New fields request - ContactID
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Some of us use AppColl data outside of AppColl, and it would be extremely helpful if fields in Matter records that draw from Contacts were to have counterparts that listed the ContactID for the record(s) that they point to. For example, ClientContact could have a ClientContactContactID, Inventors could have an InventorsContactID (which would be either a single ID or a comma-separated list of IDs).
Right now, we have to match on name since that's the only identifier in the Matter record that can be used to match to a record in Contacts--but names can have duplicates, making it not always possible to find the correct Contact record.
Would it be possible to add those fields to Matters?
Cheers,
Christian -
@gregg_appcoll Hi Gregg, thanks for the quick response.
If you are going to expose the ClientContactContactID as a column, please also do so for other Contacts-based fields in Matters. That would be great!
For the Inventors, you're correct that the Inventors CSV export does include the ContactID for the inventors. This would work for our purposes. However, I don't think we have any way to automate getting that information out of AppColl, and that's critical.
Our current practice is to do a nightly FTP dump of our Matters, Tasks, and Contacts tables from AppColl via the Manage Report Schedules interface to take a daily snapshot of our AppColl data. We then import that data into a parallel database that we maintain internally and use for various internal systems.
I may be mistaken, but I don't think we have the option of selecting the Inventors or Connections report types from the Manage Report Schedules interface--we can only specify a named report that we've saved, and the Connections and Inventors "types" of download are special types of report that surface data that isn't visible in a named report but which is sourced from the records in that report.
If the Manage Report Schedules interface were to allow users to specify the "type" of report (I think only Matters, Inventions, Billing, and IDS modules have more than one "type" of report) that is to be scheduled, then I think this would allow us to access the data in the manner we need.
If that's already possible, please let me know how to go about setting it up!
Best,
Christian -
Hi Christian - we actually have this data in the database called ClientContactContactID. We will expose this as a column.
For inventors, you can export the inventor list from the Matter's Excel icon. This download includes the InventorID. We will let you know when this is done. Does this work for you?
