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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived) / Fills fields automatic...
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Fills fields automatically ?

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Posted on by Jimmy_acco 130

Hello everyone,

I'm new to CRM 2011 and I am currently blocked :(

English is not my native language so be sure to notice me if you don't understand something, I'll try to explain as best as possible :)

So I have imported Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities from another CRM software.
Accounts are parents of Contacts and Opportunities.
I'm currently trying to import or create Activities.

So here's my problem : when I create and Activity, for example a Phone Call, sending an Email, sending a Letter etc... when I fill the Addressee's field with a Contact, I would like the field Phone number, Address, Email to be filled automatically with the Contact's information.
Is it possible ? If yes can you tell me how I can do it :)

Secondly, in my Accounts, I have addresses and would like for each Contacts that belongs to the Accounts, to have their addresses's field to be filled automatically by the Account's one, instead of writing it 2 times every time. Same for the city and the zip code.

Thanks in advance for you help :)

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  • G Sav Profile Picture
    G Sav on at

    There are a couple of ways. One quick and easy way is to use a Workflow.

    First of all ensure you have the relevant fields you require in the "Phone Call" form, these should currently be set to visable and not Read Only.

    Set the Workflow against the activity type in this instance "Phone Call" and "Workflow to run in back ground"

    (If you are moving to CRM 2013 you can set the Workflow to run in real time)

    Set the Workflow to Start when "Record is Created"

    In the workflow build area at the bottom, select Add step and update record.

    You are going to update the "Phone Call" and then select properties.

    This will open a new screen showing you all you phone records. Select the field you want to auto populate and at the left select the drop down look for to "regarding contact", then in the box below look for the corresponding field. Select and click OK. The field on the form should now have some yellow text. Repeat until all required fields are done. Save and Activate the workflow and try.

    If you want any of the fields to be read only and or not visible, now update them in the Form.

    There is a couple of issues with this, the fields will only be populated when you save the phone call and come out of it. When you re open the fields will be populated.

    This is also based on the call to be added to the Contact, so regarding field needs to be the "Contact" otherwise it will not work.

    If you need further help, just google workflows crm 2011 plenty of articles and youtube clips.

  • Jimmy_acco Profile Picture
    Jimmy_acco 130 on at

    Hi,

    Thank you for your help.

    I tried what you suggested me. For example for a phone call , yeah I have the problem with the field filling only when I save and re open it. But it's ok it's not a big one.

    Secondly, why must the Concerning/Regarding field must be the contact ? For example, I want to have a phone call with a Contact about an Opportunity. Can't the Phone number field filled by the number of the contact ?

    Is it possible to make it work ?

    Thanks :)

  • G Sav Profile Picture
    G Sav on at

    If you attach a phone call to an Opportunity rather then a contact, their will be no direct link with the Contact.

    This means the update part of the workflow will not work as the contact is not directly linked so the field will not be populated.

    There is a slight work around, if you store the phone number in the Opportunity. If not depending on which way you go, Opportunity leads to creating contact or Contact to creating an oppotrunity you could use a workflow to populate a Phone Number field. This could be hidden or locked depending if you want people to change it.

    Within the workflow add some IF STATEMENTS.

    If Regarding Contact Telephone Field contains data - Update Phone Records from Contact.

    If Regarding Opportunity Telephone field contains data - Update Phone Record from Opportunity

    And so on depending on which entities you are linking.

    If you put a phone call against an opportunity the first IF statement will come back as false as there is no regarding contact so therefore the telephone field has no data, and the workflow moves on to the next IF statement.

    I find it easier to map out the problem in a drawing, Phone call in the middle and the various entities you want to attach to it, and why, what data do you want. Then build from there.

  • Jimmy_acco Profile Picture
    Jimmy_acco 130 on at

    "If you attach a phone call to an Opportunity rather then a contact, their will be no direct link with the Contact."

    What does this mean ? The Concerning/Regarding field is the one who create the link with other Entities ? Cant't we affect or create this link on the field Addressee ?

    I understand your solution, but this would mean I have to create Email or Address field on my opportunity, if I want to send an Email or a letter instead of a Phone Call.

  • G Sav Profile Picture
    G Sav on at

    The link will be Phone Call --> Opportunity --> Contact (Assuming you are connecting a contact to an opportunity.) So there are two steps to get from phone call to contact (Not a direct link)

    Workflows can only drag through information from one step a long a link.

    The Addressee field is a many to many relationship, rather then a 1 to Many/Many to 1, so you can not pull in the data.

