Automatically Link Contacts and Companies on Import

[#1]

Please add the ablility to automatically link contacts with companies when importing data. 

[#2]

This can be done with Act! v16

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Australia
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[#3]

I just did an import yesterday.

Contacts are linked to new companies but company has no addtional data other than names. Not sure of the usability to create the company when no data about the company is entered into the company record. User would still need to manually enter or update the company fields with a linked contact, one company at a time.

Better to use Egen add-on or other 3rd party developer add-on.

Create company, another half baked feature that was broken upon release and pretty much useless after it was fixed in 16.1.

[#4]

I was one of the people who requested the "Automatically create Companies from Contacts" feature in Act! and I was really, really disappointed in the way it was implemented. Can't see any point or value in creating Company records that don't contain any address or other information.  The stuff that copies down when you create a contact from a company should be the stuff that copies UP when companies are created automatically.

And yes, this should happen automatically when contacts are imported.

[#5]

Jeff,

 I'd love that. But I'm stumped on figuring out what rules that should follow.

For example,

John Doe, Doe Exports, PH 123456789, Head Office, 1 Main St, Big Town

Jane Doe, Doe Exports, PH 987654321, Regional Office, 2 Short Rd, Little Town

How would this feature know which address to copy up to the company records?

This is a scenario we see a lot of here.

Ben.

[#6]

Ben

Following the current "rules" by which Act! operates these would clearly be separate Company records. They have to be, otherwise, when you update linked contacts from the Company Records the Contact addresses get changed.

It's not complicated in my view. That's how it works.

Now, if you want to add some additional functionality that says "if we have two company records with exactly the same Company Name automatically create a new Company (no address) and add these as Divisions, fine.

What rules would it follow? Allow people to choose. Perhaps "Company Name" + "Address Line 1" would work for 95% of users.

After all, you could agrue that there should be another entity called Head Office under which sits Regional Office, under which sits Contacts, but that's way too much over-engineering.

I think we are missing out on a major feature here just because there will inevitably be some exceptions to the general rule. That's always going to be the case whatever you do.

I would also like the option to display an address field next to the company name in the Tree view (Like Gilles does with the Contact Favourites add-on). Why? well, if you do have "Doe Exports" in the tree view more than once, then the only way of knowing which one is at which address at the moment is by clicking to open the record, which is a pain.