relationship-specific custom fields (contact<->account)

[dbischoff]

My apologies if this has been answered, but I have not been able to find any.

A contact can have a relationship with many accounts, but I can't find a way to add additional information to a unique one-to-one account_contact relationship.

In other words, I may have a contact that works for multiple accounts, but has a different purpose in each of those accounts. I need to apply a specific designation to them in each of those accounts. To make it more complex, the same contact could be fullfilling multiple designations within a single account.

If relationships could have custom fields the same way that modules do, I think it would all work. For example, if there was an accounts_contacts_cstm table.

Can this be done, or will I have to create duplicate contacts and relate them to accounts on a one-to-one basis?

[ruchida]

Hi
I think you need to re-design the accounts_contacts relationship because it can not have a custom field like a standard table. You need to make it an extended relationship class where each relation can have more properties (such as "purpose"). The good example is the opportunities_contacts relationship class which has a "contact_role" property allowing a single contact belong to multiple opportunities but act differently for each one.