form.

Default, CRM have 1:N relationship grid on account form.

but if you had proper relationship grid.. then it should work..

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Scott Nevin 115 on at

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Thanks Mahadeo,

I double checked and I have set the relationship between contacts and accounts to N:N

Do you know if I have to remove the default 1:N relationship between contacts and accounts that Dynamics CRM has out of the box?

Thanks,

Scott

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Mahadeo Matre 17,021 on at

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You cannot remove out of box Account to Contact 1:N relationship..

Even though you tried to delete this out of box relationship.. CRM will throw error saying.. "Cannot Update or Delete Relationship. Only Custom relationships can be updated or Deleted."

If you don't want default relationship, then you can remove lookup from contact and sub grid from account entity form. so that users will not use 1:N relationship to associated account and contacts.

Hope this will help..

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Community Member on at

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Three options:

Use an N:N relationship, remove the existing Contacts sub-grid from the Account form, and add a new sub-grid that uses the new relationship instead of the old 1:N one.

Use Connections, create a custom view for Connections to only show Connections with Contacts. Add a sub-grid to the Account form to show Connections, using the new View. So you can use Connections without adding any need to navigate to see them. Connections has the advantage of allowing users to say more about what the relationship is.

Create a custom entity to link to Accounts and Contacts. Add whatever fields you need to describe the relationship. Add a sub-grid to the Account form. This is effectively a custom version of Connections for a single purpose.

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Robet.gauthier1 60 on at

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Hi Adam - thank you for the for the options. I have the same challenge requirement described above but this is a new implementation and I have to migrate the data from old systems. We've finally de-duped both the Contacts and Accounts. But in our industry there is no concept of a Contact working for a single Account. Our Contacts are Healthcare Professionals that work in multiple Hospitals, Clinic environments. The Wizard is a bit of a challenge on the uploads this way. Thoughts?

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Hanan.Ali 10 on at

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Hi Mahadeo

Thanks for your reply, I made these steps remove lookup from contact and sub grid from account entity form but when trying to insert case I got this error "

The specified contact doesn't belong to the account selected as the customer. Specify a contact that belongs to the selected account, and then try again."

Is this mean that the old relation is still active and how to solve this ?

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