This feature enables any Contact, regardless of whether they are directly related to an Account, or are “Connected” Contacts (related to another Account item), to appear in the “Main Contact” drop-down menu when creating new Interaction items.
Connected Contacts are denoted with an asterisk* and the name of it’s related (parent) Account.
The “Important!” message (see below) appears only when Connected Contacts are available. This alerts the user to select a Main Contact for the Item (all child items will be affected by this feature, including Interactions, Tasks, Calendar Items, Projects, etc.) first before filling out any other fields:
Once a Contact is selected from the menu, the page will reload and lose any field selections that had been made on the form.
If the Main Contact selected is a “Connected Contact” then the Interaction item will be “related” to the item of the selected Contact and becomes “connected” to the item where it started the process. To explain further, let’s use a real-life example:
- A new Interaction is created from an Account called “5955 Melrose Partners” which in addition to its related Contacts, has “Connected” Contacts:
- Within the Main Contact drop-down menu, connected Contacts are denoted with an asterisk. At this point the Interaction is related to 5955 Melrose Partners:
- Once the Connected Contact (Diane Lyons) is selected, the form will reload and now the Interaction becomes related to Lyons Enterprises and connected to 5955 Melrose Partners:
- The Interaction record below is now related to Lyons Enterprises and appears in the Interaction Sub-Grid for this Account item:
- The Interaction is also connected to 5955 Melrose Partners where the Interaction creation began:
Note: This feature is available for new items only, and once the item is saved, you cannot change to another connected Contact.
To fully enable this feature you will need to add an Advanced Flex Setting and also enable the desired Sub-Grid(s) to show Connected Items. Setup instructions are listed below.
Configuring Connected Contacts
- Go to Settings/Advanced Settings, and add the following Setting using a Value of “True.” Once this Setting is added, all Main Contact choice fields will be enabled and will display all connected and related Contact items.
Setting Name: MainContactShowConnected
Setting Value: True (Default is false)
- Click “Save”, then Reset the Application Cache.
- Open the Web Part properties for the Sub-Grid you wish to display “Connected” items for (example: Interactions), by right-clicking the arrow in the header area or using Settings Tool/Edit Page:
- FlexSubGrid web part properties editor will open. Select the “Connections” category to expand, then ensure that the following option is checked:
- Click “OK” then stop editing.
To gain insight into which connected items will be displayed, review the Connected Accounts Sub-Grid and view the contents (example shown below):
Using this feature, Contacts directly related to the Account as well as the Contacts related to the Connected Accounts (as shown above) will all appear on the Main Contact list for new child items, such as Interactions, Tasks, Opportunities, etc. when created.