Hi All,
Please help as this is quite frustrating and I think I’m close.
I know leads are usually associated with Accounts or Contact until they are converted. However, I have both suppliers and distributors that bring me leads and would like for those companies to have accounts that the leads are associated with.
This would allow me to go to a distributors account and see if they’ve brought me any leads etc.
So this would involve the lead record being visiblein potentially multiple account / contact records.
I have made related fields in the edit layout of a lead record allowing me to input the distributor account and the distributor contact record. But although the contact and account fields are populated, the lead record does not appear in the account or contact records.
Is this possible please?
Thank you
Dan
You probably just need to add a subpanel in Studio, to show a list of linked distributors in those records.
You need to make a one to many relationship between Leads and Accounts (another one). Call it like Distiributor or something. Then in the lead you’ll have a relate field (to the account which is a distributor) and then on the Distributor side (account) you’ll have a subpanel with all the associated leads.
On conversion you’re going to have an issue. The Lead will convert to account and the default lead/account subpanel will be populated, but you’re new relationship will not carry over on conversion.
You’ll need to create another one-many relationship between Accounts and distributors. This will have a relate field in the account and a subpanel in the distributor (account). However, this relationship will not copy over on convert. You’ll have to customize the conversion process to copy over the relationship on convert from the lead-distributor to account-distributor.
The new relationship is the way to go, yes (something like lead-provider or so).
That’s very useful for reporting later on as well.
In cases like this, I usually used a workflow with a specified trigger (or a custom button) to convert a lead and not use the standard conversion process.
That has the advantage, that the standard conversion process stays as it is.
At the same time, custom relationships can be copied during the custom conversion process.
Firstly, thank you for all your replies. This is such a supportive forum and just another reason I love SuiteCRM.
I’ve taken your advice and made new relationships in the contact module that have worked well. I’ve then made two new modules, suppliers and distributors to separate these records from accounts, I’ve still got a lot of work to do tying it all up but it’s looking good!
Yes, the conversion was a concern of mine and is something I need to tackle, I’m currently rubbish at workflows so need to do some research
Thanks again
As for the two new modules:
I usually hesitate to copy / create the accounts module.
Data architecture wise it seems to be cleaner to have one account module and maybe add a dropdown or a multi select of ‘types’.
So one account can be:
- A customer
- A supplier
- Maybe even a distrubtor at the same time
If you have got completely different business processes and maybe fields and requirements on customers, suppliers and distributors, then separate modules can make sense. (example in education with contacts - students and professors in a separate module.
With separate modules, you could add duplicates without noticing it easily, which can lead to other issues down the road (two email campaigns, etc.)
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