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Solutions are groupings of apps that all address a common business process. They acts as containers for their set of apps, allowing users to navigate SmartSuite content in an intuitive way.
One of the most powerful features of SmartSuite is the ability to "link" Solutions together, combining the information they store to tackle virtually any type of task, project or workflow.
Why would I want to connect my Solutions?
Many things that organizations do as part of their everyday work involve several functions, departments or types of data. A sales department might interact primarily with Customer and Order records, while the operations group needs Inventory information - along with information about customers and orders - to be able to send out shipments.
Let's sketch out how this might look in SmartSuite. Suppose that you have a Sales solution and an Operations solution, as in the diagram below:
If you already have sales and order information in the Sales solution, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to duplicate that data in the Operations solution. Instead, we can connect the solutions and share that information to build a complete picture of the entire lifecycle - with no redundancy!
All that it takes is a special SmartSuite field Type called Linked Record.
Linked Record Fields
Linked Record fields allow you to connect SmartSuite records together, and those records can be in any Solution.
In this display, a Linked Record field connects the Accounts app and Contacts app, so you can easily visualize and view all the information on the contacts of each account.
Then, we show the real power and flexibility of SmartSuite - the Sales CRM Solution uses Linked Records to connect Accounts and Teams who are working on each account. Two Linked Records, linking all three applications together across two Solutions to give you a clear picture of the entire CRM relationships.
How do I add a Linked Record field?
You can add a Linked Record to your Application just like any other field - and we have an entire article on it here.