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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Business Central forum / Advice needed - Import...
Business Central forum

Advice needed - Importing customers to BC, coupled to Dynamics, with customer number from old financial system

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Posted on by Stephen Pryke 412

I have to ask for some advice / best practice from the community.

Current situation: We have accounts in Dynamics CRM & in an old financial system and we are now migrating to Business Central. We want to have our customers in Business Central with their old customer numbers (they are existing clients) AND have them coupled to the correct record in CRM, but we are running into some problems which we just can't resolve not matter how we try.

Scenario 1: We created the customers in BC via the CRM sync to get the existing accounts from CRM into BC. This gives us customers which are coupled, but unfortunately with the wrong "customer number". They are given new number based on the series we established. 

  • We tried updating the "No" field with RapidStart / config package, but this appeared to delete the customer and added a new one with the correct number, but which was not coupled. 
  • We tried updating the "No" field with Edit in Excel, but this had the same effect (when it worked) - it created a new customer with the correct number, but which was not coupled.  

Scenario 2: We created the customers in BC via RapidStart. This gave us customers with the correct customer number, but which were not coupled to accounts in Dynamics. Same results as in scenario 1, although much quicker to get there. 

What is the best practice for this? I can't believe we're the first to encounter this and there must be a simple solution, but we're just ending up in the same place no matter how we try. How can we get to a point where our customers have the correct number but are also coupled to the correct account in CRM? 

Thanks in advance!

Stephen

Categories:
Other
Data Migrations
  • Stephen Pryke Profile Picture
    Stephen Pryke 412 on at
    RE: Advice needed - Importing customers to BC, coupled to Dynamics, with customer number from old financial system

    For future reference, the solution worked like a dream! Very simple and also helps me understand the data better.

    Steps laid out:

    1. import customers via rapid start with the customer numbers you want
    2. create a "config package" for table 5151 and export this to excel
      • this gives you the GUIDs & numbers for the customers in BC
    3. export your accounts from CRM
      • make sure the customer number is in the export so you can match them to the customers
    4. get the CRM GUIDs from column A in the export (hidden column)
    5. match the CRM accounts in a new excel sheet to the ones in the BC export (5151) using the customer number
    6. create a "config package" for table 5331 and export to excel
    7. complete the export (5331) with the CRM GUIDs - adding curly brackets - in the first column and the BC GUIDs in the second column
    8. import the excel back into your config package for table 5331
    9. apply the package
  • Stephen Pryke Profile Picture
    Stephen Pryke 412 on at
    RE: Advice needed - Importing customers to BC, coupled to Dynamics, with customer number from old financial system

    Hi Dave,

    That looks like something which will solve exactly this problem. Thanks!

  • Verified answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at
    RE: Advice needed - Importing customers to BC, coupled to Dynamics, with customer number from old financial system

    Hi Stephen,

    I've fixed this by creating the customers in BC through Rapid Start first.

    This will created records in tabel 5151 Integration Record with a link to a GUID created created per customer.

    Get the GUID for the accounts in CRM by exporting them using a advanced search.

    Now we need to lookup the GUIDs for the customers in BC, these are stored through a RecordID in tabel 515, the easiest way is the build a page on this table that will show the Customer No for the record so you can export this towards Excel.

    We now both have the GUID for the Customer in BC and the GUID for the Account in CRM, we need to couple them in tabel 5331.CRM Integration Record.

    This can be achieved by combine the GUID from BC and the GUID from CRM in a rapid start file to import into tabel CRM Integration Record.

    After the import the records are coupled, you now can run a complete sync with the interface to get the data up to date in both systems.

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