Managing Relationships

Relationships link contacts in your database, for example an employee to their company or a parent to their child. This guide shows administrators how to set up relationship types and add or remove relationships.

Managing Relationship Types

A relationship type names the connection, such as Director, Employee or Friend. Oncord includes a set of default types, and you can add your own.

The Relationship Types option appears only when Email Marketing is enabled. You can also create a type while adding a relationship.

• Go to Dashboard > Customers > Contacts.
• Click the three dots at the top of the page.
• Select Relationship Types.

The page lists the default types and the types you have created. You can edit or delete only the types you create.

Creating a New Relationship Type

• On the Relationship Types page, click New.
• Enter a Title.
• Choose a Category:
  • Individual to Individual
  • Individual to Company
  • Company to Company
• Tick This relationship is reciprocal if the relationship reads the same both ways, such as Friend or Sibling.
• Click Save.

Editing a Relationship Type

• On the Relationship Types page, click the three dots next to a type you created.
• Select Edit.
• Update the Title.
• Tick Has Sales Access to Related Company if an individual with this relationship should be able to view the company's invoices when they log in to your website.
• Click Save.

The default Accounts Contact, Director and Owner types already give this access.

Creating Relationships

• Go to Dashboard > Customers > Contacts.
• Open the contact's profile.
• In the Relationships panel, click the Edit Relationships (pencil) icon.
• In the chart, click + next to the contact you want to link.
• In Related contact, search for the other contact.
• Choose a Relationship Type.
• Check the Relationship preview.
• Click Save Relationship.

The Relationship Type list shows only the types that fit the two contacts. For example, linking a person to a company shows the Individual to Company types.

Adding a Contact or Type From the Same Dialog

• If the other contact isn't in your database yet, click Create new contact under Related contact, enter their details, then click Save contact before you save the relationship.
• To add a new type, choose [Create New Relationship Type...] from the Relationship Type list, enter its name and tick Reciprocal Relationship if it reads the same both ways.

Removing Relationships

• Open the contact's profile.
• In the Relationships panel, click the three dots next to the relationship.
• Select Remove Relationship.
• Click Confirm Delete.

To change a relationship instead, select Edit Relationship. In the Edit Relationships chart, clicking a relationship's label also opens it for editing, and right-clicking the label opens Remove Relationship.

Importing Contacts With Companies

When you import contacts and map a column to the Company field, Oncord links each Individual contact to a Company contact with that name, using the Employee relationship type. If a Company contact with that name already exists, Oncord uses it. Otherwise it creates one.

This means an import can create more contact records than the spreadsheet has rows.

Using the Company Personalisation Tag

When you use the Company personalisation tag, for example in an email campaign, an Individual contact shows the name of the company they are linked to.