How to account for customer contacts who belong to multiple accounts?

[Patrick Schult2]

Is there a way to account for Customer Contacts who are associated with multiple accounts? The situation is that there could be 2 clients who use the same person as a contractor. This person needs access to our Customer Service portal, but not as a partner. Basically, our situation says that there is a m2m relationship between customer contacts and accounts.

Is there a way we can do this without blowing up a ton of the out of box features that require a single account per customer contact? Would multiple user records (1 per account) with the same email address (because it's the same person) be kosher?

[oharel]

Hi Patrick,

As far as I know, you will have issues with mails and such, and basically anything that relies on the email address.

I would not recommend it.

harel

[kathyneff]

Hi Patrick.   Would it work for you to create an account for the contact - associate the contact with that account and make it a 'customer' account.   Then link the partner accounts to the customer account via partner relationships.   That will allow the contact to sign into the portal as a regular customer who could open cases, etc., but not give him/her partner permissions.   Let us know if that's feasible.  

[Brian Gadeberg]

Hey Patrick 

I dont know if this is still a relevant question (created 3 years ago) but in order to get the required functionality you need first to create an account to account relationship and then create a contact relationship. Then you only need to create one contact account. Remember the account relation must be from the account were the contact is created to the account he/she needs to manage

Brian