Rename an entity to Entity

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Posted on by Glen W.

I know this sounds kinda crazy, but is it possible/acceptable to rename the Company entity to "Entity"? In our law firm, some of our clients are individuals. For reasons to long to explain here, we cannot define those clients as contacts. We have to create a company using their name; then create them as a contact and relate them to the company.

So, since the Company can be a business OR and individual, we were trying to come up with a name that would encompass both. After searching in the thesaurus for quite a while, Entity was all I found that would work.

Thanks,
Glen

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Muhammad Adeel Javaid 5,580 on at

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By using a system entity for something other than it’s original purpose. ex: “Fax” to “Instant Message” we are adding or changing some functionality of the fax entity to make it an IM. Another defining characteristic of a repurposed entity is that we can no longer use it for the original functionality (i.e. we no longer have faxes).

Another (less obvious) example might be calling Contact “Tenant” in a real estate customization. We haven’t changed any functionality but, by calling Contact something specific like Tenant, we’ve functionally (although not technically) ruled out having other types of Contacts who might have some relationship with us other than Tenant.

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Muhammad Adeel Javaid 5,580 on at

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Changing the name of a system entity to something else while still using the functionality exactly the same way.

ex.: Contact to “Person”, “Individual”, “Constituent”, etc.

We’re calling it something else but that is all we’ve changed. We still use it exactly the same way. In my opinion, the disadvantages/costs outweigh the advantages of calling Contact something else in most cases.

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jlattimer 24,562 on at

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I just tried on a test environment - there is nothing actually stopping you from renaming Account to Entity. Personally I would come up with a different name though :)

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Muhammad Adeel Javaid 5,580 on at

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However you can refer to this link for this purpose and can do it after going through the contents and instructions carefully:

ftp.cap.2020.net/.../how_cust_rename.htm

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Muhammad Adeel Javaid 5,580 on at

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If you want to rename Related Entity Groups on Forms in CRM 2011 then this post will teach you how to do it:

www.crmsoftwareblog.com/.../rename-related-entity-groups-on-forms-in-crm-2011

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Glen W. on at

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Wow! So many answers and so quickly! Thank you all for your responses. However, I don't think I was clear. I do understand that we can "rename and reuse" (as was the tag phrase at Convergence 2013) and I understand how to accomplish this.

My question is this: Is there a problem renaming something "Entity". Is that a reserved name or would that cause problems. Our project team wants to rename "Company" to "Entity". Is there a problem using that name?

Thanks,

Glen

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Muhammad Adeel Javaid 5,580 on at

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Although the system supports your ability to do this but you will significantly limit your ability to associate other powerful built-in functions to your prospect entities.

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Dave Ireland on at

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Glen, we have used a custom entity called 'Entity' for years - no problems.

Dave

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SyedHussain 1,820 on at

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Glen, we did the same and the system maps out the changes quite well, and there is no system wide interference, however if you have existing views and dashboards setup that use the label "Company", post change, I think the name or title of the views and entities remain unchanged, in your case it will still say "Company" and not "Entity"; so you're manually going to have to change those. Otherwise it's fine.

I've noticed that Polaris is quite notorious for not making global names changes.

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Stef Rose 240 on at

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We commonly use "Entity" under capitalized first letter as his programming name representation or the entity itself. That is why "entity" word has reserved domains of application.

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