Considerations When Adding A Business Required Field To Contacts – Part 3

Colin Maitland, 30 June 2012

In my previous two blogs I have been writing about considerations when adding a custom Business Required field to the Contacts entity and Contacts form. I have used, as an example, a custom field called Contact Type. This field is an option set field. The values users are permitted to select are defined by the option set.

In my previous blog I looked at the impact this addition has when adding Contacts to Microsoft Dynamics CRM using the New Contact and the Add Contacts methods available in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook Client.

In this blog I will look at the Import Data method. In the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook Client, Import Data is accessed from the Ribbon Bar by selecting File, CRM, Import Contacts and Import Data.

Whether or not Import Data is available depends on the privileges on the Security Roles associated with the user’s User Profile in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. These include Create, Read, Write, Append and Append To privileges for Contacts and the Import Data privilege.

Import Data allows you to import Contacts, and other types of records such as Accounts, into Microsoft Dynamics CRM from a data file.  The supported file types are XML Spreadsheet 2003 (*.xml), .csv, .txt and .zip.

Using the Import Data Wizard, Contacts can be imported into Microsoft Dynamics CRM from a file whether or not the file contains a Contact Type column.

Example 1: The following screenshot shows the contents of a data file containing Contacts and has the following columns: First Name, Last Name, Business Phone and E-mail. In this example, a Contact Type field is not included.

Using the Import Data Wizard we progress through several screens to configure and complete the data import. The following screenshot shows the information that is displayed on the Map Fields screen of the Import Data Wizard.  At the Map Fields screen:

• Under CRM Fields, on the right-hand side of the screen, the Contact Type (Option Set) field is listed under Required Fields because it is a Business Required field in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. 
• Under Source Fields, on the left-hand side of the screen, the value Not Mapped (Use Default) is displayed. This indicates that the default value defined for the Contact Type option set in Microsoft Dynamics CRM will be used when importing Contacts.

Using these field mappings, the Import Data Wizard is able to successfully import the Contacts into Microsoft Dynamics CRM as follows:

• If the default value for the Contact Type option set in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is set to Unassigned then the Contact Type for each imported Contact will be blank. In this case users will be required to set the Contact Type themselves, if not already set, if they want to subsequently edit the Contact and save their changes.

• If the default value for the Contact Type option is set in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is set to a specified value, such as Customer, then the Contact Type for each Contact will be set to the specified default value.

Example 2: The following screenshot shows the contents of a data file containing Contacts and has the following columns: Contact Type, First Name, Last Name, Business Phone and E-mail. In this example, a Contact Type field is included.

Using the Import Data Wizard, the Contacts are imported into Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the Contact Type field is set to the value provided in the data file.

If the Contact Type values provided in the data file do not exist in the Contact Type option set in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and the user has the appropriate Security Roles assigned to them, then these will be added to the Contact Type option set.

In conclusion, two important considerations when using Import Data to add Contacts to Microsoft Dynamics CRM when we have added a custom Business Required field called Contact Type are whether or not the Contact Type is provided in the data file and whether or not the default value for the Contact Type option set is set to Unassigned or to a specified value. If Contact Type is not provided in the data file and the default value for the Contact Type option set is set to Unassigned, the Contacts will be imported but the Contact Type field will be blank requiring users to set the Contact Type as they subsequently edit each Contact.

In my next blog I will be reviewing the Track method for Contacts and Meetings.