Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

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Posted on by crm_caser

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Is the only way to associate a contact to multiple accounts through 'Connections'? Doing this doesn't make the contacts appear in the 'Contacts' sub grid of additonal accounts. Does anyone have a better solution?

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RE: Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

Connections. You could also create a custom entity to manage a contact and multiple associated accounts or customize/create a new contact entity that has a 1 to many relationship with accounts.

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Aileen Gusni 44,524 on at

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RE: Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

Current CRM has 1:N Relationship between Contact and Account.

If you want to add more association, yes, you can add new Relationship N:N.

There are 2 types of N:N, Manual Many to Many Relationship and Native Many to Many Relationship.

You can ceate Native N:N using the CRM UI, create N:N Relationship.

Or, you also can create 1 entity as intersection entity to store the association between Contact and Account, it is similar to Opportunity product or Price List Item line concept, an entity to store the connection or link between two entity records.

If you want to have flexible and detail relationship, then user connection, for example you want to have Stakeholder, Patient and Hospital, Doctor and Hospital, Lawyer and Corporation, Customer and Bank, Customer and Insurance Company, Person and Ex Employer, etc.

Hope it helps!

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crm_caser 555 on at

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RE: Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

Hi first of all thank you both for responding. I have to admit I am a little confused though...

Are you both saying a solution to this would be to a create a new custom "contact" entity that has a many to many relationship (N:N) and replace to replace the native contact entity that already exists?

If this were to be created would the replacement be an easy fix?

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Karth on at

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RE: Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

You don't have to create a custom contact entity. You can create a N:N relationship between Account and Contact entity. This will allow you to associate multiple Contacts to an Account.

Using Connections could be a better option for you. You will have an option to specify the type of relationship the Account has with each of the Contacts along with some description. You wont have this advantage when you configure a N:N relationship.

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crm_caser 555 on at

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RE: Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

Hi Karth,

Currently we can associate multiple contacts to an Account. The problem is the reverse... we cannot associate a contact to multiple accounts.

Would creating a custom entity work here?

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Karth on at

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RE: Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

Go to the Contact entity and use the Connection feature to add multiple Accounts there.

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crm_caser 555 on at

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RE: Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

Yes I know about the Connection... The issue with this is that connections do not appear in the 'Contacts' sub-grid... you will have to go to the Connections area to reference this.

It would be ideal if we could have all Contacts appear in the same place.

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Aileen Gusni 44,524 on at

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RE: Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

Hi,

Why you don't create Native N:N relationship between Contact and Account if you don't want to create Connection. It will appear in the same place.

Thanks.

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Thomas Lampert 210 on at

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RE: Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

hi,

you can use a custom n:n relationship between contact and account and replace the standard relationship. but in this case you will loose the standard funcionalities (e.g. show activities of related contacts in accounts, qualify a lead) because you cannot use the standard parent account lookup anymore if you want to see all contacts in one related subgrid (you cannot show different relationships in one subgriid or related view). if you use both, standard 1:n and n:n on the same form it's difficult for the user to decide which one is the correct and it can result in a bad data quality. in my experience if a user has more the ine clear path he will find ten others to enter data.

so i would recommend the connections too.

i have the same challenge at a currently running project. in our case we should connect the contact to multiple accounts (one account directly working for - the "strong connection" and some other accounts where the contact is e.g. in the management - the "soft connection"). now we train our users to identify the "strong connection" and put this information in the parent account field. for all the other "soft connections" the user has to create connections where we have created custom connection roles for. if e.g. an email has to be seen in the strong and the soft connection the user has to set the regarding field to the soft account. the strong account will display the emails of its contact through the standard tools.

we know that it's not perfect but in our case it's working.

tom

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crm_caser 555 on at

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RE: Associating a Contact to Multiple Accounts

Thank you Tom. Your answer is the most accurate.

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