Contact List Column add to/don't overwrite

Brendan E

I am attempting to mass-edit my contact column for the purpose of Dynamic Views in a way that will add certain contacts based on the contents in other columns.

Example:

Column A is my contact column

Column B is "State"

Column C is "Department"

Column D is "Advisor"

If Column B=

• Illinois, then I want column A to include "Person 1"
• New York, then I want column A to include "Person 2"

If Column C=

• Math, then I want column A to also include "Person 3"
• English, then I want column A to also include "Person 4"

If Column D=

• Advisor 1, then I want column A to also include "Person 5"
• Advisor 2, then I want column A to also include "Person 6"

So, column A should have 3 people listed, but who those people are will depend on the values in B, C, and D. If I sort by B then add to A based on what is in that column, then that works for getting the right contact for the column B value. However, if I then sort by column C, is there a way to add the right contact to the contact column for these people without overwriting what is already in that column (and thus deleting what I had put in for B). I am looking to do this in mass (not manually adding to each cell) as I'm dealing with 1,500+ rows of data.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Brendan E

Automating this will depend on how many contacts you have associated with each field.

For example, if you already have Column A filled in manually based on Column B (State), then you could set up an Assign People Workflow that adds a specific contact based on what's input in Column C (Department). You can do this without overriding the current values input, but there is a limited number of condition blocks (20) you can have per workflow.

What I would usually suggest in this instance is having three separate columns, one associated with each criteria to bring back the correct contact. Then you could use a formula to show all three values in one cell as a Text value, but it sounds like you want these to all be Contact type of selections for Dynamic View. There currently isn't a way to join together multiple individual contact values into one multi-select cell using a formula while keeping the Contact functionality. Please add your vote and voice to this Product Idea post, here!

Thanks,

Genevieve