Topic: ‘Data’

There’s an interesting post on the MSCRM Team Blog by Inna Agranov that verbalizes how to pre-filter your data in CRM, allowing you to query results much quicker. The post also contains a link to another article, located in the MSDN library. It describes in more detail how to filter CRM reports through SQL Reporting Services.

Click here to go to the Team Blog and read the post, or click here to go directly to the MSDN article.

For the most part, I try to steer people away from renaming fields directly from the form POV. This usually creates a more disorganized environment (and believe me, disorganized environments are my “nails on a chalkboard.”). If javascript is desired on the form sometime down the road, the code is usually difficult to understand and read if schema names do not accurately reflect the purpose of the code. Additionally, and most importantly, the information will be nearly impossible to understand from an Advanced Find POV (searching for SSN information by selecting Anniversary seems strange to me…). However, sometimes this comes in handy, and is almost beneficial from a form cleanliness standpoint. So I like to go by a certain “A or B” rule when renaming fields. This helps the environment I’m working on stay user-friendly and organized.

Situation A: I have a new field I want to put on the form, but I have fields on the form that I don’t use. Should I recycle a field or create a new one?

Solution A: Remove the unused field from the form, and CREATE A NEW FIELD. This will reduce the amount of confusion down the road, and it also leaves open the possibility of using that particular field sometime in the future. Business processes change, and the existing fields in the system may become useful sometime down the road. Always leave this possibility open by creating new fields for new needs.

Situation B: I have 4 different fields with the exact same name, let’s say Monthly Fee. I want them all to say “Monthly Fee” on the form, but I want to be able to run AF queries off of each of these data points.

Solution B: From an Advanced Find standpoint, it will be difficult to know which Monthly Fee field you’re selecting. If you’re looking for a specific one, they would need to be renamed to something else. When encountering this situation, I RENAME the field from the FORM LEVEL. I make sure each field name is unique from the attribute level (e.g. when I’m creating the fields, before saving them), and input an attribute name like Monthly Fee (Q1). Inside of the field properties on the form, there is a Display Name area. Rename the field here. Doing this keeps the form  clean (no parentheses), and keeps Advanced Find searchable.

Here’s a rough example:

FIELD 1: Monthly Fee would be the display name on the form, but the attribute’s true display name would be Monthly Fee (Q1)

FIELD 2: Monthly Fee would be the display name on the form, but the attribute’s true display name would be Monthly Fee (Q2)

FIELD 3: Monthly Fee would be the display name on the form, but the attribute’s true display name would be Monthly Fee (Q3)

FIELD 4: Monthly Fee would be the display name on the form, but the attribute’s true display name would be Monthly Fee (Q4)

The best way to accomplish the above example would be to plan for it – map it out before you create it. This will be much easier than fixing something that’s already built (mostly from a confusion standpoint rather than a time standpoint). However, if you already have an environment in place where this is an issue, the best way to do it would be to follow this process flow:

1. Rename the fields from the ATTRIBUTE level to a unique name (do this on all of the fields in question before moving onto step 2).

2. Rename the fields from the FORM level to a uniform name.

I was checking out the MSCRM Team Blog today, and I found a new post surrounding the CRM Data Connector. It includes information about what the Data Connector is, how it’s used, and a common issue that can emerge when utilizing the connector – definitely an informative read. Access it on the MSCRM Team Blog site by clicking here.

When you begin creating an new Duplicate Detection rule or continue altering an existing one, the common behavioral actions are to include First Name, Last Name, Company Name, etc. The basics. And from there, yes, you will be able to detect duplicates as long as the data related to the records are in fact exact matches. 

Here comes the big question: once you deactivate a particular record, wouldn’t the record automatically be excluded from Duplicate Detection results? No. It wouldn’t. Yes, it is an Inactive record, but it will still be included unless you specifically state that you do not want Inactive records to be included in the results.

The rule is set up to do exactly what you tell it to do. It won’t read your mind  and think about what would be the most efficient additions to the rule. 

If you want to only search inside of active records for duplicates, you need to include an Exact Match line on the Status field. (Be sure to save and republish the rule after making any alterations.)

This way when you go through and merge any records you find that are in fact duplicates, they won’t be included again and again in the search results. This makes it much easier to quickly dwindle down the amount of records that appear in the Duplicate Detection results.

Hope this helps!