Considerations for Using Contact Roles

Contact roles let you specify the part that a person plays in an account, case, contract, or opportunity. When you use contact roles, you have more information about who to contact and when. Examples of contact roles include decision maker, business user, and executive sponsor. There are some things to be aware of when using contact roles.

Required Editions

Available in: both Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience

Available in: all editions

Important In Salesforce Classic, contact roles are available for accounts, opportunities, cases, and contracts. In Lightning Experience, contact roles are available for opportunities, contracts, and cases. Although contact roles work similarly for each available object, they work independently. Therefore, you need to set them up and use them separately for each object.

• To view the contact records that are listed in the Contact Roles related lists, you must have the proper user permissions and sharing access to those records.
• When contacts are merged, contact roles on non-master contacts lose their status as the primary contact.
• When you add contact roles to opportunities, you can save up to 200 contacts at a time. All contacts that are associated with the record’s account are prepopulated. You can also search for other contacts that are not associated with the record’s account.
• A single contact or person account can have a different contact role on different records.
• Adding person accounts to contact roles on accounts is available but not recommended. Instead, use the Partners related list to associate person accounts to other accounts.
• When you create an opportunity from a contact detail page, that contact becomes the primary contact on the opportunity. However, a contact role isn’t automatically assigned.
• On case contact roles, the Primary option isn’t available. The primary contact on a case is always the contact listed under Contact Name in the Case Detail section.