Using Workflow to Set the Primary Contact
Posted Friday, January 9th, 2009
Sometimes an Account may not have a primary contact associated with it, and it’s difficult to know exactly who to contact when you need to get in touch with an Account. Workflow can take away the manual task of actually associating a primary contact each time a new Account is created. Follow these steps to create a workflow to automatically set the primary contact of an Account:
1. Navigate to Settings on the left-hand side of your screen, and then click on Workflows. Click on New to create a new workflow. In the Workflow Name area, type in Set Primary Contact. Choose Contact as the entity in question, and leave the Type as New blank workflow.
2. When the Workflow box opens, keep the default settings for Scope and Start When. Click on the area that says Select this row and click Add Step.
3. Type in a description for the check condition that you are using. In this case we want to check and see if the parent account has a primary contact. After you have typed in a description, click on the blue hyperlink that says <condition> (click to configure).
4. Once the new window opens up, you need to specify the workflow condition. Choose Parent Customer (Account) as the first selection. Next, find Primary Contact, and lastly select Does Not Contain Data. This means that we are checking to make sure that the parent customer does not have a primary contact already. Click Save and Close.
5. Select the second row of the If statement and click Add Step. Select the option Update Record.
6. Type in a description for the Update Record condition. For this one, we are going to Set the Primary Contact of the Parent Account. Click on the button that says Set Properties.
7. When the window opens, the Account form will be visible. Select the field that says Primary Contact.” The Form Assistant should be visible on the right-hand side of the window. If it isn’t there, click on the small button with an arrow pointing to the right.
8. Make sure that the form assistant is visible on the right-hand side of the window. The Operator and Look For values are defaulted in the form assistant. Click on the Add button, and then click OK. This will place {Contact(Contact)} in the Primary Contact field. Click Save and Close.
9. After you have saved your workflow, remember to publish it by clicking the Publish button on the toolbar at the top of the workflow window.
10. In order to test the accuracy and effectiveness of your newly created workflow, create a brand new Contact for an existing Account that has no Primary Contact. On the Contact form, fill in the field that says Parent Customer. Save the contact, and then open the Accounts listview and open the Account. You may need to wait a few minutes to make sure that the workflow has had enough time to process. When you open the Account, the Primary Contact should be populated for you with the Contact that you created.
11. If the Primary Contact has not shown up in the Account form yet (and you’ve waited a little bit), navigate to the Workflow section of the Contact form. This will allow you to visualize the progress of the workflow you have created. If it does not say Succeeded, you may need to refresh the listview or even give it some more time.
Tags: Setting Primary Contact, Workflow
Posted in Dynamics CRM, Workflow
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