Salesforce IdeaExchange
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Sales Force Automation Comments
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Applications Comments
| Applications Ideas
Ability to Set Accounts & Contacts as InActive
It would be very helpful to be able to mark Contacts or Accounts as InActive and then have those Objects no longer show up in Picklists (aka: Lookup Fields).
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Jim_B 04/21/07 |
This idea is very similar to an item already posted: (http://ideas.salesforce.com/article/show/52384/Inactivation_of_Contacts_Conta...) However, the previously posted item does not refer to Account Inactivation. |
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sanfranchris1915 04/23/07 |
Can probably do this easily with a custom field. |
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Heros 04/26/07 |
If you used a Custom field the Record will still show up in a Lookup which is what we need to stop. Please we needs this. Lookups are large enough as it is. |
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WYam 04/27/07 |
We are too facing this problem. There are so many records that we have kept for historical data integrity that the lookups are becoming extremely cumbersome. This would also allow us to disallow users from creating opps/contacts from accounts/contacts that have been previously inactivated. |
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JonV 04/29/07 |
We have set up an Inactive Indicator on Contacts (and the same approach could be used on Accounts) which when selected triggers a workflow rule to set the Contact First and Last Name to the existing value prefixed by loser case x. For instance John Smith when inactivated becomes xJohn xSmith - this allows us to report and manage inactive records without having them show up on user searches, unless they are genuinely looking for them. A system level inactive indicator would be problematic, as these records still have active opportunities and need to show up in historical reports, but also need to be clearly differentiated from the current active John Smith Contact. |
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Pramod 05/08/07 |
Absolutely Agree !!! We also keep historical data. System level Inactive Account status will restrict users creating related records I also have posted following idea which can resolve above issue with the use of custom field http://ideas.salesforce.com/article/show/25164 (Filter on Lookup) |
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5th_Wheel_Steve 06/07/07 |
I need this functionality now or at least a best practice to deal with a growing contact list related to an Account |
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Pony_Boy 06/12/07 |
This was one of the first custom fields I created to show inactive contacts and accounts. i was shocked this was not a standard feature and can't believe it has not been on a rollout yet. please implement this and make life much easier. We want to retain contacts and accounts that are inactive for historical reasons but they clutter up the system when doing a search! |
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Hayley 06/13/07 |
At our organization, we re-assign them to a user that is not actively working leads & accounts, such as a team leader, or manager. Thus all of our inactive accounts owned by "Chuck" are inactive and not being worked. However, I would prefer to have the above option, which could then tell me how many rep 1 is marking as inactive, vs. rep 2 and so on. |
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NateD 10/12/07 |
Great idea! Would also be helpful if inactive records did not show up on related lists. For example, inactive Contacts should not show up in the Contacts list under Accounts. |
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jquesada@dftech.com 10/23/07 |
This is a great idea. We dont delete accounts or contacts but we like to and need to track them so when they move from one firm to another we can still see the history we had with them. Currently we have a checkbox that says "no longer at firm" this helps when were sending out emails because we use the rule "if this is true" omit. But it doesnt help with accounts and it doesnt stop including that person/account in the look up. It would be nice to say "dont include them". |
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MiaF Jan 16 |
Merged Idea
originally posted Jan 16
Contact Management
Can we introduce the ability to make a Contact record dormant if, for example, the contact leaves the Account organisation. Making a record dormant should also exclude it from Outlook synching.
This functionality should enable us to retain the history associated with a Contact record but exclude it from reporting and synching activities |
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Jim_B Apr 14 |
Merged Idea
originally posted 12/28/06
Inactivation of Contacts (Contact Life-Cycle)
Over the course of time, Contacts can change. Specifically, they leave an Account. I would like to see enhancements to help manage Contacts through a natural life-cycle. For example, we should be able to inactivate a Contact for an Account. By inactivating the Contact, we would retain the history for the Contact, but eliminate the Contact from reports and e-mail lists. Another example - we should be able to "transfer" certain attributes of a Contact from one Account to another. As Contacts change jobs (companies), it would be useful to know their history of interaction at a previous Account (at least via a link).
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Scott_Jorgensen Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 12/28/06
This is an excellent suggestion. It is also closely related this this popular idea: http://ideas.salesforce.com/article/show/22418 If you like this one, be sure to check out the other one.
