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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived) / Relationship b/n A...
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Relationship b/n Account, Contact and Opportunity Entities

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Posted on by Kinga 345

Hi there, I'm new to this forum and hope somebody will be able to help with a problem I've encountered with Dynamics CRM v4.

It seems that the standard configuration of the system links the Opportunity entity with either an Account or a Contact. Unfortunately I need to link both the Account and the Contact to an Opportunity. One of the side-effects of not being able to link both an Account and a Contact to an Opportunity is that any emails tracked under the opportunity only show in that Opportunity record and the related Entity (i.e. Contact or Account), when I need it to show in both the Contact and the Account related to that Opportunity. But I also simply want to be able to view on the same screen the Opportunity, the Account associated with it and the Contact associated with it.

Using the Relationships does not seem to solve my problem here as they don't seem to cascade into the entities I am relating which would mean duplication of data if I need to repeat the process of assigning relationships in each Entity separately....

Hope this explanation is clear and that somebody can help. I cannot believe that the system doesn't allow to link an Opportunity with both an Account and the Contact associated with it.

I am not a programmer but I can access the Customization area of the Settings.

Thanks in advance

Kinga

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  • Henrik Schmidt Profile Picture
    Henrik Schmidt 430 on at

    Hi Kinga,

    We use the functionality as you describe it out-of-the-box, as we need to track individuals and their companies.

    The opportunities of contacts also show up under the account related to the contact as parent customer. The same goes for activities and so on. In this sense the opportunity is linked to both anyway.

     Best, Henrik.

  • Kinga Profile Picture
    Kinga 345 on at

    Hi Henrik

    Thanks very much for your message. Does this mean, that when you are in Opportunity/Information screen you are able to view both the Account and the Contact related to that Opportunity? My system allows me to choose one or the other but not both at the same time?

    It seems that your description covers a scenario where I associate an Opportunity with a Contact. This means that I then need to drill through to see the related Account. Unfortunately this will not be good for us. I need to be able to see both the Contact and the Account on the top level summary of the Opportunity.

    Our business is that of technical consultancy so our Opportunities are quite complex (run more like projects, often with many stakeholders involved in the process) that's why we have a need to record both....We also need to track which particular Contact within the Account is related to a particular Opportunity as not all of them will be... 

     Any ideas, suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

     Kinga

     

     

     

  • Henrik Schmidt Profile Picture
    Henrik Schmidt 430 on at

    Hi Kinga,

    What you assume about how we use it is correct. You need to click on the contact to figure out the parent customer, they are not both visible on the opportunity immediately. I'm however sure that this can be fetched and someone here on the forum will let you know how. When we want to see which opportunity is related to which account and individual contact we use Advanced Find usually, but from what I understand that's not satisfactory for you. A dynamic pivot table helps us for a quick overview on what's going on, but admittedly our business is not that dynamic, so a few clicks don't matter really.

     Henrik

  • Kinga Profile Picture
    Kinga 345 on at

    Hi Henrik

    Once again many thanks for your help with this!

    If anyone else has any suggestions on how to overcome this problem please leave a post.

    Kinga 

  • Maggie Profile Picture
    Maggie 20 on at

    Create one to many relationship between contact and opportunity,  choose a custom label for the primary entity's navigation pane to display the label something like "indirect opportuntities", display the lookup attribute on the opportunity form (as primary contact), you can may javascript to disable this attribute, until the potential customer is captured as account, then you might need to filter the contact lookup attribute on the opportunity form to only display contacts who are associated with the account who is the potential customer.

    when you open the contact record you access 2 seperate list of opportunities - the out of the box opportuntities list where this contact is captured as a potential customer . the second list "indirect opportunities" where this contact is captured as a primary contact who is communicating on behalf of his parent account.

     I hope this helps,

    Magui

  • Kinga Profile Picture
    Kinga 345 on at

    Thanks very much Magui

    Will give this a go.

    Kinga

  • Leon Tribe Profile Picture
    Leon Tribe 7,034 on at
    While you can't see the contact's parent account from the opportunity form, you can set up a view so you can see the information as columns in a list view of opportunities. Perhaps, with training, this will allow the users to work as they require. Leon Tribe Want to hear me talk about all things CRM? Check out my blog http://leontribe.blogspot.com/
  • Kinga Profile Picture
    Kinga 345 on at

    Leon

    Thanks very much for this. Didn't know I could do that! This is also very helpful.

    Kinga

  • Kinga Profile Picture
    Kinga 345 on at

    I have had 2 suggestions so far as to how to overcome my problem but I still have some questions...

    Does anyone know of a reason why I couldn't just igore the OOTB setup for the Opportunity Contact in the Opportunity Entity (which is either an Account or a Contact), hide this field on the Opportunity Form and instead create "separate" relationships for an Account and Opportunity and for a Contact and Opportunity and use those instead?

    Or even create N:1 relationship between a Contact and an Opportunity and display this as multiple fields on the Opportunity Form so that I end up with e.g. 3 Contacts for 1 Opportunity (this is so that I can record all of the Sales Contact, Procurement Contact and Accounts Contact for 1 Opportunity)

    Please let me know in case my explanation is not clear.

    Any ideas will be greatly appreciated!

    Once again thanks for everyone's help so far

    Kinga

  • Leon Tribe Profile Picture
    Leon Tribe 7,034 on at
    There is no reason I can think of why you couldn't create additional relationships between opportunities, contacts and accounts. You *probably* can remove the customer link, although I always get nervous about removing 'coded' fields and I generally tend to move them to another tab. For example, the price list on the opportunity can cause you no end of grief if you take it off the form, so do testing before rolling it out. Generally I would expect the relationship between contacts/accounts and opportunity to be N:N but it depends on your business model so whatever works. Please note that unless you code them, the lookups for the account and contact will be independent i.e. if you select the account, this will not restrict the list of contacts. Finally, even if you do create the two links this will not address your original requirement of having the accounts and contacts listed in the one screen. Again, this will require coding to achieve. Leon Tribe Want to hear me talk about all things CRM? Check out my blog http://leontribe.blogspot.com/

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