Please Login with your Salesforce ID to post, promote or comment.
Salesforce IdeaExchange
FAQs | Terms of Use8070 Ideas; Promoted 170371 Times; 16407 Comments.
- Suggest a New Product Concept
- Promote Ideas That You Want to See Developed
- Discuss With Product Managers and Other Users
- See What We Are Planning To Deliver
Sales Force Automation Comments
| Sales Force Automation Ideas
|
User Experience Comments
| User Experience Ideas
|
Applications Comments
| Applications Ideas
|
Force.com Platform Comments
| Force.com Platform Ideas
|
Search and Navigation Comments
| Search and Navigation Ideas
Searching for Contacts by Account Name
Although the new search/filter capabilities of the Spring '07 Release are great, there is a HUGE flaw. Now when you perform a sidebar or advanced search by Account Name, it will not search the database for Contacts that are associated to the Account. You will only be presented with matching Accounts, Leads, Opportunities and Activities. The only way for you to find Contacts at a particular Account, or across multiple Accounts of the same name, is to use Reports or Views. This is very inefficient for our users. The search capability needs to allow for searching on ALL key fields within the application, and the Account Name our Contacts are associated to should be one of those!
|
Jim_B 03/07/07 |
How is it possible that we have stepped backwards in the Spring Release by losing this functionality? Duplicates have been shown in Idea Exchange to be perhaps the single biggest problem with the application. We have now removed a functionality that is important to reducing duplicates. Why would this happen? There is no way that I can expect users to search for Contacts via a separate process (a Report or View) when the search functionality is presented on the main page. Also, why was it not announced that this functionality was being removed? Most users will assume that the functionality is still there and that no Contact matches are being found. I can feel our duplicates rising .... |
|
SusanK 03/08/07 |
The current behavior for retrieving Contacts from Sidebar & Advanced Search is to match on email domain, rather than account name. This has not changed in the Spring 2007 release -- see the "Why don't all contacts show up when searching for an account?" solution in Help & Training for more information. However, the ability to match Contacts that are associated with an Account from the Sidebar & Advanced Search would be an interesting feature. How would you want to view the matching Contacts after you've searched for an Account name? How would you want to distinguish which of the Contacts in the search results are matched because of associated to an Account that matches your search? |
|
melbrien 03/08/07 |
If using the Sidebar or Advanced Search, I would assume my search results would show a combination of Contacts associated to the Account Name I typed in, as well as those that match by email. When I look at the search results, it does not matter to me which field was matched - Account Name or email. |
|
Ali_J_in_NH 03/10/07 |
Yeah, I don't quite buy what SusanK is selling on the new Search. We regularly had contacts come up appropriatley when searching for an Account prior to the Spring07 upgrade . . . now I am gonna get an earful from our reps. :( |
|
BruceEsrig 03/11/07 |
To match any object that matches on any field, you would think that it would suffice to use the Search All option. But a search for a Contact doesn't match on Account name. One way to resolve this would be to allow the user to "Search All Fields". Alternatively, you could look at this as a request for two consecutive searches: find Accounts, then find all the Contacts for each Account, and show the combined results. Using either approach, the results could be an undesirably long list. How about a cascaded search that can be started once the results come back? Users would have the chance to start a search based on the result list using the following fields. Show: (choice of objects) Matching: (search terms). Is this type of search frequent enough to be worth offering all the time at the location where the search is first invoked? I don't work for salesforce.com, so this is just a comment, not an offer of functionality. |
|
SusanK 03/12/07 |
If you search by email domain, as the current solution suggests, or any string that will get you a super-set of contacts results that will probably contain the one you're looking for, you can filter the results for contact by Account name, using the new Search Result Filters. It's definitely an extra step and requires some setup by the administrator and education for users, but it's a viable workaround. As a side note: The cascaded search approach that BruceEsrig suggested above sounds a like wanting to be able perform a second search, within your first search results set. That's also something that can be approximated using the Search Results Filters. |
|
melbrien 03/13/07 |
The problem with searching by email domain is that many email domains do not match the Account Name. For example, I just did a search in our database for ABN AMRO Bank. There are well over 25 Accounts in our database, but the search results for Contacts is 0. Their email domain is @abnamro which is considered a different spelling of the Account Name, and therefore, not found in the search results. From a report, I know we have over 200 Contacts. This is not an efficient way for our Reps to be working. Searching should provide them with all the answers, not a subset. Our users need to go to one location to find what they need, not to a search, report and/or a view. |
|
Jim_B 03/13/07 |
E-mail domain has another problem - many contacts do not use their work e-mail because of firewall issues. If a prospect wants a download or some other item (in a Web to Lead scenario), they may have to use a personal e-mail (such as yahoo.com) in order to avoid their corporate firewall. Those people using an alternate e-mail would not be picked up on domain searches. |
|
lfitzgraham 10/31/07 |
Merged Idea
originally posted 05/21/07
Search feature improvement: include "Account Name" when searching Contacts
I just learned that when you do a Search, the Salesforce search engine does a search on the email address field. This presents two problems: 1) If a Contact doesn't have an email address listed (not a required field) and you do a search on an Account name that contact won't appear in the search results; and 2) if a Contact's email address doesn't have their Account name in the email address then that contact won't appear in the search results either, ex., if a Contact is related to the Account Name, Lockheed Martin but their email address is xyz.smith@lmco.com then a search on Lockheed Martin will not bring up xyz smith as being related to that Account Name. It makes more sense to me that the search engine should search on the Account Name (a required field). Thank you!
