Create a many to many relationship from Accounts to Contacts?

[Asinproject]

Hi,

I'm developing our CRM as a contact management tool for a non profit. Many of our contacts may be the director of one organization and a board member for another... is it possible to associate one contact with multiple accounts?

[salesagility]

Yes ... a single Contact can be related to as many Accounts as you require ... goto Accounts > Contacts subpanel and click select

[Asinproject]

Thanks for your response! Could you elaborate on how this is done? I did not totally understand your answer. Thanks again!

[anicolais]

Go to whichever account that you want to add an existing contact to. Scroll down to the contacts subpanel at the bottom of the page. Instead of clicking "Create new contact" click "Select" instead. This will pop up a window to search from existing contacts to be added to the account that you would like.

[tomcdonnell]

If an existing contact is linked to a another account using the method desribed, a new contact is created. The new contact has all details equal to the pre-existing contact except 'Account Name'. This can be verified by searching for the contact in the 'Contacts' tab. The new contact that is created is undesirable since it contains duplicate data that must then be kept synchronised with the data from the original contact.

I want to link the same contact to multiple accounts. I figure this should be possible because the relationship between the 'Accounts' and 'Contacts' modules is listed in the studio as being 'Many to many'.

That only one account can be displayed in the 'Contacts' module detail view seems odd given the 'Many to many' relationship.

Can anyone shed some light on how to assign a single contact to mulitple accounts?

If this is not possible for some reason, then an explanation as to the meaning or purpose of the 'Many to many' relationship linking 'Contacts' to 'Accounts' would be much appreciated also.

[salesagility]

If you wish one Contact to be related to many Accounts, simple goto the Accounts that you wish the Contact to be related to, scroll down to the Contacts subpanel and Select the Contact. You can do this for as many Accounts as you wish.

[tomcdonnell]

I found a solution in another thread. An 'Accounts' subpanel must be added to the 'Contacts' detail view. Instructions on how to accomplish that are given here: http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56953. The method described worked for me.

[Jeremy Hutchings]

Apologies for the thread necromancy ........ though, is there a way of adding "is-a" data to a relationship.

For instance if I have 2 companies A and B. I need to have contacts for 3 roles within each company.

Company A is a 1 person outfit so each is the same :

CTO : Bob Smith
COO: Bob Smith
CFO: Bob Smith

Though B is a much bigger company and we have :

CTO : Betty
COO: Frank
CFO: Mary

My initial thoughts were either, define the type of relationships of the contact ......... OR have custom fields in the company for each of the roles that are links to contacts that must exists (the usual drop down).

Thanks for any suggestions or insights

[vakimby]

Apologies for the thread necromancy ........ though, is there a way of adding "is-a" data to a relationship.

For instance if I have 2 companies A and B. I need to have contacts for 3 roles within each company.

Company A is a 1 person outfit so each is the same :

CTO : Bob Smith
COO: Bob Smith
CFO: Bob Smith

Though B is a much bigger company and we have :

CTO : Betty
COO: Frank
CFO: Mary

My initial thoughts were either, define the type of relationships of the contact ......... OR have custom fields in the company for each of the roles that are links to contacts that must exists (the usual drop down).

Thanks for any suggestions or insights

Did you ever figure out how to customize the role of the contact at each account? We need to do the same thing. Thanks!