What
In some cases, you may need to add a person to Mercury that is currently employed by more than one Client, as a Client Contact. When adding this Client Contact to the system, it is important to understand that Mercury intentionally restricts Client Contacts from being added to more than one Client record. The system is restricted in its ability to bifurcate certain actions. As an example, when emailing as a Client Contact, Mercury can only associate one work email address per Contact record; if the Client Contact record belonged equally to two Clients, then Mercury would be unable to process the email due to the ownership conflict.
Fortunately, alternatives are available to mitigate this restriction:
Option 1: Creating and linking multiple Client Contact records
The most straightforward alternative, is to create two Client Contact records (one for each Client) and use Connections to link the two records, indicating that they are the same person. The advantage of this alternative is that each record will behave like any other Client Contact record as intended; you don't have to worry about navigating around email restrictions because each Client Contact record will have its own associated email address.
Option 2: Connecting a single Client Contact to multiple Clients via Connections
Alternatively, you can make broader use of Connections from a single Contact record, as a Client Contact can be connected to many different Clients simultaneously. This alternative allows you to maintain a single Client Contact record. This method comes with the caveat that the Client Contact will be restricted to a single work email address for all Clients. If you need to associate Client-specific work email addresses with your Client Contact, you will encounter issues using this method and should consider creating multiple Client Contact records instead.
The following sections pertain to Option 2: Connecting a single Client Contact to multiple Clients via Connections.
Where
From the Client Contact record, click the Related tab > Connections > Connect dropdown > To Another
How
1. On the New Connection page, use the Name field to locate the record you want to Connect:
2. Type the Client name into the Name field and select it if the Client record appears as a selection. If the Client does not appear, click into the Name field and press the Enter key, then select Advanced lookup:
3. Within the Advanced lookup window that appears, select Clients from this list. You can use the Search bar to search for the desired Client record, or select from the alphabetical list of Clients:
4. Once the desired Client has been located, click the blue circle next to the Client name followed by the Done button in the bottom right corner of the window. The Client Contact is now associated with that Client record:
5. You can also use the As this role field to define the nature of the Connection. Click into the field and press the Enter key, then select Advanced lookup as above for the Name field. Then select an applicable Role from the Applicable Connection Roles list again as above. If you wish to add a new Role, click New Connection Role in the As this role field:
6. Finally, you can add an optional Description in the Description field:
7. Now that the Connect To tab has been filled in, we need to do the same on the Details tab, filling in the Connected From, As this role and Start/End Date fields:
8. Once you have filled out these fields with your desired values, click Save & Close to save the Connection:
9. To add a second Client record Connection, simply repeat the process. This is what the Connections tab should look like once both Clients have been added (if there are additional Connections for this record you will also see them here):
Authored by Andy Speck - Senior Application Support Analyst @ Mercury