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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,... / Customer insights time...
Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,...
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Customer insights timeline relationship

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Posted on by Paulien Lb 125

I'm configuring an activity in CI to make legacy activities visible on the CI timeline in Dynamics CE.

I don't understand the Relationship-step; is this the actual relationship that will be used to match activities to customers?

1. Why can't I pick a relationship I created before in CI?

2. When creating this relationship I can only select the entity (CE.contact), the primary key is then designated based upon the unified customer profile. I can't tell that another unique identifier (the Pk of the legacy CRM that we added as a custom field on CE.Contact) on this entity needs to be used to create the relationship.

How can I manage this? 

Thanks for your advice!

I have the same question (0)
  • Verified answer
    FrancisRomstad Profile Picture
    FrancisRomstad 205 on at

    Hi Paulien,

    This is by design. When you select a primary key on a source, it is expected that this is the key used to connect activities to this source.

    You have to look at your legacy system as a separate source, with the PK of your legacy system as the "contact". In your ingest queries, you will then have one table with the "activities", and create a reference query where you take all you PKs and take a distinct on these.

    You then have all unique pk's (LegacyProfile) and the activities  (LegacyActivities) for this system. You treat this as a seperate system (which it actually is).

    You can then map match merge these pk's into you customer on a matching rule on CE.contact.LegacyPK = LegacyProfile.PK.

    Then you can create an activity with LegacyActivities with 1:N on LegacyProfile.PK - LegacyActivity.

    Hope it makes sense?

    -Francis

  • Paulien Lb Profile Picture
    Paulien Lb 125 on at

    Thanks for your prompt response Francis, I don't fully understand though.

    Are you suggesting I should add a seperate entity of the legacy.contacts to CI? And include this in the Unified Profiles?

    We migrated those legacy contacts to CE.contact and added the LegacyPK as alternate key to it on a customfield. In CI for the Unified Profiles I'm using the D365.Contact entity and have included the LegacyPK in the Merge step.

    It would feel redundant to add the same contacts in a seperate entity to CI solely to be able to connect the legacyactivitues to the legacyPK.

  • Suggested answer
    FrancisRomstad Profile Picture
    FrancisRomstad 205 on at

    Hi Paulien,

    You can see if there are other inputs to your challenge, it is a bit complicated area of CI and CI also improves/changes in this area. So there might be other solutions.

    I believe however, that you need to keep the mindset that all data sources with a pk and activities around it should get ingested separately and 3M'ed into the customer.

    In our case we have many sources, CE, Adobe, Bookings etc. Even though I have some of the keys from one system showing in another, I treat all systems as separate, with their "profile" and activities.

    So yes, add a separate entity with the legacy.contact (but only with the pk as column). 3M that into the customer. Then you should be fine.

    I usually quite quickly in Power Query make a reference table based on the activities, delete all columns except the pk, and distinct this. Then you have your legacyProfiles (which have activities).

    -Francis

  • Paulien Lb Profile Picture
    Paulien Lb 125 on at

    Thanks again Francis,

    I understand, will do so.

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