How do you manage many to many customer groupings?

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  • olof
    Senior Member
    • Jul 2018
    • 184

    How do you manage many to many customer groupings?

    we are looking for a flexible way of handling grouping of accounts and contacts. We want a many to many relationsipsthat allows us to create lists such as:

    - Customers we are going to invite to 2018 summer party
    - Customers we are going to arrange a meeting to demo product X
    - Customers we want to get into to talk about X

    At the moment all of this is done in Excel - you grab a meeting room and sit with the management team to brainstorm who should be on the list. You pull up last years party list or the list of contacts you went to go and see about product Y. Then the team adds columns to the sheet to track progress; called: yes/no, invite accepted: yes/no; probability of acceptation 0-100% etc

    It's flexible, easy to use but this makes a mockery of our current CRM. silo'd data, poor data security, no audit history.

    I've been looking at "target lists" and at creating our own new entity called "buckets". The issues with both are the same:

    Pro:
    - you can associate both accounts and contacts with them (not essential but nice to have)
    - search contacts by association with a "target list".
    - You can see which target list someone is in from

    Cons:
    - The select association mechanism is clumsy - the right hand select menu box closes after each contact is selected
    - You can't bulk edit in the contact list view - i.e. do another search (e.g. contacts in another list) and then bulk edit a section of them to add them to a new list. I have not been able to add either the custom entity (based on "base plus") or target lists to the may update pannel
    - There is no way to do an annotation against the contacts within the context of the list

    Am I missing something - isn't this a workflow every B2B has? Does anyone have any better suggestions?

    Maybe this should behave more like a tag?

    ===

    PS looking for the best way to handle this I stumbled across that you can add "Campaigns" to the mass edit panel for an account but you can't add "list".
  • yuri
    Member
    • Mar 2014
    • 8417

    #2
    1. a. You can select multiple contacts at once by clicking select all results. 1000s contacts can be added at once. Make a search by specific criteria and select.

    1. b. You can utilize Reports to sync target list with a specific list report. Sync will be being done automatically.

    2. You can make a search to filter contacts related to a specific target list and do mass update on them.

    3. You can check 'Link-Multiple field' for Target Lists relationship in Entity Manager. This will create Target Lists field that you can add on the list view.
    If you find EspoCRM good, we would greatly appreciate if you could give the project a star on GitHub. We believe our work truly deserves more recognition. Thanks.

    Comment

    • olof
      Senior Member
      • Jul 2018
      • 184

      #3
      Hi yurikuzn,

      1. a. Yes I know you can do a select all but you can't keep searching for 1 person at a time and adding them. For us its more surgical than broad searches.

      1. b. Yes I think reports will be very helpful.... Can reports be used to sync to custom entities?

      3. Entity manager is not available for Target Lists. I have tried checking 'Link-Multiple field' for the entity I created - "buckets" but can't figure out what this has changed in the list view?

      Comment

      • olof
        Senior Member
        • Jul 2018
        • 184

        #4
        Ok, I understand link multiple fields - rather it gives you a multi select field that you can add to the detail view.

        Comment

        • yuri
          Member
          • Mar 2014
          • 8417

          #5
          You can also add it on the list view since 5.3 version.

          Custom entities are not supported in target lists.
          If you find EspoCRM good, we would greatly appreciate if you could give the project a star on GitHub. We believe our work truly deserves more recognition. Thanks.

          Comment

          • olof
            Senior Member
            • Jul 2018
            • 184

            #6
            I'm sorry but I can't find this option. Any chance you can post a screenshot?
            Have a great weekend.

            Olof

            Comment

            • tanya
              Senior Member
              • Jun 2014
              • 4308

              #7
              Before linkMultiple fields weren't enabled on list view in Administration > Layout Manager. Now you can add them to layouts

              Comment

              • olof
                Senior Member
                • Jul 2018
                • 184

                #8
                See attached screenshots - am I missing something?

                Comment

                • tanya
                  Senior Member
                  • Jun 2014
                  • 4308

                  #9
                  What is your current version of EspoCRM?

                  Comment

                  • olof
                    Senior Member
                    • Jul 2018
                    • 184

                    #10
                    5.3.4

                    Comment

                    • tanya
                      Senior Member
                      • Jun 2014
                      • 4308

                      #11
                      custom/Espo/Custom/Resources/metadata/entityDefs/Bucket.json and Contact.json
                      in needed fields remove "layoutListDisabled": true,
                      Save, Clear Cache in Administration

                      Comment

                      • olof
                        Senior Member
                        • Jul 2018
                        • 184

                        #12
                        Bucket.Json only currently includes:


                        {
                        "controller": "controllers/record",
                        "boolFilterList": [
                        "onlyMy"
                        ],
                        "sidePanels": {
                        "detail": [
                        {
                        "name": "activities",
                        "label": "Activities",
                        "view": "crm:views/record/panels/activities",
                        "aclScope": "Activities"
                        },
                        {
                        "name": "history",
                        "label": "History",
                        "view": "crm:views/record/panels/history",
                        "aclScope": "Activities"
                        },
                        {
                        "name": "tasks",
                        "label": "Tasks",
                        "view": "crm:views/record/panels/tasks",
                        "aclScope": "Task"
                        }
                        ]
                        },
                        "iconClass": "fas fa-shopping-basket",
                        "kanbanViewMode": false,
                        "color": null
                        }

                        Comment

                        • tactionsoftware
                          Banned
                          • Jul 2018
                          • 4

                          #13
                          Ok, I understand becoz last year I'm searchin for the same type of grouping and relationship. As a business owner, we are unable to create grouping or relationship management software solutions. So, we should want a technical expert to consult for better solutions, Hope, without any problem we find TechEsperto Solutions best IT Consulting experts. They provide the best solution for our problem.
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                          Comment

                          • tanya
                            Senior Member
                            • Jun 2014
                            • 4308

                            #14
                            You share with me clientDefs, but not entityDefs

                            Comment

                            • olof
                              Senior Member
                              • Jul 2018
                              • 184

                              #15
                              Apologies, that works, thanks. Although now I see what it does it doesn't really help with the list management.

                              I've just been having a look at the importer. I don't see a way of importing into buckets... is that correct?

                              Olof

                              Comment

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