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Advice needed: how to handle internal Contacts that are also CRM users

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Posted on by yvka123

Hello everyone,

I am looking for best practice / advice for the following scenario:

When we started with our CRM we were confronted with the issue that the CRM was automatically generating collegueas as contacts out of e-mail conversations. And the way it created these contacts was partly completely wrong (inserted the full name into first name etc.).

To prevent this, we divided contacts into internal yes/no and added all of our employees as internal contacts into the CRM. In that way, the CRM already knows all email addresses and won't falsely create new contacts.

The issue that we are now facing is, that some of these internal contacts of course are also users of the CRM. So the problem when sending or receiving an email is, that it will always add the internal contact but also to the user, who is the same person and therefore has the same email address.

In the timeline when you as an user send an email, it also shows two records: one for the user sending a new email and one for the contact sending an email

I hope it's not too confusing the way I tried to explain it.

Does anyone have advice for fixing this?

I thought about deleting the internal contacts only for the crm users but I'm afraid that I delete all email records with it then....

Thank you in advance!

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yvka123 17 on at

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RE: Advice needed: how to handle internal Contacts that are also CRM users

Thank you for the link!

That former activity records are not removed is fine, the only thing I want to achieve is, that when I send (or write an email to a crm user), it doesn't show a) two times the name in the e.g. sent by or cc of the mail (name of user and name of contact - same mail address) and b) one record in the timeline "sent email" and a second record that shows "received email".

When I write an email and look for a contact in the "send to" field, it doesn't show inactive contacts, right? And it also won't be shown in the time line then? If that is correct, which I assume after a first test, then I'm happy already.

Here is a screenshot of the timeline when I or any user that is also internal contact send an email out of the CRM:

And here is a screenshot of what it looks like when you send an email to a user:

(same name, same email address -> user but also internal contact)
diegompc 798 on at

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RE: Advice needed: how to handle internal Contacts that are also CRM users

I think this link could help you: crmtipoftheday.com/.../

And note that the relationship between a contact and an activity is referential so removing a contact will NOT remove activity records such as emails, only the link between the contact and the activity.

Could you provide a screenshot in relation to this comment? "In the timeline when you as an user send an email, it also shows two records: one for the user sending a new email and one for the contact sending an email "

Thanks
yvka123 17 on at

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RE: Advice needed: how to handle internal Contacts that are also CRM users

Thank you for your reply but it's not exactly what I was looking for. We actively implemented all employees as internal contacts into the CRM. So pretty much every CRM user can be found as a internal Contact as well.

One solution I was thinking about was to set internal contacts that also have a CRM license as "inactive". In that way no previous records will be deleted, but it should not be possible any longer to chose it as a email receiver - am I right with that though ...?

Thanks for assistance
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diegompc 798 on at

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RE: Advice needed: how to handle internal Contacts that are also CRM users

Hello yvka123,

From my experience there are two main reasons why contacts are created that are identical to the system's users:

Personal configuration (You can use XRMtoolbox to make massive changes in personal settings):

Automatic record creation rules (if allow emails from unknown senders):

Please try disabling these two options and let me know if you have been able to solve the problem of contacts and users.

Regarding the name and Lastname, there is another general congestion that indicates how to display the names.

If some of your functional requirements demand the need of having "internal customers", that is to say, users as contacts, such as a ticketing system that supports both internal and external customers, I recommend you to read this article: crmtipoftheday.com/.../

Regards,