Linking contacts in Outlook to Accounts in BCM

[Guest]

I can link contacts in Outlook to Accounts in BCM but not vice versa. In
order to link the contacts in Outlook to the Accounts in BCM I just go to the
bottom left of the card and click Contacts, expand the BCM folder, select
Accounts, then the account I want and click OK. This creates a named link on
the card where it says Contacts and I can just double click it to open the
BCM card I want. However, I can't do something similar from BCM to Outlook.
Basically I just want to set it up so I can go between the 2 easily. I've
tried looking thru the BCM guide and can't find the solution. Any ideas?

 

[Guest]

I believe that BCM needs you to link Accounts to Business Contacts, and not
Contacts, to get what you want.

Once you have linked a Business Contact to an Account, when you next look up
the Business Contact record, you can click on the Account Name (top right)
and it will take you through to the Account.

Ian

 

[Tim P via OfficeKB.com]

BPB,

You probably already realize this but I thought I would additonally re-
emphasize that BCM is on a MSDE db where in contrast, Outlook uses .pst files.
In essence, below the surface of their shared UI, Outlook and BCM are 2
separately functioning apps designed to co-exist and add additional function
vs. Outlook by itself. When linking different program object items,
everything depends upon which program you are intiating the link from and
whether a certain type of linking connection is supported or not. There are
some creative ways to manually link from Outlook items back to a BCM item in
order to create a "reverse-bridge" to navigate back and forth across but this
only works among certain items. To achieve the kind of back and forth
Contact to Account linking that your post describes will require you to copy
all of your standard Outlook default folder Contacts into the separate BCM
database folder titled "Business Contacts" thus creating the required
Business Contact linkable items that can then be easily linked to the BCM
Account items.

For instances where you want to link more than 1 Account to a Business
Contact (in order to get around this built in BCM limitation) I have posted a
workaround I use on a separate thread which involves a Task item to create a
bridge to navigate with.

Best regards,

-THP