Showing properties of related objects in view

Question

Hi all, 
 I have 2 object types: 
 
 Customer 
 Contact Person 
 
 On the customer there is single select drop down to specify the main contact person. 
 I try to create a view that returns the E-Mail addresses of all main contact persons. Since in a view I cannot use properties from related objects, I am not sure how to create such a view. I could save the E-Mail address of the main contact person on the customer object, but if I change the mail address on the contact person, the customer object wouldn't get updated. So this isn't a solution. 
 What is the correct solution to implement this? I would assume this is quite a common use case.. 
 Thanks for help, 
 Beat

Joonas Linkola · Answer

You cannot currently add view columns with indirect metadata (ie. properties from related objects). We have a long-standing improvement request (ID 12740) on the development backlog to add such a possibility and I've added you as a requestor, hopefully this will get considered for future implementation. 
 If you end up copying the property values to the Customer object and it's necessary to keep them up to date, then additionally you'll need an event handler on the Contact Person object that would trigger an update on the Customer object whenever the email address is changed on the Contact Person. Without the event handler, the email address on the Customer object would get updated the next time someone modifies the object.