Opportunity Contact Roles record which Contacts at the customer Account are involved in the deal — Decision Maker, Economic Buyer, Influencer, End User. They're the structured way to capture deal team context that pure Activities miss, and they drive Forecasting visibility.
- Open the Opportunity
Contact Roles live on the Opportunity, not on the Contact.
- Open the Contact Roles related list
May need to be added to the Opp page layout if the related list isn't visible.
- Click Add
(Or Edit if Roles already exist.)
- Pick a Contact from the Account
By default, only Contacts linked to the Opp's Account appear. Org Wide Default + Sharing controls who's selectable.
- Pick a Role
Decision Maker / Economic Buyer / Evaluator / Influencer / Technical Buyer / etc. Role picklist is configurable in Setup → Object Manager → Contact Role on Opportunity.
- Tick Primary if applicable
Exactly one Contact Role per Opp can be marked Primary. The Primary Contact's Email becomes the Opportunity's primary point of contact.
- Save
Contact Role is created. Reports can now key off Role to surface deals lacking a Decision Maker, etc.
Required by association — Roles live on the Opp.
Required.
Required. From the configured picklist.
- Only one Primary Contact Role per Opportunity. Marking another as Primary auto-unmarks the previous — silent change that can confuse audit trails.
- By default the Contact picker shows only Contacts on the Opp's Account. To pick a Contact from a different Account, your org must enable Contacts to Multiple Accounts (Setup → Account Settings).
- Contact Role on Opportunity has its own object (OpportunityContactRole), separate from the legacy CRM Account Contact Roles. Reporting differs between the two — make sure the report you're building uses the right one.