Currently, object-based workflows can only create new associated records — they can recognize but not link to existing ones.

This leads to errors that read "This location does not allow duplicated contacts" (or an entirely duplicated record if duplicate contacts are on) when the same contact already exists in the system.

Adding the ability to update or associate existing records, rather than always creating new ones, would make workflows more flexible and prevent data duplication.

Examples:

We need the ability to use workflows to add associated contacts to custom objects with out having to create a new one each time. For example, we're using custom objects for Classes and adding Students to be associated when they sign up.

Without the ability to write data into the object fields and associate that object to a contact, these new feature requires a lot of manual input.

For instance, if Jake is listing his car for sale, we should be able to collect all his car information and update the object fields and associate him as the seller.

When Sally buys the car, we should be able to associate the object to the buyer.

There should be an action to be able to associate two contacts to one another the the automation workflows.

Example Use Case: A Parent purchases a box subscription for their child. On a form or survey, we collect all the parent information and the child information. Currently, there is no way to automate associating these two contacts through a workflow.

It would be so helpful if we can associate a contact automatically through a step in the automation directly to a smart object

After a customer signs up with us, we would like to use objects to keep track of the active services the customer has with us, campaign start dates, exp dates, campaign duration etc... Nearly all customers that are in our system end up purchasing a new product from us at some point or another and the issue I'm facing is trying to AUTOMATICALY associate the new object (active service) with an already existing contact record. You would think this feature should already exist as manually associating the 2 can result in things getting messy or lost.

I propose that in the workflows we should have the ability to either "find a contact" or associate the object with an already existing contact record based on the phone number or email of said customer. It would be super helpful in managing campaigns if we could do this, let me know what everyone else thinks or if i'm missing something here.