Danger of Reassign ALL Records Owned by the Current User function

I want to bring up the dangerous side effect when using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 User Reassign Records function.  The User Reassign Records function assigns all the records owned by the current user or team.  To access this function – open a CRM user record and then click on the “Reassign Records” button:

It is powerful – with just one button click ALL Records owned by the current user are reassigned including those activities that are completed, opportunities that are won, cases that are closed, etc.  There is even a warning note on the window: “Note that this will move all records owned by the selected user or group regardless of state”.

In most cases, changing the value of historical records is a bad practice.  For example changing the Owner information of a Won Opportunity or changing the Owner of a Qualified Lead record.  If you have reports that are based on the Owners of these records, then those reports are flawed.

So what should we do instead – I would recommend using Advanced Find to search for all the records needing to re-assign that meets your criteria (such as only the Open Activities, Open Opportunities, Open Cases, etc.) and then perform the assignment.  This approach does take more time – but will yield the exact result you desired, no potential side effect.

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Frank Lee, Microsoft CRM MVP
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