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Administering Oracle CRM On Demand > Application Customization > Record Type Application Customization Page > About Custom Related Information Fields

About Custom Related Information Fields

By using joined fields, Oracle CRM On Demand enables you to display some information from a related record of a given record type within the Detail page or related information lists of records of a second record type. A joined field is a field on a record type that uses a foreign key to reference a field on another record type. For example, Custom Object 04 can be linked to the Contact record type, and a number of joined fields in the Custom Object 04 record type allow you to display information from contact records on the Detail page for custom object 04 records. You can display a contact's first name, last name, and email address, as well as other fields from a contact record on the Detail page of a linked custom object 04 record. Similarly, you can display the fields from the contact record in the lists of custom object 04 records that are linked to a record of another record type.

However, you might have a requirement to display the values from a field in a related record type for which a joined field is not available. For example, you might want to display the phone number of the related contact's assistant on the Detail page of the custom object 04 record, but a joined field is not available for the Assistant Phone # field in the Contact record type. Or, you might want to display the values from a custom field in the Contact record type in the list of custom object 04 records that appears on a Detail page for another linked record type, such as the Custom Object 05 record type. For the Custom Object, Account Contact, Household Contact, and Contact Portfolio record types only, you can create custom related information fields that enable you to display information from fields for which joined fields are not available. For information about creating custom related information fields, see Creating Custom Related Information Fields.

NOTE: You can create custom related information fields for all types of fields except Web link and multiselect picklist fields. You can not use a custom related information field in Oracle CRM On Demand reporting because these fields are not mapped in Oracle CRM On Demand Answers. Instead, you must use the original source field, which is available in Oracle CRM On Demand Answers.

About Updating Values in Custom Related Information Fields

The following considerations apply to updating values in custom related information fields:

• When you save a new custom related information field, Oracle CRM On Demand automatically submits a request to initialize the new field. The initialization process populates the custom related information field on the records with the value of the corresponding field in the records of the related record type.
• After a custom related information field on a record is initialized, the value in the field is automatically updated each time that the value in the corresponding field on the related record is updated.
• The value in a custom related information field cannot be updated directly through any channel.

Example of Using Custom Related Information Fields

Your company owns and manages conference centers, and it provides conferencing facilities to other companies, government clients, and so on. You use a custom object record type to track information about events and another custom object record type to track information about the rooms that are used for the events. Each room is used for many events, and each event can use a number of rooms, so that you need a many-to-many relationship between the record types. To create the many-to-many relationship in Oracle CRM On Demand, you use a third custom object record type as an intersection table to track information about each room booking or session. You then create a one-to-many relationship between rooms and sessions, and a one-to-many relationship between events and sessions, which gives you a many-to-many relationship between rooms and events. For information about setting up many-to-many relationships between custom objects, see About Many-to-Many Relationships for Custom Objects.

On the Room record type, you have two custom fields: Room Type and Room Capacity. You now want to display the information from the Room Type and Room Capacity fields in the Sessions related information section on the Event Detail page for certain user roles. This configuration enables users who view an Event Detail page to see the type and capacity of the rooms assigned to the event.

The following procedure describes how to configure the Event and Session record types in this example.

To configure the Event and Session record types

1. In the Application Customization pages for the Session record type, create two custom related information fields to display the values from the Room Type and Room Capacity fields, which are in the Room record type.

   You can give the new fields on the Session record type the same names as the fields on the Room record type, or you can give them different names. For information about creating custom fields, see Creating Custom Related Information Fields.

2. View the Related Field Initialization Queue page to confirm that the initialization request for the field completes successfully.

   For more information, see Creating Custom Related Information Fields.

3. In the Application Customization pages for the Event record type, create or edit a related information layout for the Session record type, and move the custom fields that you created for the Session record type from the Available fields section to the Selected Fields section in the Related Information Layout wizard.

   For information about configuring related information layouts, see Customizing Related Item Layouts.

4. In the Application Customization pages for the Event record type, create or edit a layout for the Event Detail page, and assign the related information layout that you set up for the Session record type.

   For information about configuring page layouts, see Customizing Static Page Layouts and Specifying Dynamic Page Layouts.

5. Assign the Event Detail page layout that you set up for the Event record type to each of the relevant user roles.

   For information about configuring roles, see Adding Roles.

6. If the roles are not already assigned to the users, then assign the roles to the appropriate users.

   For information about configuring user records, see Setting Up Users.