Primary Contact that was a Secondary Contact

[maxtowns]

Hi

Trying to work this out/hope someone can help

I am using the excellent new CommitCRM Email Configuration Check feature on the settings menu to find duplicate email addresses in the system

errr yeh... we have a lot...

Many I can totally see why and were they came from lets say 'the early days' of using Commit and can be sorted but some are a little more difficult to decide what to do with

For example there is a contact for an account that is the primary contact but was a secondary contact before - we had already long since made the secondary contact inactive (did not want to delete as it pops up saying there are tickets/appts/blah blah linked to this contact are you sure - no we're not sure so umm no - thanks) when we made them the primary contact

OK probably this doesn't matter because the secondary account is inactive and the config check is just flagging it up because it can't tell inactive from active accounts so effectively this can be ignored - right...?

But maybe we're not doing the right thing making a secondary contact inactive and adding them as primary (don't know any magic button that does it but that would obviously work well for us if there was one) but then what are we supposed to do in situations when perhaps they go back to being a secondary contact months/years later - just make their 'old selves' active again and delete the primary contact?

dunno bit lost/like I say any help/advice appreciated - think I am a bit lost on what the primary contact is 'about' (and then there's the umm second primary contact.. who gets notified about what and umm should they be secondary contact too - too confusing!)

(then there are the 4 email addresses for the contracted financial bloke who works at 4 of our accounts but uses his own companies email address to send to us from all 4 of those accounts - yeh... am just saying it's fun/difficult to work this all out but will have to one way or the other)

[Support Team]

Re: Primary Contact that was a Secondary Contact

Thank you for posting this.

Actually Account itself acts as Primary Contact, its details (email and etc.) are used when no secondary contact is set for Ticket or any other record. And there is no magic button to convert Secondary Contact to primary Account and keep all existing history and links, though there is an option to copy a secondary Contact to a new Account (right click the contact).

As for duplicate email addresses between Account and its Secondary Contact - the Ticket will be created for the Account without linking to the Secondary Contact (even if it's active), so you can ignore this duplicates.

[maxtowns]

Re: Primary Contact that was a Secondary Contact

OK thanks for that

you say 'Actually Account itself acts as Primary Contact' - not sure what you mean by this... do you mean the account name is ummm the primary contact?

Shame no magic button ;) so I guess we are doing things correctly by making secondary account inactive and creating them as primary contact (and I guess we delete them as primary and reactivate their 'old selves'?)

Interesting you say can right click a secondary contact and copy them to another account - wouldn't that then mean you have two (or more if you keep doing it!) contacts with same email address that are active and will cause no end of problems?

ALSO - would you be able to direct me to any documentation that completely goes through the logic behind the primary (and secondary primary) and secondary contacts so I can try and get a bit more clue'd up on this? At present I do not think we have contacts setup in the best possible way and it would be really helpful to get the lowdown

thanks!

[Support Team]

Re: Primary Contact that was a Secondary Contact

Yes, exactly, Account name is the primary contact, and what you described about switching between secondary and primary contact makes sense.
As for copying secondary contact to a new Account - yes, it might cause duplicates and issues when working with Email-to-Ticket feature, so make sure you remove the email address from one of them - either the main account or more likely the source secondary contact.

We do not have specific articles about this, perhaps you may search forum and see how other users are using Account and Contacts.
In general, as you already know, secondary contacts are additional people working/related-to the Account (aka Company), and the Contact name in Account details is usually indicates the main/primary Contact in the company.

Hope this helps.

[maxtowns]

Re: Primary Contact that was a Secondary Contact

Right ok thanks for the reply

Shame no documentation on this as it is becoming a major concern for us - the primary account is added to a new ticket by default (unless one of the accounts contacts started the ticket) and as far as I understand the primary contact is notified/included as an external recipient on any new ticket (not entirely sure on this but we've had tickets where a secondary contact has started a ticket and the primary contact has chirped up to tell that secondary contact how to fix the problem - without us doing anything! just sitting and watching it happen)

We support schools who have an ICT coordinator who 'deals' with the IT at the school so we want them included like this so we put them as the primary contact - but then they leave the school and another contact takes up the role but in some cases the head or deputy head takes on the role whilst they appoint a new ICT coordinator - hence the conundrum what we are to do to keep up with this!

I was dragged into a meeting with a head and their financial officer yesterday (was not much fun...) and they pulled me up on who is getting what notifications for what and of course I promised them 'this will be sorted and not happen again' - the truth? I haven't a clue really what is going on that I might just remove all primary contacts and keep everyone as secondary's but then we loose the 'feature' whereby ICT Coordinator is included in secondary contact tickets and can answer themselves which was kinda neat/the system working like we would want it to

Yup 'hear you' on the double emails/remove one or the other - again reality is somewhat different unfortunately but computers are computers and not mind readers to know who is who

[maxtowns]

Re: Primary Contact that was a Secondary Contact

I've seen the 'copy contact to primary contact' option when right clicking a secondary contact so I assume it is then neccessary to make that secondary contact inactive... yup I guess that is the procedure to follow?

[Support Team]

Re: Primary Contact that was a Secondary Contact

Yes, it looks like the right workflow. Please don't forget remove email under secondary contact :-)