Contact merge issue - Activities 'Completed By' changes....

(1) Share

Report

Posted on by Community Member

Hi,

I have two contacts to be merged. Both contacts have associated activities, completed by a range of users and across a range of dates.

Once I merge the records, all the activities now show against the active contact, by are now all completed by me, and all at the time of the merge.

How can I stop this happening??

Thanks,

Rich

*This post is locked for comments

I have the same question (0)

All responses (11)

Answers (1)

Suggested answer

Drew Poggemann 4 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Rich,

This is due to how the relationships are setup in the 1-N for cascading.

Please see the following note where I walked through how to fix this for a Case, you should be able to do the same with your situation on the Merge as well configuring the cascading relationship.

community.dynamics.com/.../218520

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Thanks Drew!

So I will set all the cascade rules to Cascade None, for 1:N between Contact-Phone Call, Contact-Email etc?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Drew Poggemann 4 on at

Like (0)

Report

Yes. That is what I would try to do, look at the details on what each would do to verify (i.e. on merge, re-parent, etc.) but yes.

Good luck!

Thanks,

Drew

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

So I tried that. Changed everything to Cascade None on all relationships between Contact and Activities (phone call, email, task etc). The records arent been re-assigned to the user doing the merge, but the Modified On and Modified By is still updated to the time/person doing the merge.

This results in the change still being shown on the Social Pane, so if pre-merge it was 'Completed by Bob Smith on 11/3/16 15:00' then post-merge, it now says 'Completed by Rich Pearson on Just Now'.....

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Ok I've figured out what's happening - the Modified On/By only changes against the activities from the contact record being merged. So the records coming over from the contact being made inactive have their Modified On/By updated (and therefore shows on the social pane), all the activities that were already on the master record (the one staying active), do not have their Modified On/By updated (and therefore are showing correctly in the social pane).

Is there any way to stop this happening that you know of??

Thanks.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Verified answer

Drew Poggemann 4 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Rich,

I am guessing that this might be a limitation on the merge because it is creating a new record on the new entity and not just "moving" the record from the old entity I would expect. I wish it wouldn't do this as it makes no sense to me.

Sorry this did not accomplish your specific needs Rich.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (1)

Report

It's pretty ridiculous, you just end up losing history of which use actually completed the call! I'm going to raise it with Microsoft and see what they say - I'll let you know if I get anywhere.

Thank you very much for your help!!

Rich

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (1)

Report

I'm seeing the same issue, but wanted to chime in on what I think is actually happening. When merging two contact records, the activities from the subordinate record are actually moved to the chosen master record (it doesn't create any new activities). You can verify by looking at the created dates on activities after merging two records with activities.

The problem is when these activities are moved, the "modified date" and "modified by" change to today's date and the person doing the merging, which it probably should do... It is technically being modified because it's associating the activity with a different contact record.

But, in the activities tab on the contact record, it references "modified date" as the completed date. Normally that works because you can't normally modify a closed activity.

And "completed by" in the activities tab is referencing "modified by". There is no true "completed by" field on activities, so you really are losing that data forever when merging records.

So, I don't think there is a setting you can change to fix this.

Microsoft should instead reference "actual end" date to show when an activity was completed in the activities tab. This date field already exists, and does not change upon merging contact records. Open activities should probably still reference "modified on" though.

They should also add a new "completed by" field to activities that gets populated upon complete and remains unchanged.

Until then, the activities tab won't be a great reflection of who did what and when after contacts are merged...

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Joe Woltering 12,163 on at

Like (0)

Report

Rich,

Did you ever come up with a solution for this?

I believe the issue (at least in Dynamics 365 aka 2016) is that the "Merge" behavior is greyed out and unchangeable in a 1:N relationship between Contact and Phone Call (possibly other Activity entities). This seems the be the OOB limitation of CRM.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Robert50 212 on at

Like (0)

Report

The same thing seems to happen to activities when the Account Owner is changed. The completed by will then show the wrong persons name and date will be updated. Since it doesn't say "modified by" and "modified on" it confuses users.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No