Notes from the Elements Service Team - February 2022

Your Bi-Monthly Dose of Advice from the Elements Team

Salentica is always looking for ways for you to stay connected – to our product and to our people. Notes from the Service team is a bi-monthly series where we tap into the things our service team is hearing and seeing as they work through their cases. Chances are, if one client is experiencing something others are as well.

This month, we’re talking about something you may come across when you're categorizing Relationships in Elements CRM.

Specifically one related to a Process Builder called Service – Update Contact Type for Relationships.

This often occurs when System Administrators add new Relationship Record Types, but forget to add a new Contact Type corresponding to it. You must ensure the Contact Type Name matches the Record Type Name.

Firm Admins often want to create new Record Types to better categorize Relationships.

This ensures that their users are only seeing the most relevant information, and removing unnecessary clutter from current Page Layouts.

As an example, they will want to flip a Client to a Terminated Client when they no longer require the use of the firm’s services. This is something that will often happen organically over time as firms use CRM and find the need to further classify or differentiate Relationships from one another.

Follow along as we list the steps and point out often overlooked points. Noting the main thing is to ensure that the Record Type Name and the Contact Type API Name match. Other than that, it is a fairly easy process.

When using the Process Builder, it will automatically change the Contact Type field on Contacts directly related to a Relationship when the Record Type of that Relationship changes. This ensures that users do not have to manually change the Contact Type on each Contact when a Relationship changes from Prospect to a Client.

Below is an example of the error we often see:

There are two important things you’ll see in the error message above:

Although this seems complicated, it simply means an error occurred when the Service – Update Contact Type for Relationships Process Builder was triggered. It also tells you that it occurred because the value that this Process Builder is trying to insert for Contact Type either does not exist or is not valid, which in this case is Terminated_Client.

To better understand this, it is important to review the Terminated Client Record Type to see where this “Terminated_Client” value is coming from. If you go to the Relationship Object in Object Manager and look at Record Types, you’ll see “Terminated Client”. However, it is the Record Type Name that matches the value that we saw in the error rather than the Record Type Label.

In order to ensure that the Record Type Name has a matching Contact Type, you need to go to the Contact Object in Object Manager and view the Values on the Contact Type field. In most cases, you will need to add a new Picklist Value. However, in some cases, you’ll see that you already have a picklist value, but there is not an underscore between the first and second word in the API Name.

To make this correction, you have to click Edit next to the corresponding value and add an underscore to the API Name. Once this is saved, anyone can freely make this change to Relationships moving forward!

Here is what the correct picklist should look like.

Thanks for reading our inaugural Service Team Blog! If you have any suggestions on what we can help with for our next edition, please let us know at info@salentica.com