The PowerWebForm plug-in is one of twenty awesome PowerPack add-ons that provide additional functionality to both CRM 2011 and CRM 2013. This add-on lets CRM users create web forms inside of CRM, post web forms to their website, and pulls form data automatically back into CRM as soon as that form is submitted. As a part of PowerWebForm, the CRM user can choose what happens with that data when it comes back into CRM – do you want to create a lead? A case? Some other custom entity? The choice is yours!

If you've chosen to create contacts when your PowerWebForm is submitted, maybe it would also be useful for you if an account was automatically created and related back to that contact as well. If that's the case, then boy do we have news for you! PowerObjects has created a plug-in that marries up beautifully with the PowerWebForm add-on, and will automatically create an account (or find a related account that's already in your system) when a contact is created in Dynamics CRM.

Once you've imported the PowerWebForm add-on into your CRM system, and you've imported this additional plug-in, the first thing you'll want to do is create a new field called Company Name (text) and place that field on your contact form. The field can be hidden, if you don't want users to get this field confused with the Company Name lookup that is on the contact record by default.

You will then want to build a web form that creates a contact when it's submitted by choosing Contact in your related entity field on your web form. Make sure you ask for the person's company name and email address when you're creating form fields. Map the Company Name field on the web form to the Company Name (text) field that you just created for your contact record, and map the email address field on the web form to the email address field on the contact. Then continue to build the rest of your form fields as you normally would.

Here's how the logic works:

When a web form is submitted, the PowerWebForm solution will automatically create contacts in your CRM system. On the creation of a contact record, the custom plug-in will run and create a related account record.

This plug-in will run on the creation of any new contact in your system (whether manually created or created through a web form submission).

If the contact has an existing parent account related to the record, nothing will happen

If the Company Name text field is filled in (on the contact entity), the plugin will search for the company name in your CRM system. If an exact match is found it will use this for the parent account.

If not, the plug-in will search for other contacts with the same @xxxx.com email domain that have a parent account. If one is found, the plug-in will use that related parent account as the parent account for the new contact record.

Otherwise, the plug-in will create a new account with simply the company name and it will set that as the contact's related parent account.But wait, there's more! This handy plug-in will run not only if the contact is created from a web form, but also if you manually create a contact, and fill in the Customer Name (text) field.

Interested in trying this plug-in out? Download the PowerWebForm add-on and contact PowerObjects to get this free plug-in for your CRM system!

Happy CRM'ing!