Method:Classic General Q&A

Re: New Activity - drop down for customer name instead of contact name

MikeB — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:49:00 GMT

Yes, I had to change those since the original design was referring to the stock screen. Likewise, my Activities List screen was also a stock screen.

Thanks

Re: New Activity - drop down for customer name instead of contact name

Method_Jason — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:37:40 GMT

Hi Mike,

Did you make sure to point the link in your Edit Customer screen to your new customized New Activity screen? It sounds the Show Screen In Pop Up action is pointing to a different screen. My screenshot below shows the action inside the New Activity button in your Edit Customer screen.

- Jason

Re: New Activity - drop down for customer name instead of contact name

MikeB — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:33:53 GMT

OK, so I added 2 linked fields to the Activity table:

Fullname via Fullname (from Contacts)
ContactsEntity via Entity (from Contacts). I called it ContactsEntity because there was already the Entity field I mentioned above.

Anyway, those were available to be chosen and I selected Entity first, but there was still only 1 contact showing for each entity. That's when I realized there was a filter on the dropdown that said "Parentfullname" = empty. Once I removed that, everything was showing.

However, this was all fine in the "New Activity" screen in the Activities tab, but when I used a "New Activity" hyperlink from a Contacts grid in the Edit Customer screen, the contact details were not automatically populated.

So...long story short, instead of investigating that, I left the first column in the dropdown as Name via ContactsName, but I added the Entity field as the second one instead.

I'd prefer the Entity one first, but it's good enough for now.

Re: New Activity - drop down for customer name instead of contact name

MikeB — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:39:56 GMT

I need further clarification on this:

The dropdown in my New Activity screen is based on the Contacts table and currently shows:

Name via ContactsName
CompanyName
EntityType

I would like the first column to be the Entity field.

In my Activity table, I already see an Entity field, with dotted underlining, and when I hover over it it says: Displaying fields from the Fullname field in the Entity table. The field type is Dropdown, and the "linked via" column does not have anything.

How can I get this Entity field to be the first column in my Contact dropdown?

Re: New Activity - drop down for customer name instead of contact name

Method_Michael — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:04:24 GMT

lpierpont-

When you select a contact from the Contact drop down there are actions that populate the Contact Name, Phone and Email.

You can apply a similar concept with an Entity drop down but it may not be an easy task since everything is linked to contacts in Method, also since one entity could potentially have multiple contacts when you select an entity which contact do you want to fill the information in for?

One suggestion is to use the existing Contact drop down but make it show the Entity as the first field instead of Contact, the only draw back to this is that if a customer has multiple contacts then the customer will be displayed multiple times in the drop down.

To have the ablity to show Entity for the Contacts drop down you will have to edit the Activity table and link the Entity field using the Contacts table, once this is done if you edit the contacts drop down on your customized screen and go to Step 4 of 6 you should be able to set Entity as the first column. You may want to set Name as the 2nd column.

-Michael

New Activity - drop down for customer name instead of contact name

lpierpont — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:00:48 GMT

How do I get the New Activity screen to show me a drop down of customer company names (i.e. the list name in QuickBooks) rather than the contact's name? I added a drop down box for Entity but then the contact info doesn't fill in below.