Household to Contact to Household Linkages

[BobBob]

I would like to create some households. I have the following information:

• Household name
• IDs of all contacts
• Household address information
• Household phone information

Is there a way to do this via .csv import? What are the linkages (ID?) between the household and contact objects?

tia... Bob

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[sandersen]

the best way is to use the dataloader. You can create the Households and get the Ids back on the CSV. You then need to join the two lists together--the Households with the contacts for each. Then use the data loader to update the Contacts, putting the new Household Id in the Household relationship field.

You can use a database program like Access to do the join, or you can use the VLOOKUP function in Excel. 

Hope that's helpful,

Steve  

[BobBob]

Very helpful. Was approx. what I was thinking.

I'm still puzzled by the linkage back to household from contact. That is, I'm looking at a household with, say, two members. Both members have a link to their respective contact id. Where does that linkage come from? It does not appear to be in the household object, at least not visible. SF doesn't search all the contacts, I assume. So, how does it efficiently fetch the contact IDs?

tia... again... Bob

[sandersen]

There is a field on Contact that holds the Household Id. Members of a Household are all Contacts with that Household Id in the Household field.

Thanks,

Steve 

[BobBob]

I got that. Sorry to be a pest.

Short of chasing all the Contact records how do the contacts get assembled into a household view? Maybe the question doesn't make sense? Does Salesforce maintain tables that we don't see?

In the old Bill of Materials applications we called this "Where Used"

Really, THANKS for indulging me... Bob

[BobBob]

Just fyi, after adding the Households I use DemandTools DiscoverIDs to link the contacts to the new Households. Worked out very well.

DemandTools are great, very powerful.

I still don't understand how Household objects know what Contacts are contained in them. I do understand how  Contacts know what Household object they belong to. Anyone care to enlighten me?

tia... Bob