Tagging with classifications¶

A list answers "who is in this group?" once. A classification answers "what kind of thing is this?" permanently — and it is what makes the firm's data searchable years later.

Practices, industries, regions, offices: classifications are the firm's shared vocabulary, applied to accounts, contacts, matters, and experience.

Everything here is Core. Classifications live on the Classifications tab in the CV Marketing app.

1. One object, several kinds¶

Everything is a Classification record, distinguished by its Type — a multi-select field. In a typical dataset you will see:

Type	Example
Practice	the firm's own practice groups
Firm Industry	the firm's industry taxonomy
GICS Industry	the standard financial-markets classification
LinkedIn Industry	LinkedIn's taxonomy, for matching external data
Region	APAC, EMEA
Office	the firm's locations
Initiative	a cross-cutting campaign or theme

Type is multi-select for a reason. "Energy" can be both a Firm Industry and a GICS Industry, and carrying both lets the same record match the firm's internal language and an external data feed without maintaining two records that mean the same thing.

Each type also has its own checkbox field — Is Practice, Is Region, and so on — so a list view or report can filter on one type without working with the multi-select.

A classification with several types is normal; one with contradictory types is a data problem. A record typed as both a Region and an Office is almost certainly a seeding or import error, not a deliberate overlap. If you see them in quantity, tell your admin — it makes the whole taxonomy untrustworthy.

2. Reading a Classification record¶

Highlights: Name · Type · Parent Classification · Site URL

Details tab — Information (Name, Parent Classification, Source Id, BD Liaison, Abbreviation, Type, Address, Office Main Phone, Office Fax, Office General Email, Non-Legal) and Admin Data (GICS Category, GICS Code, LinkedIn Code, Site URL). Non-Legal marks a classification that is not a legal practice, such as an administrative department.

BD Liaison is worth knowing: it names the person responsible for business development in that practice, industry, or region. It turns the taxonomy into a directory of who to ask.

Sidebar tabs:

Tab	Holds
Descriptions	Classification Descriptions — longer text used in pitches and submissions
Mappings	Classification Mappings — how this record corresponds to external taxonomies
Child Classifications	The level below in the hierarchy

3. The hierarchy¶

Parent Classification makes the taxonomy a tree. "Banking & Finance" can sit under "Corporate", and the Child Classifications tab shows the level below.

This matters when searching: tagging at the most specific level you can is right, because rolling up a hierarchy is possible and guessing down it is not. A contact tagged "Structured Finance" can be found by anyone looking for "Corporate"; one tagged only "Corporate" is invisible to someone looking for structured-finance experience.

4. Applying a classification to a record¶

On a single record¶

Contact and Account record pages carry a Classification Picker component, sitting above the tabs. Assign classifications directly there — no need to open a separate record.

Each assignment creates a Classification Assignment, which is what makes assignments reportable and auditable rather than a picklist value that quietly changes. The Relationships tab on a Contact carries Classification History, so you can see how a contact's classifications have altered over time.

To many records at once¶

Account and Contact list views carry an Assign Classification button. Select the records, click it, and a screen flow assigns classifications to all of them.

This button does not work out of the box. Because of a Salesforce packaging limitation, the button's link is not adjusted when the package is installed, so it points at a flow that cannot be found and fails with an error. It is a one-off fix an administrator applies after install, and it is in the Admin Guide's post-install steps. If you get an error rather than a flow, that is the cause — report it to your admin rather than assuming you lack permission.

Once the link is fixed, the flow can still show an error of its own until an administrator re-selects its Apex action in Flow Builder. That is another one-off setup fix, so report it the same way.

See Running a bulk update.

Automatically, by rule¶

Account and Contact both carry a Configure Classification Assignment Rules action. Rules assign classifications based on criteria, so that — for example — every contact at an energy client picks up the energy industry classification without anyone tagging them by hand.

Rules are empty until someone writes them. The package ships the machinery, not the rules; they encode the firm's own policy. In a fresh org there are none, and classifications are entirely manual until an admin defines some.

5. Why this is worth the effort¶

Classifications are unglamorous and easy to skip under deadline. They pay off in three places:

Finding experience. "Have we done energy M&A in Germany?" is answerable only if the work was tagged when it was captured.
Building audiences. A dynamic list built on classifications maintains itself; one built on names does not.
Directory submissions. Practice and industry categorisation is what Recognition submissions are organised around.

The cost of tagging is a few seconds at capture. The cost of not tagging is a partner reconstructing the answer from memory under deadline.

Troubleshooting¶

"The Assign Classification button gives an error." Known post-install steps — see above.

"I cannot find the right classification." Check the hierarchy. It may exist at a different level, or under a different Type. Classifications are usually created by admins, so ask rather than creating a near-duplicate — duplicate taxonomy is much harder to clean up than a missing entry.

"A classification has types that make no sense together." Likely a data-quality issue rather than a deliberate overlap. Report it.

"Nothing is being classified automatically." No assignment rules have been configured. That is an admin task.