|
|
melbrien 10/31/07 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 05/23/07
This is the same as another idea - http://ideas.salesforce.com/article/show/63080/Searching_for_Contacts_by_Acco...
|
|
Jeff@AIR 12/04/07 |
Could not agree more!!! The fact that we can not search for contacts by Account Name is completely absurd. Apparently we are being asked to work around a major bug that Salesforce has yet to resolve. Hopefully, we will have a common sense solution in the near future. |
|
barbkuntz Mar 5 |
I completely agree with melbrien - I've always assumed that searching for an account name would bring up all of the contacts associated with that account. I understand how the search is functioning, but don't understand why it functions that way - it doesn't make a lot of sense. One of the limitations of the way it functions now: if you search for a company name, say 'Continental Industries' but the email address is '@continentalindustries.com' you won't get a hit in the search results because the search won't recognize the run-on. I always try to tell my reps that 'less is more' when searching in Salesforce, but it's so opposite what they've learned using search engines like Google where you need to be very specific to get the results you want. Please consider fixing this in a future release! |
|
martymar Mar 5 |
There shouldn't even be a checkbox for Contacts in the Advanced Search since it doesn't find all of them (unless they have company emails with the domain spelled exactly like the Account name). That's just as nonsensical as only finding Contacts with the same phone number as the main number of the Account and neither the phone nor the email should even be a criteria for the search and only the Account name should be a factor just like Leads are found even if they don't have emails. If there's one Account in a city then you might say it's not a big deal to click on the Account to see the Contacts but if there are dozens of Contacts and dozens of leads and you're trying to find duplicates then you have to click back and forth trying to remember everyone's name or you have to click on find duplicates for each one instead of seeing everything on one page. Now imagine 4 Accounts on the same street with dozens of Contacts and Leads on each one! Happy clicking! |
|
bsilva May 15 |
This is bsilva. I could not agree more with Jeff@AIR! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE fix this! I am so surprised more users are not screaming about this issue. Searching contacts on name/e-mail/domain is not enough! My reps need to *easily* locate all contacts at any particular account, regardless of site/location. Someone forgot that this app was built for sales people. The fact that we cannot search for contacts by Account Name is completely absurd. The suggested work-arounds are unacceptable for this major bug that Salesforce has yet to resolve. |
|
SusanK Jun 23 |
Changed status to Ideas Under Consideration. |
Please log in to post a comment
recently promoted by:
- Francesco23
- Couttsey
- avlerik
- md1
- Peter_vS
- martymar
- gwylie02122008
- lblock
- robertcrav
- bsilva
- rammohan_rao
- kdlarson
- stephan_lemmen
- barbkuntz
- initsysadmin
- Bob@Rupholdt.com
- sherwt
- jshaff
- ChrisMcL
- wendysueb
- cbrown58
- sparky
- mvoelker
- pacman
- Jeff@AIR
- craskulinecz
- hellerbr
- bmf
- berger
- lfitzgraham
- user2006
- hpPMO
- ShannonJohnson
- bravo
- NCB
- SysMuc
- AstroSHS
- hayli
- AlanIC
- tmiller
- JStewart
- info@redteaminvestigations.com
- JimCRC
- razor
- AdminRD
- ianroberts
- EverhaAY
- dwoodman
- EStowe
- mmcconna
- RT
- Chrisr
- Jamison
- jcohen
- rflorig1
- jfxk
- Ali_J_in_NH
- anyh00
- mtlcanuck
- zoltdala
- tdima
- TCC
- ErikM
- SusanK
- Jackie
- LASTOIA
- jjendo
- EricCH
- AlexCRMmanager
- Kringo
- SLambert
- lkelly
- ronedawg
- bica
- Linda22
- Salesbynature
- melbleau
- buckeyelove
- PeterBan
- Scott_Jorgensen
- sfraz
- littlenapoleon
- DennyD
- nflores
- singman
- leggs
- Ford
- susanmg
- KandieB
- smasch
- JXP
- wylieatworknz
- RobD
- andriesv
- Leyna
- mym0
- marketmaster
- Jim_B
- melbrien
POST IDEA
TOP USERS