Dependent Dropdown-Type Information

Smart CRM & Sales Hub CRM
1

I’m setting up our CRM, and need some help with how to store vendor information.

At our company, we have a list of vendors that can be linked to a Project. Each Project needs to have one vendor that is linked to it. I was going to set this up using a Custom Object, however, I’m running into a snag.

With each vendor, there are multiple contacts. I’m hoping to find a way that I can set this up so that each team member can choose which vendor needs to be linked to a Project, and than be provided a list of specific contacts at that vendor to also link to the Project, similar to a dependent dropdown.

For instance, I link Vendor A to a Project 1, and then I get a list of all the people at Vendor A that we work with. I can then pick one person from that list to link to Project 1.

Then, on Project 2, I link Vendor B, and then get a list of all people at Vendor B that we work with, and so on and so forth.

I don’t want a list of all contacts from all vendors in one place, to keep things from getting messy.

2

Hey @nalakatos - thanks for posting in the Community!
I’d like to tag in some Community experts to see if they have any recommendations in terms of how to approach this use case. @danmoyle, @Josh, and @franksteiner79 - any thoughts?
Shane, Senior Community Moderator

3

Hey @nalakatos ,
You should look into associations and their labels and limits. I’m not sure I got your UX idea right, but at the very least you could associate all the necessary Contacts (people) to Vendor A, then when needed open Vendor A record and choose from the associated contacts the one you’d want to associate with Project 1 (also check out the Record customization guide, you’ll need to make sure you have the association cards visible on all these objects).

4

Welcome to the Community @nalakatos. First, a +1 for what @EugeneAtKiwi offered. I think associations and customizing your record + index views will help.

For a little more thought to maybe help, I don’t think yu’ll be able to get a true “dynamic dropdown of just that vendor’s contacts” with native properties as you describe. But here’s how associations plus record layout customization should help.

If you have Enterprise, here’s how I’d set your objects:

Vendors: custom object (or use Companies if that fits)

  • Associate Vendors ↔ Contacts (all people at that vendor).
  • Associate Vendors ↔ Projects (so each Project has one Vendor).

Projects: you may have this already, or it can be a custom object

  • One association label to Vendor (“Primary vendor”).
  • One association label to Contact (“Vendor contact”).

This keeps your “who is the vendor?” and “who is the main person there?” cleanly separated without a giant contact dropdown.

Now, here’s how I’d think about how users actually pick “vendor then contact.” You can get the UX you want by driving the workflow from either the Project or the Vendor record.

Option A: Start from the Project

  1. User opens Project 1.
  2. In the right-hand sidebar, they use the Associations area to search and select Vendor A (your Vendor object).
  3. Still on the Project record, they use the Contacts association card to search and pick the correct contact.

Result: Project 1 is linked to Vendor A and one Contact; that Contact is already linked to Vendor A via associations on the Vendor record, so you always know “this person belongs to that vendor.” The good thing for this set-up is that there’s no custom dropdown properties to maintain, it scales well as you add vendors/contacts, and it works entirely with native HubSpot association UI.

Option B: Start from the Vendor

  1. User opens Vendor A.
  2. On the Vendor record, they see the association cards for Projects and Contacts.
  3. From Projects, they create or open Project 1 (now associated to Vendor A automatically).
  4. From Contacts, they pick the one person to associate to that project (via the Project’s association card or from the contact record).

This workflow feels closest to “choose vendor, then choose someone at that vendor,” because they already see just Vendor A’s contacts on that card.

Hopefully that gives you something to think about. I’m a fan of custom objects for something like this, using more than just the Contacts object if possible.