Recommendation for sharing contacts

[Luvsql]

We started CRM with 3 marketing users, which are setup as a team, in their own business unit. We are now wanting to add salespeople, who have their own set of contacts. I have setup a business unit for each salesperson, so that their contacts are separated, which works well with syncronizing with Outlook, as each salesperson's contacts only need to sync with their Outlook (which then sync with Blackberry's server).

The issue I am running into is when a salesperson has the same contact. If I remove the one setup in the marketing business unit, then the salesperson can see his, but then the marketing team cannot include it in campaigns. If I remove the individual salesperson's contact, they will always have to look at ALL contacts, instead of just his own, and then it will not sync with Outlook.

I am trying to figure out how to segregate each saleperson's contacts to sync with Outlook, as well as be available to be included with marketing campaigns, without duplication. The additional problems will happen when we add another salesperson, that also has the same contact. We will then have 3 in total, 1 in marketing, 1 in salesperson A and 1 in salesperson B.

 

[jymm]

my other comments (from the question in Feb) help here?

 

[Luvsql]

Ya, I think this may work ie we create a "sync with Marketing" "Sync with User A" "Sync with User B". In the sync setup, we'll use this field instead of the owner to sync? I guess I'll want them to default as well as I'm sure the users will forget.

Ie if User A creates a new contact, the default for Sync with User A will be set to yes, and all others to NO.

 

[jymm]

We have it as bit fields (so a check box) and have one for each user (like I said).

Then our offline is that checkbox OR the user is the owner.

THis also buys me some other things - in SQL I have a proc that I run nightly that will always give the contacts from sales folks in the west to their boss. Then he gets all of the activities (etc)...

only pain is when someone leaves - you can make the field to not display, but it is still there. Also when a new person is hired - moving things around on the 'sync tab' to make them alphabetic is a bit more of a chore than I would like.... but we do not hire/fire often.

if you need help - holler.