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Matthew Lamb

Combine related lists of same object to display as one list

Sales Productivity (Notes/Activities/Calendar )

I have two custom objects, Lab Projects and Employees. Any given Lab Project always has two Employees assigned, using lookups, and Employees can change roles between projects (Lead one time, Support the next). (Top image) This causes two separate related lists to show up on an Employee's page. (Middle image) It would be great if I could combine these two lookups on the Lab Project to appear in one combined related list on the Employee page. (Bottom image) Note: This should only work when dealing with multiple lookups on the same data type.

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Daniel Pennell - 1 year ago

Pooling lookup fields that are in the same object would be extremely useful
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Ford Ben - 2 years ago

You can merge mutile related list into one big related list with the following app, you just need to place the smart grid on the layout and setup and advanced filter e.g. lead_analyst__c={ID} OR support_analyst__c={ID}.

Link to the app: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N30000009uXwyEAE
The Provider: http://www.zaapit.com/page/smart-tables
Video guide: http://www.zaapit.com/page/Videos

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Sreekanth Kalluru - 2 years ago

I have same problem. Indeed nice to have this functionality.
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Matthew Souther - 3 years ago

Thanks Rupesh, I like your workaround. I haven't tried it yet, but I think there's a good chance you could accomplish the record create on the junction object with Process Builder now, instead of having to resort to a trigger.

It would be better if you didn't have to resort to the workaround in the first place. We have a custom object, "Application", where different contacts play very defined and predictable roles -- and only one person can play each role. Representing the relationship between the contact and the application as parent-child allows us to easily report on all the applications in our database and organize them by submitter, technician, analyst, etc. But having so many related lists on the contact object is messy. On the other hand, storing the relationships exclusively as a junction object prevents good reporting. So work around it we will.

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Andrew Zimmerman - 4 years ago

I have the exact same issue, I am trying to associate Contacts into working groups so that certain shared items from the Object Level can be aggregated and shared amongst those Contacts. Has this had a resolution yet?
I could not get the link from Rapesh to work.

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Pauline Labib - 6 years ago

All,

I realize it has been five years... But has anyone found a solution to this?
Experiencing the same problem.

Thanks
Pauline
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Sam Davyson - 8 years ago

It would be really great to have the choice of combining related lists for the same object - it would help to bridge the gap between lookup fields and having a dedicated junction object. In the meantime you could use a trigger to create the child objects into an additional object which would be the related list you display on records.

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Ankit Arora - 8 years ago

Indeed a good idea !!!
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Kurt Worden - 8 years ago

I have a similar problem. I attempting to combine 9 separate look up fields in a custom object into one related list on the accounts page.

Rupesh seems to have a work around but lost me mid way though his example.

Has anyone else had success in implementing a solution?

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Rupesh Desai - 9 years ago

I definitely would like Salesforce.com to provide this out of the box. In the interim period I did resolve this issue with some customization. Feel free to check out my blog on how I achieved this.

http://salesforcetechstuff.blogspot.com/2010/09/combine-related-list-of-same-object-to.html

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Matthew Lamb - 9 years ago

No resolution in terms of combining the related lists. As several people mentioned, one option is to use a junction object, but it takes significantly more clicks to manage those records when 99% of the time you have only 2 (or however many) records to relate. And this is a goofy gripe about junction objects, but if you go that route you can't assign an icon to those related lists without using another custom tab.

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Peter Lee - 9 years ago

I have exactly the same problem mlamb. Have you found a resolution?
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Matthew Lamb - 9 years ago

You're definitely right @gurumike that you can do this with a junction object (as you described), and I've used those in other similar situations. But in this case, 99% of the time I have 2 people assigned to a project., so Lookups are the most straightforward way, significantly fewer clicks. I'd love to see the VF page you created if you don't mind.

Thanks to all who have promoted!

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Staff SDHC - 9 years ago

I have the same problem. I would love to do this within Cases and on a custom object I've built.
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Mike Olson - 9 years ago

What you can do is create a third custom object, called something like, "LabProjectEmployees." Make it have the LabProject object as its master in a master/child relationship. Then, on the LabProjectEmployees object, you create an employee lookup field, and a role picklist. Then, you can tie any number of employees in any number of roles to a given Lab Project.

It's similar to contact roles for an account or partner roles for an opportunity.

Of course, it takes about 2 million extra clicks to manage those child records, versus using the lookup field. I had a similar situation, where I found that I would need up to 11 related contacts in various roles for a given custom object record. So I did what I described above, and then wrote a VisualForce page and some javascript to make the management of many contacts and roles much easier.

Anyway, I'm promoting your idea.

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Matthew Lamb

11 years ago

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