Autonumber field in SugarCRM?

**lmoreau** · 2012-01-05, 12:01 AM

Hey everyone, is there any way to do autonumber? Can't seem to figure it out. Switching from Salesforce and right now for Accounts and Opportunities I have an auto number field. It's mostly important for opportunities, each one I make has an opportunity ID generated for it which is 5 digits long. We use these to reference particular opportunities. Since I'll be migrating my data from Salesforce, I need to keep the current numbers and then have it continue the sequence for new opportunities just not sure how? Thanks!

**Angel** · 2012-01-05, 12:25 AM

There are a couple of ways of doing this. One is via the backend, i.e. at the database level, setting a column to auto increment. However, that will be somewhat limited as it is sequential and nothing further.

Another approach which I've used in the past is the use of some custom code to generate the value such as YYYYMMDD-Sequence, where YYYYMMDD = current date. That, of course, could be tailored to your specific requirements, but does require a little programming work.

**lmoreau** · 2012-01-05, 01:10 AM

Thanks for your help. Sequential is totally fine, I started my opportunities at 2000 and now we are at 8890 so every new opportunity created just goes up by 1, there's nothing fancy there.

This is where I get confused if my sugar is on demand hosted by sugar. How would I make these database modifications? Not sure if that's more a question for Sugar directly, but would I just make an integer field and request they do this for me or do I need to be more specific with the changes and tell them what to do?

**Angel** · 2012-01-05, 01:21 AM

That's a good question. I've never had to do it for OnDemand, but I think your strategy of creating the field and submitting a ticket would be a good starting point.