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Sales > Addresses

Addresses

Use the Address pages to create, update, and track addresses that are shared between account, contact, dealer, and partner records.

NOTE: Your company administrator determines which tabs are available to you. If your job responsibility does not include working with addresses, then the Address tab might be excluded from your setup.

If your company administrator enables the address record functionality by selecting the Enable Shared Addresses check box on the company profile, then the addresses that you create in the Address pages can be associated with multiple account, contact, dealer, or partner records (shared address functionality). Companies that do not have Enable Shared Addresses configured do not share address information between any records, and the address information in each record is specific to each record (unshared address functionality).

NOTE: Oracle CRM On Demand supports shared address functionality only for account, contact, dealer and partner record types. For other record types containing address fields, such as leads, households, orders, and so on, Oracle CRM On Demand only supports unshared address functionality.

Characteristics of the Shared Address Functionality

Some characteristics of the shared address functionality when configured for a company are as follows:

• Account, contact, dealer, and partner records can share and reuse a common, top-level address record.
• Addresses have many-to-many relationships. That is, accounts can have multiple addresses (for example, hospitals might have multiple buildings with unique addresses), and contacts can have multiple addresses (for example, a doctor can have a hospital address, a clinic address, and a private office address). Multiple contacts can use each address (for example, more than one doctor can work at each address) and multiple accounts can use each address (for example, multiple clinics might share the same building at a particular address).
• Using a simple search, you can search for all address records that share a ZIP or postal code, a city, a province, a state, or an address (Address line 1 field). With advanced search, you can find all record types (accounts, contacts, dealers, and partners) that match user keywords, such as the city, state, ZIP, or postal code. You can search for addresses that are shared, and you can confirm which contacts, accounts, dealers, or partners are using a particular address. However, you cannot search record types to find all the accounts, contacts, dealers, or partners that use a particular shared address.
• Addresses are treated as independent entities that can be imported into Oracle CRM On Demand from an external set of addresses. This is useful when using a third-party system for data quality and address validation (to ensure that correct address conventions are used and that there are no typographic errors or duplications).
• Addresses have no territory affiliations. Territory affiliations are defined only in relationship to account, contact, dealer, or partner records.
• Addresses are not book-enabled. Book segmentation is defined only in relationship to account, contact, dealer, or partner records.
• A top-level shared Address record supports the addition of Web applets. However, for Release 26 and later, Account Address, Contact Address, Dealer Address, or Partner Address records also support the addition of embedded Web applets as a Related Information section. For more information on how your administrator sets up Web applets for your company, see Creating Web Applets for Record Types.

What Tasks Can You Perform with Address Records?

You can create, edit, or delete address records from the top-level tab. You can also create or remove address records directly from account, contact, dealer or partner records, or add existing address records to account, contact, dealer or partner records. In addition, you can edit certain fields on the shared address record (such as the Address Type picklist, or the Primary, Billing, and Shipping settings) within account, contact, dealer or partner records. The remove functionality removes the association between the address and the account, contact, dealer or partner record, while retaining the shared address as a global resource. Standard lists are available on the Address homepage, which users can access by default. Because a shared address cannot be owned by users, these lists are prefaced by the word ALL, and not MY.

About Denormalized Fields

When shipping and billing addresses are set for accounts, dealers, and partners, and primary addresses are set for contacts, Oracle CRM On Demand stores the address fields directly on the parent object. This process is called denormalization. If the shared address fields are deleted or updated, Oracle CRM On Demand propagates the changes to the account, contact, detail, or partner records that are using the shared address so that all address data is consistent and data integrity is preserved. The denormalization also improves the search capability.

What Is the Effect of the Propagation of Denormalized Fields?

Because of the propagation of changes to fields on the account, contact, dealer, and partner records, updates to addresses might take several minutes to process by the Oracle CRM On Demand propagation business service. In addition, if a top-level shared address is deleted, then a similar delay might occur when the Oracle CRM On Demand propagation business service is removing address values in the denormalized fields. If a timeout or error occurs, the Oracle CRM On Demand propagation business service attempts to repropagate the changes at midnight, every night. If propagation does not take place, your company administrator might have to manually apply the changes, or contact Oracle CRM On Demand Customer Care for assistance, if necessary.