Hi,
We are about to move into production with CRM (2016 online, update 1), but I have an ongoing challenge that I can’t get my head around. I have posted a similar question previously, but as yet we’re yet to find a satisfactory option.
We have a (pretty common I would think) scenario where we need to classify accounts into business ‘sectors’. Each sector is a multi-level (as many as 4) hierarchy. For example:
Computing > Consumer > Hardware > Hard Drives
Computing > Industrial > Hardware > Hard Drives
Computing > Consumer > Software > OS
Computing > Consumer > Software > Productivity
Obviously there are more than that, but you get the idea. Key requirements are that:
- Each account can have more than sector assigned to it.
- Sectors can be assigned at any level. E.g., one account may have Computing > Consumer > Software > OS assigned to it, which another that we know less about might have only Computing > Consumer assigned to it.
My key challenges are:
- How can we incorporate the assignment into the accounts form? The user needs to be able to select level 1, then level 2, then level 3…. and at any point assign the sector and either stop or assign another.
- We need to structure the setup such that if someone completing an advanced find selected Computing > Consumer they would get all accounts assigned to that sector and more granular sectors, but if that searched for accounts assigned to the bottom level Computing > Consumer > Software > Productivity they would get only those.
I have setup a recursively referenced custom entity and then related that (N:N) with account, but it doesn’t satisfactorily meet either of the two above requirements.
I can’t use the in-build category entity as it’s not possible to add a N:N relationship between that and account.
Any thoughts on either or both of the points?
Many thanks,
Steve