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Account-to-Contact Relationships

In a Siebel application, a contact can have multiple associated accounts, but in Microsoft Outlook this is not the case. When synchronizing contact information, only the primary account in Siebel Business Applications is exported or synchronized with Microsoft Exchange Server.

If a new account is added to a business contact record in Microsoft Outlook, that account is made the primary account for that contact when it is synchronized with Siebel Business Applications. Any accounts previously associated with that contact remain associated but are not primary.

CAUTION:  Users must not delete the association between an account and a contact in Microsoft Outlook. Users must delete the association in the Siebel application. The limitation is due to the fact that when you delete the association in Microsoft Outlook, the delete operation causes the next account in line to become the Primary Account for the contact.

Consider a case where a contact C1 is associated with 10 accounts A1...A10 with A1 being the primary. When this contact is synchronized with Microsoft Exchange, the account A1 becomes the value for the Company field for the contact in Microsoft Outlook. If the user clears the Company field in Microsoft Outlook, during the next synchronization cycle, SSSE deletes A1 from the account MVG for the contact. In the process, A2 (next account record) becomes primary and this change is synchronized with Microsoft Exchange. The end-result is that the user who cleared A1 now sees A2 in its place. This has the potential for confusion and data loss.

Contact Access

For a business contact in Siebel Business Applications to be accessible to SSSE during the outbound synchronization process, the Siebel user must have designated the individual contact record for synchronization by adding it to his or her Sync List.

During the inbound synchronization process for a user, a business contact is accessible to SSSE if either of the following conditions apply:

• On the user's User Map record, the Visibility Type specified for the user for the Siebel Business Contact domain is All.
• If Visibility Type is set to Sales Rep, contact records to be synchronized must be visible in the user's My Contacts list.

Related Topic

About Using SSSE with Contact Records