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Forum to discuss writing script in Architect plugins for SalesLogix & general SalesLogix customization topics (for Windows client only). View the code of conduct for posting guidelines.
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Assigning notes to multiple entities...
Posted: 09 May 06 4:27 PM
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fiogf49gjkf0d Hi,
We have a situation where we would like to enter notes for an account and then assign these notes to anyone that the user want to assign the notes too. Practically speaking, the user would be given an opportunity to select the other entities via a grid that would be populated by looking at the associations.
I take it that the only way to do that is by creating a new form and using VBScript via a button click or some other event thrower?
Thanks.
Terry |
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Re: Assigning notes to multiple entities...
Posted: 10 May 06 6:17 AM
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fiogf49gjkf0d Terry,
I do not know if this SLX form is accessible, but there is a form that appears when there is more than one contact with the same email address. Does someone know the name of this form or if its accessible?
You could use this as a model for your 'record to multiple contacts' form. You would have to modify the select list to include the additional contacts based on your criteria. The list then has to be made multiselectable. The click event would have to be modified to loop through the multiselected contacts to record the activity for each contact record.
I do have to warn you that this adds alot of overhead on the user side when they are completing activities. Out of the box, completing an activity just records it to history. This would defeat the purpose of the system being efficient.
Benefits? Outside of being able to find the history in multiple contacts, I don't see why its necessary. If you are looking for a piece of history you normally would go to the contact in question and be able to find it. Or go to the account and find the history. You also mentioned 'associations' I'll take it you only want to pull the contacts from the associations tab for the contact? If that is the case then you should look to see if this feature is really being used. I know in our situation the users could care more or less about the associations tab. I've always trained on how to use the associations tab but never got any 'Oh, WoW! I can do that there!!" kind of response. Its more like, "Oh, when's the next break?" kind of response. 
In the case scenario you describe, the system will be recording multiple copies of the same exact history to multiple contacts. If 2, 5 or 8 of those contacts are from the same account its going to start polluting the account Notes/Detail tab with the same exact history. The only difference will be the contact name. Additionally, the table storage requirements are going to become double, triple or worse.
Just for stats, I checked our database and there are 36,493 contacts. For those contacts there are only 52 associations. Percentage wise this is 0.001%. Which to me is hardly worth the effort of such a customization.
Just my .02
John G. |
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Re: Assigning notes to multiple entities...
Posted: 10 May 06 9:04 AM
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fiogf49gjkf0d Thanks for the response John.
In regards to the scenario you presented in your last 2 paragraphs, I probably should explain why we are doing this. We are an Investment Consultant firm. So, if, for instance, there is news concerning a manager at a mutual fund that our clients are invested in, we want that note to go to each of those clients that have an association to that manager (i.e. invested in that fund) so our consultants can be kept aware of the news. Just assigning it to the manager leaves some gaps in knowledge that we know will happen and want to avoid.
I don't really know of a better way (unless just creating a table with the note id and the corresponding entity id) to make sure that that note gets assigned to all parties involved. Also, we don't have as larget a database as you noted but... doesn't mean we won't some time in the future so that will need to be accomodated to.
Thanks.
Terry
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Re: Assigning notes to multiple entities...
Posted: 10 May 06 9:31 AM
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fiogf49gjkf0d I can see the need. Not quite sure that would be the best way to relate it though.
I am going to make a couple of assumptions here. One is that the mutual fund relation is at the Account level - not the contact level. The second is, any contact for that account has to have a link to see the news.
What might be a better solution is to utilize the products feature of SLX to enter the various Mutual Funds, etc. Then associate these products to the appropriate accounts.
The next thing to do would be to create a custom form to enter news. From this same form, the news is associated to a product or products.
Once this base is created you can then create a new tab in the Account and Contact detail forms. Call this tab 'News'. When a news item is entered it will show up on the 'News' tab because the product is associated with the account.
The advantages to this are
* News is entered once in the database
* News is automatically shown at the account and contact levels because of the product associations.
* Because the news is related through the product associated to the account there is no need to rely on someone knowing who to relate the news to.
John G.
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Re: Assigning notes to multiple entities...
Posted: 10 May 06 9:37 AM
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lexapro and weed interaction lexapro and weed good fiogf49gjkf0d Hey John,
You are starting to get me to think abit here. Just an aside, we have Account to Account relationships as well as Account to Contact and Account to Product. A good number of our dealings are Account to Account. Having said that, if we enter the note in once and just make associations to that note, add the tab "News" then that would work! Right? This would take the place of assigning the actual note to each related entity (be it Account, Contact or Product)- adding multiple note records - and just make a relationship to it. I think that is what you are saying, and if it is, would probably be the solution.
Thanks!
Terry
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Re: Assigning notes to multiple entities...
Posted: 10 May 06 2:30 PM
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fiogf49gjkf0d I second John in moving this information outside of the History table. The history table has a lot of noise in it already like DB changes that the Notes-History form filters out. For an example, we have roughly 70-80 thousand records in our table going back to 3.16. Have you tried doing a SQL query on a 80k record table? Not what I'd consider fast. Also your method COPIES the news information which would fill up the history table to massive proportions unless you could just LINK to that one historyID.
Here's a basic table structure:
News (table name)
NewsId - SalesLogix ID
ProductId - SalesLogix ID
NewsInformation - BLOB/Memo
This table will be where you create the news item itself and keep the information to prevent duplicating it. NewsInformation would store the HTML or PlainText version of the peice of information you want to keep. ProductId would link the news information to the particular product. Make this table have NO parent like the History table.
Then on the Contact and Account tables add a 1->M child table (Account_News, Contact_News). Add a NewsId column so that you can create a join manually. This will allow each contact or account to "subscribe" to multiple news items but it also opens up the possibility to subscribe to a news item more than once. To prevent that you'll need code that checks to see if the contact or account is already linked to that news blurb. Here is where you'll use the "update multiple..." form to tie each contact/account to the corresponding newsid.
Personally I would use only an account child table and use code to say "for each contact underneath this account, show the news items that correspond to the account". If you want a solution that would only apply to some contacts but not others then you would use contact tables to link to each news item individually instead of as a group.
I believe this is the way Products and the *_Product tables behave so I'm not suggesting an untested technique. I think John was illuding to the same thing but I may be wrong there. |
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Re: Assigning notes to multiple entities...
Posted: 11 May 06 9:47 AM
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fiogf49gjkf0d Thanks for the advice John and Jeremy,
I agree that we'd be better off not duplicating the notes. You have given me enough ideas on a workable solution.
Thanks again,
Terry |
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Re: Assigning notes to multiple entities...
Posted: 11 May 06 12:39 PM
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lexapro side effects swelling lexapro side effects acid reflux zofran and pregnancy babycenter zofran and pregnancy fiogf49gjkf0d Interesting thread here. A "News" area for SLX would have some interesting possibilities. MSCRM has a "News" or "Announcements" area which I always thought was kind of cool. A great way to get a message our to all users (not quite the same as what was discussed here, but got me thinking about that) |
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Re: Assigning notes to multiple entities...
Posted: 12 May 06 7:55 AM
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fiogf49gjkf0d Terry,
Another option, though quite simplistic, is to make use of the MailMerge module. You would create your group of contacts, send your email/form letter/etc via MailMerge and a record will be cut that information was sent.
Carla |
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