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bslater Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 12/29/06
Just create a custom field for contact status (picklist) and give it the values active and inactive... when you build reports query against those that are "active"
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E Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 12/29/06
To build on this a bit more, I have some accounts with 30+ contacts, many no longer there. To be able to toggle a switch to view active vs inactice on the "Accounts" tab and Contacts within an organization would be real helpful.
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matt@welsh.com Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 01/02/07
This would be a very helpful feature. Quite often we need to refer to former employees when prospecting accounts.
Further, being able to color categorize important contacts (key decision makers, buyers, etc) would be great too. |
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JasonC Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 01/04/07
We talked about doing this manually, by reassigning the contact to a new account and adding the old account under Contact Roles with the role of "Former Employer." That works, but it's a tedious process. It would be great to see this automated.
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TomaszOczapowski Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 01/04/07
Hi E,
Modify "Related List Section" sort order to use a custom field "Active". To toggle to "Inactive" click on the column name to reverse the sort. |
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TomaszOczapowski Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 01/04/07
Hi Matt,
Use a calculation field with the IMAGE Function. It's not full color coding but still very effective. |
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RDN_LHR Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 01/08/07
I do this using a "Left Company" record type. Sadly though, users will still just change the Account name on a contact to move them. I hate this because then when you look at the activity history for the account, it shows loads of emails and contacts that were sent to the contact's OLD account. When it works, it works though... not as well as this suggestion would.
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frankbria Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 01/23/07
You can create two new field for Inactive and Inactive Reason. Both are picklists and the inactive reason field is dependant on the inactive field.
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frankbria Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 01/23/07
You can create two new fields for Inactive and Inactive Reason. Both are picklists and the inactive reason field is dependant on the inactive field.
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Suzette_from_ADP Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 01/24/07
We use a custom field named Inactive Employee and train users to filter on this field when needed for reporting. Should you want to transfer the contact record to a new account (and all of the associated activity, history, etc.) you can edit the Contact, and specify/select the new Account name.
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newmember Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 02/01/07
I deal with 100s of contractors that move from project to project from different client sites all year. I want to track when and where our company engaged these contractors. I know with MS CRM, I can change the company a "contact" is associated with. Its great that I can pick a contact see all the companies that person has every worked for that I have recorded. And the other way, I can see all the people that have ever worked at a company. And I can see who is current.
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Aliza Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 02/06/07
When Mary Sample leaves her job at SomeCustomer, we edit her contact profile to change her name to zzMary zzSample
It's an ugly inelegant solution, but it's very effective for keeping people from assigning new cases to obsolete contacts, and for seeing quickly which open cases have obsolete contacts listed. (This would not help us when Joe User leaves his job at SomeCustomer and shows up the next week as a new contact at AnotherCustomer ; it also would not help us if we hire Jane Doe away from SomeCustomer. Given that most companies monitor email sent to former employees, some contacts are listed with role email addresses, and that Salesforce only allows us to have one email address per user, it would probably be best to create a new contact record for people who change jobs.) |
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Letty Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 04/10/07
This is an excellent idea and would benefit us greatly
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LogoJon Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 05/03/07
This is a must with inactive users! We don't want to assign custom user fields to inactive users and don't even want the temptation. They shouldn't appear in the picklist.
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jimjamz Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 05/22/07
Yes, definately! By having this indicator you can filter out these redundant contacts.
We currently use a '~' to signify they are no longer active. However, even in this instance, things such as synching with Outlook Edition will bring down everyone and you cannot tell if they are an inactive user. |
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martin_t Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 09/19/07
Great - but not only contacts - also accounts
I agree with - with creating of a (or two) field(s) active/inactive it isn't done so easy. We need also some functions behind this field - for example: you don't see the inactives in lookup fields, automatically not in mass-e-mail and so. Otherwise all of us has to create the fields, formulas, special reports etc. It works with campaigns - why not with contacts and accounts. |
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thutchcroft09272007 Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 12/10/07
We have a field for Active/Inactive. When the field becomes Inactive another field becomes available with the current date and the screen contact changes to view only. That way the history remains and no new activity can take place unless the Admin approves it.
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heatherp Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 12/28/07
Yeah we have a field for inactive/active contacts as well and it works great. There are times that we'll have contacts leave one company and go to another company who is still a customer of ours. What we do is just mark that contact "inactive" and then exclude that criteria on the reports.
