Contact and User Conflicts Resolved in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

In prior posts we have discussed conflicts that can happen when a contact and a user share the same e-mail address.  Traditionally, if the same email exists on a user and a contact record, it could cause problems when activities like e-mails were tracked in CRM.  Sometimes these issues were minor, such as the activity being connected to the contact record instead of the user, but other issues were more major—the most troubling one was when you tracked a meeting request that included the email address that was duplicated in CRM, sometimes when it synched back to outlook from CRM, it would resolve to the contact instead of the user, which would cause the appointment to be removed from the user’s outlook calendar—not good when it is an important meeting getting removed from your calendar so you forget about it.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Update Rollup 12 for Dynamics CRM fixes this issue. 

The way that the duplicate e-mail synch conflicts are resolved is by giving the user record top priority.  When resolving a tracked activity using the email address, CRM now first matches against the User records.  If it finds a match, it stops.

This is a great improvement and should make life easier in those cases where you need to have people as both contacts and users.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Users,contacts,Microsoft CRM,Dynamics CRM

Comments

[Kirrmann]

Hello,

I'm very interested in this contact & user conflict resolution. I have installed the rollup 12 on my servers, but nothing is solved.
I have contacted Microsoft support, and they say that the rollup 12 only resolved the part regarding the loss of appointments.
Can you confirm that when an email is received in your CRM, lets say throught the email router, the email address is resolved to the user prior to the contact (in my case, it is not resolved at all)
Thanks & Regards,
Nicolas

[Joel Lindstrom]

I believe you are right--the biggest issue was the one where the appointments would disappear. The issue you will still see is that if you have the same email address on multiple records, especially if it is on a contact and an account, you may still see some cases where emails won't be able to be resolved. That's why it is still best practices to not duplicate email addresses on different types of users.
Did you install the rollup on the client as well as the server? Ive found that when I send an email to an address that exists on a contact and a user, it links it to the user first. May be some differences when receiving emails. I do see the issue more when the email address is on both a contact and account.
I've also heard that the way this is handled is changing in 2011. I've heard (but haven't verified) that the email will be resolved to both the user and the contact.