Hi <o:p></o:p>
I am trying to customise a fairly vanilla Dynamics CRM 2011 package for my company that deals with opportunities involving numerous contacts. <o:p></o:p>
As the opportunity entity stands at the moment users are able to associate a single account or contact to an opportunity record using the 'potential customer' lookup field. This includes the inhernet child parent relationship in the system.
However our users want to associate more then one contact or company to the project. I
attempted to get around this issue by using the 'relationship' entity so that people could associate more records. I used this rather then the 'connections' entity as when a contact was linked to an opportunity using 'relationships' the
opportunity record appears in the contacts record opportunity section, where as if connections are used the link appears in the connections section. It seemed to make sense that all opportunities to appear in the opportunities section rather
then getting users to go to different areas. <o:p></o:p>
However
this method has brought up two problems:<o:p></o:p>
1. Users have to flick between two filters within the opportunities view to see all opportunities as contacts linked by 'relationships' and the 'Potential customer' filed on the opportunities form appear in different filters - either 'regarding' or 'affiliated' records.<o:p></o:p>
2. The parent child relationship between opportunity and contact/account still exists
therefore all records on the opportunity record (i.e. events etc.) are filtered
onto the account/company record in the 'Potential customer' form. (I cant diasble this field as its is system required) This causes problems as the opportunity record may include activities regarding a account/contact associated to the opportunity
by not neccessarily in the potential customer field.
I was therefore wondering if there was anyone on the forum who have experienced this problem before regarding essentially creating a many to many relationship between opportunity - conctacts/accounts, and how you dealt with it?
Secondly i have also been informed that 'Relationships' will become obsolete in future and that 'Connections' should always be adopted to link records. Is this correct?
Many Thanks<o:p></o:p>