Business Rule Sets Fields as 'Business Required' with Differing Results

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We have a business rule defined on the Account entity with a scope of 'Entity'. The business rule sets the Name and a custom field to 'Business Required'. If two Account records are imported where one record has a blank name and the other a blank value in the custom field, the record with the blank name is rejected and the record with the blank custom field is not. I would expect both records to be rejected or neither.

Other fields on other entities with similar business rules all behave like the custom field: importing blank values on mandatory fields are allowed.

Does anyone have any ideas why it works differently for the Account Name field?

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Adrian Begovich 1,027 Moderator on at

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Hi Chris13,

This does not sound like a Business Rule issue, this sounds like a data import issue. How are you importing the data, and what errors are you receiving when importing the records?

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Hi Adrian,

I am exporting the records to Excel, changing them, and then importing the changed workbook.

The error I receive is "Attribute 'name' cannot be NULL". Ideally, I would get this error on the custom fields as well.

I've read on other posts that the 'business required' attribute on fields does not apply when data is imported nor if data is updated in a workflow. I had hoped to circumvent this problem by creating an entity-level business rule.

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Adrian Begovich 1,027 Moderator on at

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Hi Chris13,

Have you tried populating the name column in your Excel document?

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Hi Adrian,

If I populate the Account Name, then I do not get an error.

I may not have described my problem very well. I want to prevent users from importing records if required fields are null. This does not happen by simply setting the fields as required during field definition. I was hoping to avoid using workflows to do this validation by using an entity level business rule. To my surprise, the entity level business rule only produces the desired result (error message on null value) on the Account Name and not on any other field that I have tried so far.

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RaviKashyap 55,410 Moderator on at

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Hi9 Chris,

Is it possible that you have the account name mandatory by default i.e. the actual field is mandatory hence it is is blocked whereas the fields which are marked mandatory from BR are not evaluating during import? Can you mark the custom field mandatory by default (i.e. the field itself) and try the same test again of importing 2 record one with name blank and other with custom field blank.

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Hi Ravi, I tried that and it didn't make any difference.

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Adrian Begovich 1,027 Moderator on at

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Hi Chris13,

Required fields only apply on the client side (e.g. on the form). As you are creating records via data import the Field Requirement value of fields are not checked. Your requirement cannot be met, as Field Requirement value is not taken into account when users import records into CRM.

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Community Member on at

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Hi Adrian, so why does it work on the Account Name?

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RaviKashyap 55,410 Moderator on at

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I guess account name being the primary name field. This is why.

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Adrian Begovich 1,027 Moderator on at

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Hi Chris13,

It works on the Account Name as Microsoft designed the Account entity so that the account name field is required when creating an account record. This is the case irrespective of the Field Requirement value or your Business Rule.

This documentation explains that the name field on the account entity is Application Required.

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