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Ben-Generate Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 12/31/07
Adding a custom "active/inactive" field is fine for excluding objects from reports etc as you can simply add a criteria to exclude a certain value. However, this does not work for the standard user searches.
This suggestion would be great as long as salesforce excluded inactive records from the search facility. Therefore it should be possible for inactive records to be reported on so that they could be accessed if necessary. I also think that this would be a really good way of handling deceased records |
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rmlaura Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted Mar 6
As an administrator, I have also seen people move from a contact role in one account to a contact role in another account. It would be nice to show when a contact has been inactivated in another account, also keeping them from becoming a duplicate record in their current account.
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Atomic1 Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted Mar 12
The longer we have customers, the more liking a contact is no longer the primary or even active contact. While we don't want to lose the history with that contact by deleting them, we also don't want to see them when we view contacts in an account. We want to see only the ACTIVE contacts in list view. Request would be to have the ability, as we have in our user view, to select all contacts or only active contacts when view the related list in an account.
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sepost Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted Mar 12
My company would also find this helpful.
Right now we have a work around. Basically I've created a "No longer with Account" checkbox on the Contact page layout. If it's checked, the Contact is inactive. I've also added this field to all contact views, so my users can always see it. The problems with this is it's not used very frequently, and a checkbox is not much of a visual indicator that a contact is inactive. Unless a user is aware and checking for this field, a checkbox is easy to overlook. |
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03/6/2007_15:11 Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted Mar 12
You should have the ability to set the display of the Contacts grid in the Account details page to display either:
1) Active only 2) Active & Inactive Currently, all contacts are displayed. You can add the inactive flag to the grid but all contacts are still displayed. |
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kristinf Apr 14 |
Merged Comment
originally posted Apr 1
Thanks for the idea and comments. We understand the need and are investigating it as part of our roadmap (no specific release targeted yet) for contact management enhancements. I have a few questions for those of you interested in this feature...
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ThadKill Apr 15 |
Kristin, I suggest a tab in the Contact section call "inactive". Contacts are automatically display in this view if tagged inactive. Email and contact info is greyed and not extracted in reports. Also note the Date of move, termination,..... then in the New Contact (record) let me link to each inactive contact record. this also allow you to keep old history associated with the contact. |
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Speedy911 Apr 19 |
Good idea. There is a good workaround however. We put organizational wide defaults to private for accounts & contacts, and have 1 user who sits completely outside the role hierarchy and who isn't part of any sharing rule, only visible to the admin. Upon checking a "inactive" checkbox, a workflow task is created to the admin to reassign the account/contacts to the user outside the hierarchy, making it invisible to the reset of the organisation. |
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ThadKill May 12 |
I neat trick but we should not have to Trick the system. All the other suggestions like color coding and custom field are all forcing functionality instead of improving the product. |
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ThadKill May 12 |
I neat trick but we should not have to Trick the system. All the other suggestions like color coding and custom field are all forcing functionality instead of improving the product. |
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nikkig Jul 17 |
Like to have similar capability to mark custom objects as inactive and limit the records from lookup searches as well. |
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bweller Jul 31 |
We ran into this same request among our Sales Reps and determined that we need to keep contacts linking to historical records. We did recently add an "Inactive Contact" checkbox in the Contact record and included the Inactive Contact status as a column in the Contact Object list view. We also set it up where any contacts that are checked with "Inactive Contact" automatically sort to the bottom of the list view. It would be nice to have a way to identify if a Contact record is not linked to any Opportunities. Then would could do a mass delete of these older contacts. |
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claireb Oct 2 |
Merged Idea
originally posted 09/05/07
Archiving Contacts
I think an important feature is the ability to archive contacts.
As an interim solution, we have set up an account named "Archived Contacts" and then we assign each contact we wish to archive to this account. We also remove tick the 'email opt out' option. However when adding 'all contacts' to a campaign, these archived contacts are still picked up. I think this function is imporant, as sometimes a client may by in-active, however you do not want to loose the history on these contacts incase they are re-instated. It is important to exclude them from reporting, and campigns. Thanks |
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martin_t Oct 2 |
Merged Comment
originally posted 09/19/07
Not only contacts --- also accounts, opportunities, ....
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pastusobrown Oct 30 |
We like this idea and currently are dealing with it by having a 'Left Organisation' account and tracking the Account Name History for contacts. |
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