Hi guys
It seems, my post from yesterday wasn’t published, so I write again.
I’m using TapForms as a custom CRM system for my photography business. Therefore I have a form (table) for clients and some others for different types of jobs. Job entries are linked to a person (client) entry.
Now I’m struggling with the situation, when employees of my clients leaving their job. I like to keep the information, which person gave me which job. But keeping the employee entry at my TapForms, makes my CRM confusing with contact entries which no longer are “active”.
For the moment I usually deleted the contact entry and relinked the jobs to either another contact from the same company (which is wrong, because this person did not gave the the jobs), or I created a nonpersonal client entry just for the company and relinked the jobs to this.
Both ways are not ideal, because I loose the information of the person who gave me the job. This might be relevant at a later time point to remind the client, look at the person X data archive for my images, or I had this or that deal with person X from job Y.
So, is there any way to deactivate and hide old contact entry and keeping their informations?
For the moment the easy way would be by just adding a checkbox “non active” and save a search for all contact which do not have “non active” checked.
Problem here, when creating a job and linking the job to a contact by searching the contact form, all the deactivated entries will also show withing the search. This is a problem, as often employees start a new job at another company which is also a client from us. This created a new personal entry with the same name and the risk from false job links rises.
So anyone with the same use of TapForms, who did you solve this with your database design?
Hi Cornelius,
One solution to this problem would be to use more than just a Checkmark field, but a Status field. You could put Active or Inactive in the field. Then put the Status field just below the contact name. Or set the Group Records By setting on your form to the Status field.
Then, when you’re linking to the form and you click the checkmark to display the list of contacts, you would see all Active clients grouped together and all Inactive clients grouped together. So it would be easier to see which contacts you could link to.
Just an idea.
At some point it would be good to implement Saved Searches for the Link to Form field. Or maybe instead of linking to a Form, you choose a Saved Search instead. So the records to link to would be filtered automatically. Just thinking out loud here.
Thanks,
Brendan
Hi Brendan
May I ask what kind of field you mean with the “Status field”?
A text field with a list of the 2 values “active” “inactive”? I can’t find a specific field type “status”.
Linking between contacts and jobs is down by adding a field “link to form” with “one to many” and “show inverse relationship”.
Not sure if I understand this correctly:
–> “At some point it would be good to implement Saved Searches for the Link to Form field. Or maybe instead of linking to a Form, you choose a Saved Search instead. So the records to link to would be filtered automatically. Just thinking out loud here.”
What do you mean with “saved searches for the link to form field”?
My current concept is:
Client = Form entry for a human
Some clients have several employees I’m working with, every employees gets his own “client entry”
Jobs are stored in a seperate form called “photography jobs”. News jobs are linked to a client.
This works as long the employees do not leave the company and start a new job with another company I’m working with. In this case, I start to dublicate entry with same names but different company/phone/mail etc.. Here I gets confusing.
What I have seen here:
https://www.tapforms.com/help-mac/5/en/topic/relationships
A concept where bigger company with many employees would gets 1 company contact (client).
And I would create a 2nd form at my category “clients” called e.g. team members. Now I could link the team members to the company and all jobs to the company.
–> Here I still need the information:
– Which client gave me a job (done by the link job <–> client)
– Who is the responsible employee (team member) at my client for that job // how can this be solved?
For the client who gave you a job that’s a Link to Form 1:M from Client to Job. Tick show inverse to make sure you can select Client from Job.
For the responsible team member at your client is a Link to Form 1:M from Team Member to Job. Also make sure you tick show inverse for similar reasons.
Team Member becomes a light weight form that is 1:M from Client to Team Member and 1:M from Contact Details to Team Member. This is a three form JOIN setup which I cover with a book use case. The video on using link to form fields to duplicate records might also help give you an idea. You can add extra fields to Team Member to control if it’s active or not and use scripting to update the data. You can also then use a JOIN type and calc field to filter data as well.
Check out the videos and see if they help connect some dots and when I’ve got some more time I might see if I can work up a more expanded example.
Thx Sam. Sounds like a smart way to handle the relations. I will look into it and also watch your video.
Lets see if I (without any knowledge about programming/scripting) can rebuild this and update my TapForms. 😎
The video is live with a walk through of a skeleton CRM with the link to form setup that I think comes closer to solving what you’re after. One minor tweak not in the video was changing the ordering of the “team members” form to do status sorted first so that when you go to select a team member the active ones are sorted to the top of the list. Attached a form template that was made in the video for reference as well.
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