Collector Accounts: Allow Creating Contacts Without Allowing Creating Accounts

A Collector Account acts as a default account when a match cannot be made against an existing contact. There is a straightforward way to identify and manually match the contacts and accounts at a later date.

How Collector Accounts Work

Collector accounts work as follows:

1. An email is synchronized from the email platform to the CRM.

2. Riva is unable to match an email address on the email to a contact in the CRM.

3. Riva creates the new contact with the unmatched email address and assigns the new contact to a collector account.

4. At a later time, a user reviews any contacts associated with the collector account and takes the action required to assign a contact to an account. The manual processing may involve

   • Assigning the contact to an existing account; or
   • Assigning the contact to a newly created account.

Set Up a Collector Account

There are three strategies to set up a collector account, but the third is available only for Salesforce.

Strategy #1: Set up a collector account that has a specific prefix for every unmatched contact (supported for any CRM)

Rather than using a single collector account, a new account is created that has a specific prefix for each unmatched contact.

Implementation for Riva Cloud:

• Contact the Riva Success Team.

Implementation for Riva On-Premise to add a prefix to the new account that is created:

1. Apply the following advanced option to the sync policy or CRM connection:

   

   Where COLLECTOR_ is the prefix that will be attached to the name of the newly created accounts for unmatched contacts. You can replace COLLECTOR_ with the wording you like, but you must include the rest without changing it.

2. Disable the creation of new accounts based on a domain name.

Strategy #2: Set up one collector account for all users (supported for any CRM)

All unmatched items are assigned to a single collector account that is shared by all CRM users who have access to the collector account.

Implementation for Riva Cloud:

• Contact the Riva Success Team.

Implementation for Riva On-Premise to set up one collector account for all users (supported for any CRM):

1. In the CRM, create the collector account.

2. Apply one of the following advanced options to the sync policy or CRM connection:

   • For Salesforce, apply

     Crm.Salesforce.CollectorAccountIdQuery = SELECT Id FROM Account WHERE Name LIKE 'Collector Account'

     where Collector Account is the name of the designated collector account that you created in Salesforce to be used for all users.

      
     - or -
      

   • For one of the other supported CRMs, apply

     Sync.Crm.CollectorAccountName = Collector Account

     where Collector Account is the name of the designated collector account that you created in the CRM to be used for all users.

3. Disable the creation of new accounts based on a domain name.

   By default, Riva will take up to 24 hours to start using the collector account.

4. To force Riva to use the collector account at the next sync, restart the Riva sync.
    

Strategy #3: Set up a user-defined collector account (Salesforce only)

This strategy allows individual Salesforce users to choose which collector account their unmatched items will be assigned to.

Implementation for Riva Cloud:

• Contact the Riva Success Team.

Implementation for Riva On-Premise to set up a user-defined Salesforce collector account:

1. In Salesforce, create the collector account for the user. Ensure that the user record in Salesforce has a custom text field that contains the account name.

2. Apply the following advanced options to the sync policy or Salesforce CRM connection:

   • Crm.Salesforce.CollectorAccountIdQuery = SELECT Id FROM Account WHERE Name LIKE '{CurrentUser.Fields[Collector_AccountName__c]}'

     Where Collector_AccountName__c is the account name in the custom text field defined at step 1.
      

   • Crm.AdditionalFields.SystemUser = Collector_AccountName__c

     Where Collector_AccountName__c is the account name in the custom text field defined at step 1.

3. Disable the creation of new accounts based on a domain name.

   By default, Riva will take up to 24 hours to start using the collector account.

4. To force Riva to use the collector account at the next sync, restart the Riva sync.
    

Disable the Creation of New Accounts Based on a Domain Name

In many cases, it is not desirable to let Riva generate new accounts automatically on the basis of a new contact's email or web domain address. That automatic creation is done by Riva by default, based on a number of different scenarios. When using a collector account, disable the creation of new accounts based on a domain name.

Implementation for Riva Cloud

• Contact the Riva Success Team.

Implementation for Riva On-Premise

To disable the creation of new accounts based on a new contact's email or web domain address:

1. For new contacts added to the address book / contacts folders, apply the following advanced option to the sync policy or CRM connection:

   Sync.Crm.AutoCreateAccountsForContacts.Enabled = false

2. For new contacts generated as part of a recipient look-up, usually when adding a new appointment or email, apply the following advanced option to the sync policy or CRM connection:

   Sync.Crm.AutoCreateAccountsForEmails.Enabled = false