Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Microsoft Dynamic CRM 4.0 Marketing List Entity - Unused but useful attributes

The out of box CRM comes with many attributes. We can find most of them on the forms after successful installation. The remaining attributes maybe system fields or were created by the CRM team in the schema and waiting for us to use during customisation. Today I am going to talk about 3 attributes in the Marketing List entity that I have just realized their existence during an data migration of Marketing List and Marketing List members. They are:

1. Members Court: Courts total number of members in the marketing list including inactive members. The court happens each time the form is refreshed (by clicking "Save" button, open the form or simply hit "F5" on your keyboard). Adding or removing members will not trigger the court. You can also see the total member court on the "Marketing List Members" associated view (below the search box). Unlike the Members Court field, this information refreshes each time you add or remove members.

2. Exclude Members Who Opt Out: This is a bit field to capture information about whether to send marketing material to list members that prohibit sending of marketing material. For example: when this field is marked as "No", CRM will create activity for member(s) even if the member record (ie. Contact) has "Do Not Send Marketing Materials" marked as "Do Not Allow".

3. Ignore Inactive List Members: This is a bit field to tell CRM whether to ignore inactive marketing list members during propagation/execution. For example: when the field is marked as "No", CRM will create activity for any inactive member(s) during distribute campaign activities.

That's all for now.