Single Contact linked to Multiple Companies

[ravilal]

Reference ACT! Premium 2010 - Is there an add-on that would link a single contact to multiple companies capturing specific information like Title, Phone, Email of the contact at each Company? I can't find a way to do this without creating duplicate contact records...

[GLComputing]

You can manually add a contact to multiple Companies... but this is mainly so you can view the Contact data (notes/histories, etc) for all the connected Contacts. This would allow you to track a Consultant that works with multiple Companies

To do this, select the Company, go to the Contacts tab and select Add/Remove Contacts

 You can then see the Companies a Contact is linked to in the Groups/Companies tab

 Or, as you seem to want, look at the Contacts tab of the Company record and use Options | Customise Columns - select the fields you want

For more info, see this ACT! Knowledge Base article -

http://kb.sagesoftwareonline.com/cgi-bin/sagesoftwareonline.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1388...

[ravilal]

Many thanks Mike - The specific requirement is for contacts that have different titles at each Company - for eg. Ravi Lal is the Principal Consulant at INCON and the Director at Mercer Lal Limited and perhaps the Vice President of XYZ Company - how do we capture that Title and display it under the Companies Tab?

[GLComputing]

That's quite a complex task, involving creating a Titles table with links to Contacts/Companies and then creating the User Interface to display and edit the links

While it could be possible to do this with the ACT! SDK, it would be quite a bit of work.

[ravilal]

Thanks Mike - is that a piece of work that you can quote for (ravi@incon.me.uk)? Do you know of any other CRM product that offers this functionality out of the box?

[GLComputing]

I'm not aware of any product that would do this out of the box.

Yes, it is something I could quote on... I'll touch base in a few days to discuss the options.

You should think about things like:

• How you want to enter and edit the data - drop downs, any automation, etc
• How you want this displayed on both Contacts and Companies?
• If you want to output the data (reports, etc) - what sort of output do you want?
• How to select the data to include when doing merges (print, email, etc) or when doing reports?
• Any security requiement (if used for a shared system)?
• Any other functions ... include as much detail as possible

As you can see, there are a lot of scenarios that need to be considered to do it right

If you get this done, drop me a message care of: http://www.glcomputing.com.au/contact.php

[mrjsb]

Hello,

I was wondering, as I face the same challenge today, if you found a way to achieve linking a contact to multiple companies ?

Thanks in advance.

jsb.