How to use Relationship Roles and Relationships in Microsoft CRM

One of the least understood and least used features of Microsoft CRM is Relationship Roles, and the Relationships between Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities.

As a result, Navint’s consultants are seeing many instances where people automatically think of creating custom entities when they have a need to create relationships.

While a custom entity may very well be the best solution, we recommend that you consider using Relationship Roles and Relationships first.

For more information on using Relationship Roles and Relationships, check out this article on the “Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0” portal: http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/crm/using/sales/relationshiproles.mspx

Here are some pros and cons of using Relationship Roles and Relationships:

Pros
1. Simple and easy way to create and track multiple types of relationships in one place.

2. Can be used to avoid creating custom entities.

3. Users can search and report on the data.

Cons
1. Can only be used for Account, Contact, and Opportunity entities.

2. Limited fields available on the Relationship record to describe the exact details of the relationship. For example, you might have multiple IT contacts at an account, and you want to have a field to indicate which contact is the primary IT contact. At this point, all you can do is indicate this fact in the standard description fields on the Relationship object. Obviously, this approach does not lend itself to structured data suitable for reporting.

So remember - whenever you need to establish a relationship of some sort, be sure to consider the simple way first and look at Relationship Roles and Relationships.