Contacts to automatically inherit UDFs from Company/Individual
If a certain UDF is blank at the contact level, then just inherit the value from the same UDF at the company/individual level
Could you please provide more detailed use cases and examples. Basic UDF inheritance can be complicated and confusing for new entries or for those that are left blank on purpose etc.
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Jin Yu commented
Hi Kelsey:
I was wondering why you would like to copy "Customer Number" to every contact. Is it because you need to use this number to search contacts or need to merge it into emails when sending emails to contacts? Thank you
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John Burrell commented
This requirement for emailing Contacts for Companies based on UDF's at the company level are quite easily achieved by a 2 stage search/select process which negates the absolute necessity for UDF inheritance
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Anonymous commented
I want to send mailing campaigns, so I have to filter by contacts, however, the fields I want are in companies and it is not convenient to insert a mandatory field every time a new contact is entered instead of just make it inherit from the parent company.
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Kelsey commented
UDF Inheritance from a company to its contacts would make life so much easier. I currently have to copy our UDF 'customer number' over to each contact associated with that company. Unfortunately, this wasn't done before I took over, so having to do this for 1000+ contacts is a nightmare.
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John Burrell commented
Ideally in database design there would be no need for replication of a specific field between levels in the AB, but the realities of needs does tend to require this for a variety of reasons, eg single pass Searches based on data from both Company & Contact levels.
If the Key Field list for contacts allowed you to see the company information (& perhaps even edit them, or perhaps the Custom Tab) then this would suffice for most of the needs I've seen, so User Case 2, however I can understand that in some instances User Case 1 would be appropriate -
Curtis Barranoik commented
Use case 1
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Gaye Mathusek commented
UDF inheritance would be a huge time saver!
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Jin Yu commented
Thank you for the suggestions. There are three requests in the thread. I have included the use case for each request. Please review if the description is correct or not.
1. Allow merging company level fields into a document or an email that merges on contacts
Use case:
When I merge a document on contacts, I would like to merge the company level fields (e.g. Account Manager) into the document.2. Automatically populate the contact level UDF when the company level field has been updated
Use case:
When a company level UDF has been updated (e.g. a new item has been added into a table field), I would like the new item to be selected in all contacts automatically so I don’t need to open each contact and select the new item.3. The old Windows Access function – When creating a new contact for a company, provide an option to copy the field values from parent company to the contact. The option is per company base. It only applies to the company where the option has been turned on.
I was wondering if I can clarify the use cases for this feature.
Use case 1:
When creating a new contact, you would like to copy the value from the parent company to the contact so you can easily edit the values in the contact. (E.g. copy the values from the parent company and uncheck a few items that don’t apply to the contact)Use case 2:
Because the company level fields cannot be displayed in a Key Field list for contacts, I would like to copy the values from the company level fields to contact fields. So I can see the company information when viewing the Key Fields for contacts.Which use case are you looking for?
Thanks
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Mark Cohen commented
I'd offer a suggestion that you add an option to inherit so it's not automatic for certain users, but allows for it on new contacts. It adds a significant amount of time to create multiple new contacts for a company that require these UDF's.
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Jon Arancio commented
In addition to inheriting the company UDFs to new contacts, there is a separate need for some companies to trigger the population of contact level UDFs from values on the company level. This would impact not just net new contacts as they are added, but would fill in the values for existing contacts.
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Brent Selby commented
I started using Maximizer in 2004 starting with the on premise version. Over the years updated versions were purchased with more features or improvements made to old ones.
Recently I have converted to the Live version. One huge set back for us is not having the ability to inherit UDF from the company level to contacts. Multiple times a day my staff will create a new contact under a company. This process would take less than a minute before with the on premise version and now takes 5 - 10 min. Plus there is a greater risk of error in the multiple step process.
Please bring back the inherit option. -
Anonymous commented
for each contact we have in our companies, we have about 50 udf fields to click . we currently use CRM 12 (summer 2013 edition) and this works perfectly for us. when we add a contact with the option ticked (new contact inherit company udf ) we do not need to review each one and decide which of these (UDFs) are needed. they just get added automatically. it would be easiest if i would show you by doing an online session with me where you can connect to my computer and i can show you exactly what we do and how it is done
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Anonymous commented
Without this, using the Word merge is useless when you have a contact attached to an Opportunity, and can only add Contacts via the web access.
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Curtis Barranoik commented
This is important for users that are migrating from the Windows client to the web client.
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Dana commented
If this is changed, it should be made as an optional setting, as not everyone wants all the information copied from the Company or Household level.
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Peter de Keijzer CRM Consultant Systony commented
I completely agree with the first comment of Paul, it should be a propertie of the UDF. In the windows application it is all or nothing, but it is a good feature when you can check the option on creating an UDF.
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Colin Proudman commented
Some customers make use of this in the desktop application and require it in the browser application
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Jan-Kees Roeland commented
I really would like to see this feature in the next maximizer update. We are not using maximizer for our MS Word merging, since it won't give us the information we need to get by clicking on 1 button. Like if we send a quotation to a customer, the only thing we can get at this moment is 1. the name of the contact included company or 2. company with a 'self made field' without the contact his/ her name. At this moment Maximizer is not completely working for us, which is abit strange since a CRM package needs to be working for company's instead of working against them.
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Anonymous commented
This would be very helpful, especially when using Word integrations since this can only import features from either the contact or the company.
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Martijn Rijnders commented
We really need this feature in web access as well.