Certain custom objects are centered on one specific Contact record. Such custom objects have contact-centric relationships.

For example, a loan cannot exist without an applicant. In this case, you need all Loan records to be linked to the Contact record of the individual or company applying for it. You can ensure this relationship when you create a Loan custom object. When you configure the object's general properties, you select a check box to designate it as contact-centric. Then, you specify the role of the related Contact. For details, see General Custom Object Information.

Note: Only custom objects (including embedded custom objects) can be contact-centric.

Results in End-User Interface

When you create a contact-centric custom object (for example, Loan), the relationship appears in the following areas of the end-user interface:

•General block of object records—Displays a contact search module field labeled according to the label you specify when you define the object as contact-centric (in this example, Applicant). End-users are required to select the object's main contact in this field.

Example: Contact-Centric Record (Edit Mode)

After the record is saved (and no longer in edit mode), the contact name appears as a link, for example, Mariscal, Steven.

•Involvement tab—Displays a hyperlink to the object record after the end user selects the contact in the object record.

Results in Designer User Interface

Whenever you create a contact-centric custom object definition (for example, Loan), the relationship appears in the following areas of the Designer interface:

•Object Navigator window--The contact-> attribute appears in all of the object definition's TProject tables, and you can use it to build attribute paths. For more details, see Using Object Navigator.

•Unique ID tab—Displays the contact attribute in the list of attributes (if you are adding attributes to a naming pattern). For details, see Adding Object Attributes.