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Creating a record from the Lookup dropdown

Updated

Create a related record without abandoning the one you’re already filling in.

Why it exists

When creating a record, you often need another record that doesn’t exist yet. The Lookup dropdown lets you create it inline rather than saving, navigating away, and coming back.

Searching Organizations in Contact Edit Form — The image shows a dropdown search box appearing in the Organization field while editing a contact named Ben Miles, with results filtered by the letter “K” displaying several matching organizations. This illustrates how users can quickly find and link an existing organization to a contact, or add a new one using the “Add New Organization” option at the bottom of the list.

1 Searching Organizations in Contact Edit Form

 Duplicate Organization Warning During Record Creation — When adding a new organization named “Koko,” Insightly displays a “1 Possible Duplicates Found” alert showing an existing record called “Koko FitClub.” This duplicate detection feature helps users avoid creating redundant records in their CRM database.

2 Duplicate Organization Warning During Record Creation
Add New Organization Form with Save Button — The screenshot shows the “Add New Organization” modal dialog in Insightly CRM, with fields for organization name, email, custom fields, and contact details already partially filled in. A red arrow highlights the “Save & Return” button in the bottom-right corner, indicating where users should click to save the new organization record.

3 Add New Organization Form with Save Button

 Add New Contact Form With Organization Pre-filled — A modal dialog box for creating a new contact in Insightly CRM, showing fields for name, organization, title, and contact details like phone and email. The organization field is automatically populated with “New Org” following a success notification confirming the new organization was just created.

4 Add New Contact Form With Organization Pre-filled

Any standard or custom Lookup dropdown can be used this way, provided it’s already on the Page Layout of the object you’re creating. Note this only works while creating a new record. On an existing record, you’d need to open it in blade view and use the pencil icon instead; in-line or full-screen editing don’t support it.

As an example, creating an Organization while creating a Contact:

  1. Go to Contacts and click New Contact.
  2. Fill out the Contact’s details.
  3. Click the grey Organization dropdown and click Add New Organization.
  4. Enter the new Organization’s details. Insightly checks automatically for duplicates.
  5. Click Save & Return to go back to the Contact creation screen, with the new Organization already filled in.
  6. Finish the Contact’s details and click Save.

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