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Advice on managing contacts with multiple role in Dynamics 2011

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Posted on by Community Member Microsoft Employee

I hope someone can suggest a way forward as I am prevaricating about this now.

We have a Dynamics implementation running but have the situation where a contact might hold more than 1 role.

1. Contact holding membership information and a personal email address

2. The same contact also acts as a service provider and has a business physical and email address.

Is it good practice to create two different contact records even if this is the same person, or would it be better to combine these into a single role?

Sorry its probably a simple questi, but I am stuck on deciding the best way forward.

Thanks

Simon

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simonsnell 117 on at

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RE: Advice on managing contacts with multiple role in Dynamics 2011

Hi - interesting conversation.

We have recently moved to Dynamics365 and are facing this same issue. In our previous database, we were able to attach mailing preferences not just to the Contact or Organisation (Account) but also to the relationship between the two, so we could specify the mailings which were to go to a Contact in their personal capacity (with a personal email they wished to use) and another for mailings to be sent to the Contact in their professional role as an employee (e.g. teacher, with their school email address).

For real usability, the only practical option currently appears to be to create two contact records, but as you say that mitigates against having a single source of the "truth" for this contact. We cannot attach mailing preferences and email address to a Connection as far as I know.

Is anything planned to deal with this do you know?
Community Member Microsoft Employee on at

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RE: Advice on managing contacts with multiple role in Dynamics 2011

Sounds like a solution to solve the software rather than solving the issue. Microsoft needs to evolve the service to address users' needs rather than making us work around their shortcomings.
Community Member Microsoft Employee on at

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RE: Advice on managing contacts with multiple role in Dynamics 2011

Thanks, Scott.

I think we're at a point where we have to manage "Contact records not a person record" for similar reasons and can't have these records follow them to the new account (it's bad enough that some of them don't have updated email addresses because they've moved to a sister account). Can you elaborate on creating the linking records necessary to help users know the person they are working has multiple contact records (some disabled)? Could the linked contacts then be displayed in a subgrid on the contact record to surface this information for users?

Regards,

Nate W.
ScottDurow 50,177 on at

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RE: Advice on managing contacts with multiple role in Dynamics 2011

Hi Robert,

All good points - my suggestions are 'working around' the fact that a Dynamics Contact record is not a person record. The simple fact that you cannot have multiple email addresses for a contact and choose which one you want to send to is a case in point. There is also the GDPR issue which now comes into play - that means you need to collect data specifically for a particular purpose - if you lump everything together into a single contact that spans multiple contexts (business relationships, personal relationships etc) then it will make GDPR compliance much harder.

I love the discussion too - you might like to get involved with community.dynamics.com/.../dynamics-365-community-schema-project-what-is-it-and-how-can-you-help

Thanks,

Scott
Robet.gauthier1 60 on at

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RE: Advice on managing contacts with multiple role in Dynamics 2011

I disagree with the approach of creating 2 Contact records. This goes against the entire concept of all data in one place and assisting users in having full visibility and history of the work done with a contact.

While Accounts are a critical construct to associating Contacts to Businesses that have purchasing power it's the relationship with the People/Contact that makes the difference. I've sold, managed sales and worked with CRM systems before MS ever entered the market. Most of my work has been cleaning up that kind of approach. The approach simplifies technical design/coding but it makes for a messy way for to collaboratively work with Contacts. Who do you log a Case for or create activities against if your dealing with a major influencer for one of your Accounts? Say the Contact is a key decision maker at a company your organization does business with on a day-to-day basis. Let's just say they buy paper from you and your company's angle is that your company's key selling message is that your paper is chemical free (silly example but the point is clear). You had an invoice dispute with them which is being taken care of by a CSR in your organization. They're also a board member at the "clean is green" organization. You could have another member of your organization dealing with them as a board member trying to influence the use of products like yours to support their goals. Would you actually track that person as two separate Contacts against two different Accounts? It wouldn't make sense. The next clean is green conference that your executive attends should be an opportunity for your PR/Sales Rep/Exec is to find identify that there is an issue own it reassure them that "Jim the CSR" is working on it and that you really appreciate their patience. You create 2 contacts and you lose that.

To another point you made, if I earned the respect and trust of a Contact at one company through the relationship I developed with a Contact, if and when that Contact changes companies (moves from one Account to another) I've just potentially landed a new Account and I want to leverage the history of interactions with that same Contact record.

Just my two cents.

I need a better solution - We need to have Account based roles but connections doesn't address usability. Connections in theory is great but it's counter intuitive for the general population. When do I identify a Contact as Child of the Account or when do I crate a connection... too much for Sales Reps to really think through when they're already complaining about how taxed they are.

I work in the Medical field where Doctors are our Clients and they have practices, work in hospitals, walk in clinics, are members of boards that influence medicine and practice standards. There roles and influence differ within the context of what we are trying to achieve. They speak with multiple people within our organization - and we need a collaborative solution.

Good discussion - love to hear people's thoughts and or ways that they address similar challenges.
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ScottDurow 50,177 on at

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RE: Advice on managing contacts with multiple role in Dynamics 2011

Hi Simon,

You are right to ask - it's a common issue!

A 'Contact' in Dynamics isn't really a 'Person' record but describes the way of contacting a specific person - identified by a primary email address. It is also a context for which activities are linked to so that they appear in the right place:

1. If you want to send an email to the same person using two separate email addresses, you'll need two contacts. You can have up to 3 emails on a contact which can be used for email tracking resolution- but only the first is used to send emails and so I usually recommend against having multiple emails for a contact.

2. If you want some activities to appear on one account/opportunity/case etc and some activities to appear on others - again you'll need two contacts

A common scenario is where a person moves from one company to another - you shouldn't then overwrite the contact with the new contact details and re-link it to the new account because that will mean that all the activities from old account will now appear on the new account! You'd best deactivate the old contact and create a new one -linking back to the old one.

So having multiple contacts for the same person and then linking them together with contacts is quite common place.

It does rather depend on your situation of course - and some people re-name the contact record to be 'person' but that can lead into problems when handling different roles and keeping records separate as I describe above.

If you are only handling individuals (and not account contacts) you can link the individual contacts together under a single 'Individual' Account so that you do get a rollup view of all activities for the same person - but that would also be a special case.

Hope this helps
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Community Member Microsoft Employee on at

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RE: Advice on managing contacts with multiple role in Dynamics 2011

Hi snickp40

As far as I know your question is that your problem is that you have multiple contact information and you're deciding whether or not including it in the same contact record, am i correct? If so, I would create another entity with a Contact lookup and a Information Type field to indicate if the information is "Personal" or "Business" (also include the other fields form email address) do this if you Contact can have N addresses if they are fixed in time (only personal and business) then include in the same record as the Contact is good idea as well

Regards

Hope it helps

Advice on managing contacts with multiple role in Dynamics 2011

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