    You could create your own addressee field that is a Many to 1 (Lookup) to contact. This would mean users will need to look up the addressee!

    You could get cleaver;

    Create a "To" field (Basically your own addresse field as mentioned above)

    Create a workflow on creation of a Phone call.

    If Regarding Contact Telephone Field contains data - Update Phone Records from Contact.

    If Not Populate the "To" field based on the Opportunity Regarding field (which will be the contact attached to the opportunity)

    Then as a second step in the workflow, update the Phone Number field based on the Contact relationship to the "To" field (which you created and populated above).

    It is very difficult to say what to actually do without seeing/knowing all the different outcomes. Hopefully this has given you a few ideas. Workflows can be very powerful and you do a lot with them. Workflows can also fire on a field being updated. So if you could set a workflow to fire once the "To" field has been populated to bring the phone number across.

    I have in some instances created yes no fields that are updated by one workflow, and the change has fired off another. Or a mutiple option set. I had one workflow that had a load of Condition Ifs that updated the option set to a value. On update of this value field one or more workflows where then fired.

  • Jimmy_acco Profile Picture
    Jimmy_acco 130 on at

    Thank you for your help, I understand what is your point. I'll think about it and make my decision later.

    Another question, you know I have imported data from another CRM software.

    So for example, I have imported my accounts which are Enterprises, and I have 2 Porter Airlines that have the same name but are not in the same place (Canada / US for example).

    In my .csv file of the Contacts, I have an Enterprise field.

    When I import Contatcs, during the maping, I precise that the Client's parent is the entity Account (name), he is a member of this Account. But as I said above, I have 2 Porter Airlines Account.

    So it gives me errors, as the CRM doesn't know to which Porter Airlines affect the Contact :S

    How can I specify to the CRM during the import which one is the right one ? I have thought of using the City as it's the same on Contacts and Accounts.

    I have the same problem with importing Opportunities : in my .csv files for the Opportunities, I mapped the name of the Enterprise with Prospect, and the name of the contact in the enterprise with Contact.

    The problem comes with the contact. In my Contacts, I have people with the same fullname. So the CRM doesn't know  with which contact he has to fill the field.

    I would like to specify to the CRM to search only the contacts that are part of the Enterprise and not all contacts during the import.

    Thanks in advance :)

  • G Sav Profile Picture
    G Sav on at

    If you are using CRM (Not a dataloader like scribe) it is a little more tricky as you dont get access to the GUID fields.

    I would create a field Reference No and or Key. In the account entity. Would populate all these with a unique reference for each one. For us we use the company registration combined with the postcode (uk) as a Company could have many branches/accounts. For example 123456BH12ZS.

    In your contact csv import, put this reference within the "Account Name" column. When you come to import, when matching fields, on the account name field, click on the magnifing glass, then you can select which fields to match on. By Default it will already set to match on Account Name, but you can scroll through and look for your Reference Field instead. This will then match your unique code in your csv file to an account where the reference number matches.

  • G Sav Profile Picture
    G Sav on at

    Missed of the opportunities off, but it will work in the same way described above. Create a reference to match the two together

  • Jimmy_acco Profile Picture
    Jimmy_acco 130 on at

    I understand. But is it not possible just to specify during the import to the Dynamics CRM to, for example, only search Contatcs who are part of the Enterprise in the case of importing Opportunities ?

    And in the case importing Contacts, to match the City of the Contact and the City of the Customer's parent (here it is the Account) ?

    My files have like 3k Accounts and 8k Contacts thats why I'm asking :'(

  • G Sav Profile Picture
    G Sav on at

    No, though CRM you can only match on one field. If it is a one off import I would do the following.

    Create a temp field within account entity.

    Open up your accounts file in excel and create a new column, title it as per your temp file and populate the cells with "Airline" & "City" combinding the two. Copy this down the records. Do this as well within the contact csv but under the Airline Account Name header. Within you Opportunities files then use Vlookup using which ever ID you have joining contact to opportunity or Opportunity to Airline to get the same code over to your opportunity import. You can also do this through access, put all your data in there, add a key field autonumber, then build queries to produce the imports you need. With the queries you can have muliple joins and pull through the required fields.

    For parent contacts, use a similar thing, but you will need to upload parent contacts first so they are in the system. Now and again I have to do one off uploads that are huge and to save using the Scribe and paying for each row, I use the CRM system takes about an hour to prep between 300k and 500k of records.

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