Launchpad Lesson 13 - Contact Setup

All right, contacts next. The contact object in Salesforce is used to track people that are related to your accounts. Pretty straightforward, but like most things in Salesforce, there's always a few nuances. Let's have a look.

Remember, contacts are people. Recall too that leads are also people, but the difference is that a lead is someone in the very early stages of the sales process and the lead object isn't related to the account object. Whereas a contact is created after the lead is converted and it is related to the account.

A person who is a lead at one time can then become a contact to an account later on in the process. But you can't be both at the same time. It's one or the other.

Contacts can be either directly related to your account, which means they work for that company, or they can be indirectly related to the account, which means they don't work there, but they have some sort of ties to that account that are important and worth tracking in Salesforce.

In this lesson, we're going to walk through an example of both, so you can see the difference.

First, let's talk about setting up our contact object. To look at an example, we'll click on the contacts tab and choose a contact record.

I want to draw your attention to the account name field. This is a lookup field to the account. This field determines the primary account relationship for this contact.

Typically, this means that the person works here. Note too, it's also up here in an area called the compact layout, which we'll explore shortly.

When it comes to creating custom fields on the contact object, we recommend very few, if any, at all. The reason is that usually the information we need about a specific contact is very basic.

Think name, email, phone, title.

The custom information for your specific needs is most likely better suited on either the account or the opportunity object. So, we're not going to create any new custom fields, but feel free to do so if you think it works for your business.

We also don't need to edit anything in the page layout because the default is just fine for our use case, but we're still going to make a few changes.

First, we're going to edit the contact Lightning page to make it similar to the account Lightning page. From a contact record, click the setup cog and choose Edit Page.

We're going to make Details the default tab and make it the first tab on the left. Click the large middle pane and then from the right panel, drag the Details tab above Related and then make it the default by selecting First Tab.

We always recommend that the details are your default tabs when you land on a record so that your users don't have to make the extra click just to see them.

Now get rid of the Related tab.

Select the right-hand pane and add a tab for Related.

Move it to the top.

And again, make First Tab the default.

Highlight Related and bring the Related Lists component over to this space.

Click Save in the top right.

Then click Activation.

Make sure it is set to org default.

Click Close.

And now hit Back.

Let's have a look at the record to see what we've done, shall we?

Yep. Everything is right where it should be.

Now, do you see this row under the contact name? This line up here is called the compact layout. It will display up to six key fields that you think are the most important to see. You can change these fields based on your user's preferences. We'll show you how.

From a contact, we can click the setup cog and then Edit Object.

Select Compact Layouts and then select System Default. Here you can see the list of fields that are displayed currently, starting with Name.

So now click Clone and give your layout a new name. We can just call it Updated, and then you can determine which fields you want to see.

It's very important to keep Name as the first selection, as that is the main name of the record displayed up on top.

For this demo, we'll just select Department and put it in the fourth spot. Really, just to show you how it works.

Click Save.

And now click Compact Layout Assignment.

Click Edit Assignment.

Then select Updated.

Click Save again. And now let's check it out.

Now, it doesn't happen immediately and it might take a few minutes, so just be patient, but eventually it will display exactly what you want.

Of course, you can now do the same thing for your Lead, Account, and Opportunity objects, which all have a compact layout as well.

There is one other thing we want to edit in setup before we create our examples.

From the Object Manager, find Account Relationship and click it.

Then click Fields and Relationships.

We want to look at a specific field called Roles.

When we relate a contact indirectly to an account, we define what role they play with that account, which tells us how they are related.

A very common scenario is consultants who work at a consulting firm but are part of a team at the account without actually being employees of that account.

I'll show you a Rocket Shop example.

I'll create a role that is specific to us. I'm going to click New and in this box add Rocket Propulsion Consultant.

Then click Save.

Okay, it's time to go to the Rocket Shop sales app for the next demo.

Let's create our two examples of a direct contact and an indirect contact.

Whenever you create a new contact, it's easiest to go to the account record for that contact and create it from there.

Let's search for our account Milky Way Exploration and click on it. We can see in our Related Contacts list that we don't have any contacts that are either direct or indirect.

Click the dropdown on the Related Contacts related list. You'll see two options, New Contact and Add Relationship.

We are going to create a contact record for the Transportation Captain at Milky Way Exploration, who will be a direct contact. So we will click on New Contact.

The modal will pop up and allow us to enter data.

Now, since we did this from the Milky Way Exploration account record, you'll see that Milky Way Exploration is already entered for the Account Name field.

This is the preferred way to enter contacts so that there is less of a chance of selecting the wrong account.

In our opinion, it's a very good idea to show your users this approach.

Let's enter some details about our contact. We'll put in his name, James T. Kirk, title, phone, and email.

Then click Save.

Now we can see that the contact has been added in our related list. And you can tell that James is a direct contact because the Account Name field shows Milky Way Exploration. And the checkbox for Direct is in fact checked.

Now let's create our indirect contact.

Click the dropdown next to Related Contacts and this time choose Add Relationship.

The Account Contact Relationship modal will pop up and the Account field will already be populated.

If the contact you are relating to this account is already in Salesforce, you can search for them in the field and click their name if found.

If the contact you want to create is not already in Salesforce, then click in the Contact box and at the bottom choose New Contact. Now the New Contact modal will pop up so we can create our contact.

The first field I'm going to fill in here is Account Name. Remember, we are creating a new contact here. So Account Name is the company this person works for directly.

I'm going to search for Space Shuttle Supply Texas and click it.

Then I'll enter relevant details for our contact, Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, and click Save.

This returns us to the Account Contact Relationship modal, and our new contact will be in the Contact field.

The last thing to do here is choose the role for Scotty. We'll scroll down and choose Rocket Propulsion Consultant and click the right-facing arrow to move it into the Chosen box.

There's other standard fields here, Strength and Status, that you're welcome to take advantage of or remove through Page Layouts. It's entirely up to you. I would definitely suggest keeping Active, though.

Now we can click Save.

Now in our related list, we see that Scotty is included, but his Account Name shows Space Shuttle Supply, which tells us he is not directly related to Milky Way Exploration, but it's still important to track the relationship.

If we want to see more details about the related contacts, we can click View All, and it takes us to the full table with more columns available.

The last thing I'll show you is how this looks if we are on Scotty's contact record.

From this table, click on Scotty's contact record. Click on the Related tab.

Under Related Accounts, we see Space Shuttle Supply with a check mark for Direct, telling us he works there. And we also see Milky Way Exploration, which doesn't have a check mark for Direct but shows his role.

All right, three down, one to go. Next up, the big one, Opportunities. We'll see you.