00:00:03:48 - 00:00:32:05
Hi everyone, and welcome to this SwiftFox Masterclass. Today we're looking at a new setting on record custom fields called Sync to Relationship. If you spend time in SwiftFox, you'll know there are two different ways to connect a person to an organisation. There's the Contacts and Roles tab, which builds a proper two way relationship between the two records. And there's the Record Custom field, which lets you point at another record from anywhere in your custom field layout. Both have their advantages, but until now they haven't spoken to each other.

00:00:32:07 - 00:01:00:38
Today we're going to look at why these two things sat apart, what sync to relationship changes, and the handful of patterns that unlocks for membership, finance, and committee work. Start with contacts and roles. When you add a relationship there. Say you make yourself the finance contact for SwiftFox. That relationship is genuinely two ways, it appears on your profile, and it appears on SwiftFox's contacts tab as well. Both sides know about each other, and both sides carry the job title.

00:01:01:00 - 00:01:35:44
A record custom field works differently. It's a field like any other, sitting in a custom field section on the profile, and it holds a reference to one or more records elsewhere in your database that gives you things, contacts and roles can’t. In Forms an update contact block can include a record field, which means someone filling out your form can search your organisation database and pick their own employer. And you can build linked fields on top of a record field, pulling data points down from the organisation onto the person's profile, industry, region, or the membership tier of their organisation.

00:01:35:46 - 00:01:51:00
The catch has always been that a record field is a one sided reference. If a person's profile says they're the finance contact for an organisation, the organisation has no idea. Look at it from the other end and there's nothing there. Sync to relationship is now the bridge between the two.

00:01:51:06 - 00:02:26:48
When sync to relationship is ticked, anything you put into that record field is written into contacts and roles as a real relationship. Add an organisation to the field on a person's profile, and that person appears as a contact on the organisation. Add a person to the field on an organisation and the relationship shows up on their profile. The direction matters and will come back to it. The field writes into the relationship. It's not a two way mirror. You keep everything the record field gives you – form search, linked fields, clean exports and gain the two way reflection that only contacts and roles could provide.

00:02:27:02 - 00:02:50:16
First, head to Custom Field settings and create a new record Custom Field. The first decision is the record type. If you're building on People tick Organisation. If you're building on Organisations, tick People. Sync to relationship only appears when you've selected the opposite record type on its own, because that's the only combination where a person to organisation relationship makes sense.

00:02:50:20 - 00:03:15:08
Tick both people and organisation and the option disappears. Ticking organisation also reveals a category dropdown just beneath it, listing the organisation categories you have set up in SwiftFox. These could be member, donor, or branch. This narrows which organisations can be chosen in that field. Leave it empty and the field searches everything. Set it to member and only member organisations are selectable.

00:03:15:12 - 00:03:35:22
Once sync to relationship is on, you get a relationship job title whatever you type. Here is the job title applied to every relationship the field creates. If the field is called finance contact, set the job title to finance contact. Once and every record added through the field is created with that title. You're not typing it in again for each connection.

00:03:35:24 - 00:03:58:26
On a people field, there's a second option. Make primary when setting, when this is ticked, the organisation you choose becomes that person's primary organisation. Because a person can only have one primary organisation. Ticking it also switches off and greys out. Allow multiple. A field that sets the primary organisation holds one value. A field that holds many values can't set a primary.

00:03:58:28 - 00:04:41:18
Here's the first use case, and probably the most common one. You create an organisation record field on people called something like employer or primary org. Sync to relationship is on and make primary when setting is ticked. Now whether someone fills this in themselves through a form or your team sets it on the profile, three things happen at once. The organisation is recorded in a clean, exportable field, which means you can build linked fields off it and pull the organisation's industry region, or tear straight down onto the person's profile. It then becomes a person's primary organisation, and the relationship appears in contacts and roles, so the organisation can see who its people are. That turns one entry into three outcomes.

00:04:41:22 - 00:04:53:14
The second example removes the make primary checkbox and adds allow multiple. You can create a record field called committee groups or board memberships and set the job title to board member or committee member.

00:04:53:18 - 00:05:03:28
All organisations added here will also be written into contacts and roles with the right job title. You've built the grouping you wanted on the person, and the organisation gets the relationship as well.

00:05:03:38 - 00:05:42:36
The pattern works just as well in the other direction. On an organisation, you can create a people record field for a specific role; Finance contact, Admin contact, Primary contact. Turn on sync to relationship and set the job title to match. Your organisation profile then has a clear, readable section showing the key people for that account sitting in the custom field layout, whether your team is already looking. Behind it, each of those people has been given that role in contacts and roles, so it's visible on their profile to. Add someone as a finance contact from the organisation and their profile now says they're the finance contact for that organisation.

00:05:42:40 - 00:06:07:08
This matters. So I want to be clear about it. The custom field rights into contacts and roles, contacts and roles never writes back. If you remove an organisation from the record field, the corresponding role is ended. That behaves the way you'd expect. But if you go into contacts and roles and end the relationship there, the custom field is not cleared. The value stays where it is, and your two views are now telling you different things.

00:06:07:12 - 00:06:20:46
For anyone administering this, the practical rule is straightforward once a relationship is being written by a record field, manage it from the field. Make that clear to your team when you roll it out, because it's the one place the two views can drift apart.

00:06:20:48 - 00:06:34:34
Sync to relationship exists so you can stop maintaining the same connection in two places. You get the convenience of a record field, form search, linked fields, clean exports with a relationship to both sides of your database can see.

00:06:34:38 - 00:06:54:10
If you're starting out pick the connection your team enters most often. For most organisations, that's the employer or primary organisation on a person. Build one record field for it, set the job title, decide whether it should set the primary and see how it behaves before you extend the pattern to committees and key contacts.

00:06:54:14 - 00:06:57:42
Thanks for joining me in this week's masterclass. We'll see you in the next one.