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How does the 'Inherit' property work for task fields?

Environment:

Workspaces / Opportunities / Tasks

Resolution:

When a task is associated with a record, some values for that task can be “inherited” from the associated record. For example, you might add a task and define it as an opportunity task by setting the Task Type field to Opportunities. Once you have selected the opportunity you want to associate with the task, you can choose to set the assigned staff member, organization, and contact for the task to the same ones that are associated with the opportunity. Then, if you should later change the opportunity’s assigned staff member, organization, or contact, the same change will occur on the associated task.

Understanding Task type:
The concept of inheritance hinges on the task type. If you do not select an option from the Task Type drop-down menu, the task field values cannot be inherited from a record associated with the task. For instance, you can use the Inherit property to make the task’s assigned staff member, organization, and contact the same as the opportunity’s values. If, however, you leave the task type unspecified, you cannot use the Inherit property for those fields.

All of the task types—opportunities, organizations, contacts, incidents, answers, campaigns, mailings, surveys, and documents—allow the Assigned field to be inherited from the associated record. Use the Inherit property when you want the task to always be assigned to the staff member who is assigned to the record, even when the staff member assigned to the record changes.

As another example, assume you set the Assigned field of a Mailings task to Inherit. If you change the staff member assigned to the mailing, the staff member assigned to the associated task also changes to the new staff member. If you want the task to always be assigned to the same person assigned to the mailing, even if that staff member changes, select Inherit. If, on the other hand, you want a particular staff member to be assigned to the mailing task, regardless of who is assigned to the actual mailing, do not use Inherit. If, on the other hand, you want a particular staff member to be assigned to the task, regardless of who is assigned to the actual record, do not use Inherit.

Although the following procedures use the Answer task type as an example, the procedure is the same for all task types.

NOTE: Once a Task is completed, the inherited value will no longer change if the opportunity assigned value changes.  However, you may need to Save & Close and re-open the opportunity before you see this change in the inherited value.