---
title: "Important: Contracts and contacts roles sort their contacts on their own"
manual: "Academic Contacts for Pages"
version: "3.0"
permalink: "https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/fgtclb/academic-contacts4pages:important-contract-and-role-sort-their-contacts@3.0"
source: "Changelog/2.4/Important-ContractAndRoleSortTheirContacts.rst"
rendered: "2026-10-26T17:55:07+00:00"
---

# Important: Contracts and contacts roles sort their contacts on their own {#important-contract-and-role-sort-their-contacts}

## Description {#description}

A page contact is an inline child of three records at once: of its page, of the
contract it belongs to, and of its contacts role. All three relations wrote the
same `sorting` column.

`RelationHandler::writeForeignField()` numbers the children of the record
being saved 1..n in the order of its form, so saving a contract or a contacts
role renumbered its contacts *across every page that owns one of them*. An
editor who had arranged the contacts on a page saw that arrangement replaced by
the order of an unrelated form, in the backend and, since a page renders its
contacts in `sorting` order, in the frontend as well.

The contract relation and the contacts role relation now have sort columns of
their own, `tx_academiccontacts4pages_domain_model_contact.contract_sorting`
and `role_sorting` of the same table, and order by them. The page keeps
`sorting`, so nothing that renders today changes.

## Impact {#impact}

Saving a contract or a contacts role no longer changes the order of any page,
and a page no longer changes the order those forms show. All three
arrangements are kept side by side. TYPO3 v12 and v13 behave alike here.

A contact that joins a contract or a contacts role afterwards is appended to
the end of that record's list, whether it was created there, given the relation
in the contact form on a page, copied or localized. Changing the relation moves
it to the end of the new one. Clearing it removes the contact from that list
altogether.

Every contact that existed before the update carries `0` in the new
columns. Until the upgrade wizard below has run, a contact saved in the backend
keeps no position of its own in those lists. The wizard is the one that knows
the order the contracts and contacts roles show today, so a contact whose list
is still unseeded is left to it.

## Affected Installations {#affected-installations}

Every installation of this extension that assigns contacts to contracts or to
contacts roles.

## Migration {#migration}

Add the new columns, which come with [`ext_tables.sql`](https://docs.typo3.org/m/typo3/reference-coreapi/main/en-us/ExtensionArchitecture/FileStructure/ExtTablesSql.html#file-extension-ext-tables-sql), in
**Admin Tools > Maintenance > Analyze Database Structure** or with
`vendor/bin/typo3 extension:setup`.

Then run the upgrade wizard **Seed the contact sort order of contracts
and contacts roles**, in **Admin Tools > Upgrade > Upgrade Wizard** or
on the command line:

```bash
vendor/bin/typo3 upgrade:run academicContact4pages_seedContactSecondarySorting
```

It fills the new columns with the order those forms show today, the current
`sorting` of each contact, with `uid` settling ties. It reports
nothing to do afterwards. Running it again is harmless: it appends what has no
position yet and never renumbers what has one, so an arrangement made in one of
those forms is not reset by it.