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I would like to add a field called "industry" that is a drop down field to the entity table.  the goal is to be able to sort leads and customers by their industry designation.

i am having trouble adding the field so that i can access in the leads and customer screens.  i also seem to be creating more tables that i think are needed (one for the field AND one for the data in the field??).

i'm hoping someone can walk me through the process of adding this field so that when i add a lead i can either choose a value from the drop down or add a new industry at that time.  additionally, i would like to industry to carry over to the customer screen when a customer is converted to a lead.  I would also like it to show up in the lead/customer grids...not sure if that means it also has to be added to the contact screen.

any assistance would be appreciated.

thanks,

Hi mholden

The Industry 

I kept it quite simple but if you choose you can add a bit more complexity to it. I added a new table called 'Industry' with one field called 'Name'. I made this field unique as I wouldn't want multiple versions of an Industry clogging up the list.

The Dropdown in the Entity table

Before we start on adding the dropdown to the Entity field it probably pays to clarify the relationship between Entity, Customer, Vendor and Contacts tables. All customers, vendors and employees are part of the Entity table. While you can see a table for each of these it is just a view of the Entity table. That means that if you add a column to the Entity table it will be added to the other tables too. The Contacts table is a separate table in itself so any column added to the Entity table will not be present here.

Step 1 - Go to Edit Fields for the Entity table and 'Add a New Field' with type dropdown. Click 'Add Field'

Step 2 - In the Dropdown Wizard choose 'Choose from an existing Table in Step 1 of 3, choose the newly created Industry table in Step 2, and select the Name field for Step 3. Click 'Finish' and then 'Finished Editing Fields'

Step 3 - You will need to add the industry dropdown field to any screen where you are likely to want to collect the data such as New Lead, New Customer, Edit Customer, Edit Lead.

Adding the Industry link to the Contacts table

Again, I'm going to keep this simple and only let the Contact have the Customer/Lead's Industry. 

Step 1 - Go to Edit Fields for the Contacts table.

Step 2 - Select the 'Add a Linked Field' option and select Entity, Industry and Industry as below. Click 'Add Field' and 'Finished Editing Fields'

Step 3 - Customize the Lead List and Customer List grids to show the Industry field. When the industry is assigned to the Contact's company then it will also apply to them.

Allowing the user to add a new Industry while adding a customer/vendor

If you want to be able to add a new Industry midway through setting up a new lead/customer/vendor you can follow the below steps.

Step 1 - Once you have added the Industry dropdown to the lead or another screen click the Edit button. In Step 2 of 6 you will see the Dropdown Field Actions. Change the Event to 'Add New' and make the Action 'Show Screen in Pop Up'

Step 2 - For the Screen choose the Industry screen you created earlier, mine was called CustIndustry. As you aren't passing any customer/lead info across to the Industry sceen you can leave this as 'Has no relationship'. If you want to add a Screen Caption you can. Click 'Save & Close'

Step 3 - Click 'Finish' and publish the screen. Go view the live screen and double check the dropdown now contains the '< Add New >' option at the start of the list and that when clicked it loads a pop up screen with your Industry screen

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any further questions.

Jeff

thanks!

the field is there and so far so good.  it looks like i can even export/import but haven't had the time for that yet.

your support is awesome.

thanks again!!