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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,... / How to update differen...
Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,...
Answered

How to update different data into individual contacts in bulk?

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Posted on by Community Member

Dear community,

My scenario: I have a list of customers' info (some of them are probably in our contact already, some are not) which I want to update our system. I have 3 main questions below:

1.How do I know the customer is already in our system or not?
2.If I export the excel (c.a. 10,000 contacts info), how can I search all the existing profiles based on the customer list I received? What is the unique reference I can look up for the correct contact?
3.How can I update each contact profile in bulk?

Thanks

I have the same question (0)
  • Verified answer
    Wahaj Rashid Profile Picture
    Wahaj Rashid 11,321 on at

    Hi,

    Thank you for your query.

    The unique key is something you need to identify in your scenario. The primary key for contact is called contacted (a GUID), however, it will not be there in the 3rd party data you received. 

    Define your match key, which suits your scenario, for example, match contacts based on:

    • Email
    • Mobile Phone

    In your scenario:

    • Export contacts from 365 to an excel sheet.
    • Do a vlookup between D365 and other data based on the match key (like Email).
    • For matched records, copy the data from the other sheet to the one exported from D365, and import it back (do not remove the first 3 hidden columns, it holds the D365 unique ID for the contact, if you remove this, instead of an update it will be created).

    If this activity is frequent, I would suggest creating an ETL (integration) package using SSIS or build a small script (.Net) that reads data from excel and D365 and updates it accordingly.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at

    Dear Wahaj,

    Thanks for your great inputs. The solution with using vlookup is exactly what I could imagine.

    However, I can say this activity will be frequent for our organization, and I think your suggestion: Creating an ETL (integration) package using SSIS or build a small script (.Net) that reads data from excel and D365 and updates it accordingly. will probably require a professional to do it?

    Or is there any tutorials that I can learn by myself?

    Thanks a lot for your support!

  • Verified answer
    Wahaj Rashid Profile Picture
    Wahaj Rashid 11,321 on at

    Hi,

    I am not sure how comfortable are you with SSIS and .Net.

    If you are not into codding/scripting, a no-code solution is to use Power Automate (if you are on Dynamics 365 Online).

    Here is the high-level logic:

    • Upload the excel file (from a 3rd-party system) to one-drive business.
    • Create a power automate flow to read data from this file.
    • Use Powerapps Dataverse connector to list data from Dynamics 365 for Sales and match using a defined key.
    • Update the data using the Dataverse connector.

    As a starter, you can look for the following template:

    Create Dynamics 365 Leads from an Excel Online (Business) | Microsoft Power Automate

    Create Dynamics 365 Records from an Excel using Microsoft Flow | Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Tips and Tricks (inogic.com)

    This flow reads data from Excel and then create leads, however, you can modify it as per your need as shown below:

    Solved: Grab data from Excel and post into Dynamics 365 CR... - Power Platform Community (microsoft.com)

    Please note, in the current version of Power Automate,  Dynamics 365 connector is known as Dataverse connector.

    If you have an on-premise environment or you do not have a Power Automate subscription, you can use SSIS with Kingways Soft connector (paid), this will make your life easier to perform operations in Dynamics 365.

    SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics 365 (kingswaysoft.com)

    For writing a .Net Utility, you can look for Web API samples:

    Web API Samples (Developer Guide for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (on-premises)) | Microsoft Docs

    Again, if you are not comfortable with any of these, you can have a developer or power platform expert work on this.

    To make it easier for the other readers, please mark the appropriate answers as verified (click 'Yes' under 'Did this answer your question?').

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