Items for contacts not showing up at account ?

[boblowski]

Hi all,

As a long time Act and also Maximizer user I'm now evaluating (among others) SugarCRM for our organization. I am familiar with the accounts/contacts model, but do not understand SugarCRM's way of handeling these. Perhaps I misunderstand something?

Suppose I have an account with say 2 contacts. I add a note to contact 1 and a task to contact 2. These items show up at the contacts, but not at the account. That is, not unless I explicitly define a relation at the 'Related To' setting for the note/task.

Is this the intended behaviour? I mean, an account is an aggragate of its contacts, isn't it? At least that's how it works most CRM tools I know. Shouldn't the account automatically show all available items for all it's contacts?

Or is there some application setting I'm missing?

Cheers, Bob

[Angel]

Sugar does do this automatically.

How are you going about adding the note and task? I also assuming the relationship between the contact and account has already been established.

[boblowski]

Thanks for your reply.

I tried it again just now, and perhaps I did not make myself clear enough. (Or I am really thick... )

I have an account. I add a contact directly to this account. Then I go to this new contact and I add (say) a task for this contact. SugarCRM then automatically sets the setting 'Related to' for this new task to 'Account' with the name of the account of the contact. If I then switch to the account, obviously the task will be visible, because I told SugarCRM directly that it is related to this account.

But, as soon as I change this setting 'Related to' into something that makes a little bit more sense, like a specific opportunity or a project, then if I go back to the account, the task doesn't show up anymore at the account. I first have to click on the contact, to see my task.

Surely this can't be right, can it? The task is related to the contact, and the contact is related to the account. So SugarCRM already knows that the task is related to the account.

So what should I do to always show all items from all contacts for an account?

Cheers, Bob

[boblowski]

Hi all,

Apparently I am not the only one with questions about this behaviour. Just found this topic which asks the same question.

Cheers, Bob

[boblowski]

Hi all,

It is slowly getting decision time for us, and I would really like to have some feedback on this. Or am I in the wrong forum?

SugarCRM would be (almost ) perfect for us, except for this thingy with the items from contacts not showing up at the account they belong to. Or as sylvaindoc puts it in
this topic:

...this problem is the main drawback of sugar for my company. I really think the account detail view should display a summary of ALL activities related to an account, and that's how it works under Salesforce. To summarize, I'd like to see the activities and history of the account and its direct, and only direct, children (Contacts, Opportunities, Leads, Cases, Bugs, Quotes and Projects) all in the activities and history subpanels under this account, with the field related to referring to the actual object owning the activity.

(This is BTW also how it works in Act and in Maximizer.) And which is answered by andydreisch:

Hi all, thanks for the input. This is very useful for us as we map out post-4.5 plans.
I'll make sure this topics gets a full airing when we mull over the next release features.

Should I take his answer as an acknowledgement of the problem and that it is being worked on? Can somebody enlighten me?

Thanks & cheers, Bob

[roblaus]

Hi,

I think that this behaviour is indeed intended simply because it's not always the case that a particular entry relates to the contact and the contact's account. Think of the construction industry where a contact may be a member of an architecture firm but all activities during a certain period of time must relate to the project the person is working on.
Nonetheless you have a valid point. In 5.1 you can create relationships in studio and thus it's easy to have 3 different "fixed" relationships plus one standard "flex relate" in your activities.
If you do not want to wait for 5.1 (due in Summer) it's fairly easy to fix your issue with a few lines of code that usually is upgrade safe.

rgds
rl

[boblowski]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your helpful reply.

I think that this behaviour is indeed intended simply because it's not always the case that a particular entry relates to the contact and the contact's account. Think of the construction industry where a contact may be a member of an architecture firm but all activities during a certain period of time must relate to the project the person is working on.

I think I start to understand the problem. For the SugarCRM devs an 'account' is not an aggregate of it's contacts, but a separate kind of logical container, just like a project is. That is why they feel an object must explicitly be linked to an account. That explains those problems people looking for a B2C solution have with SugarCRM as well.

Nonetheless you have a valid point. In 5.1 you can create relationships in studio and thus it's easy to have 3 different "fixed" relationships plus one standard "flex relate" in your activities.

That sounds perfect. Is this functionality already availale in the 5.1 release candidate? I presume that I can find the necessary information in the manual.

If you do not want to wait for 5.1 (due in Summer) it's fairly easy to fix your issue with a few lines of code that usually is upgrade safe.

You mean like change the SQL for the subpanels (what are they called?) that collects the data for the account view? Or do you mean some other kind of solution?

Thanks again for your reply. It's a rainy day over here, perfect for building a test setup

Thanks & Cheers, Bob

[roblaus]

I think you got the point. And yes, 5.1RC does have the functionality already.

For the pre-5.1 versions you will find tons of comments regarding "how to create a relationship", I believe that there is even a Wiki about it.

But as always: Stay as close as possible to the original, it makes upgrading so much easier. And: Look at the Pro version, especially for reporting issues.

Good luck...
rl

[malcolmh]

Hi,

As far as I can see this functionality is not automatically available in 5.1RC. Just tried it with Opportunites, call record not being shown at the Account level

Looking at a bug 22360 which we created it say it will be fixed in a FUTURE version.

[roblaus]

I meant multiple relationships, not an automatic aggregation. The latter is a question of industry and/or type of company. For some of the customers I was working with the only focal point is the opportunity and NOT the account. For others (as I said further up) in e.g. the construction industry only the project counts because accounts may only exist for the duration of the project.
Sort of a parameter setting "automatic link" would be fine.