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Creating a Spouse Record from an Existing Contact Record using Workflow in MSCRM

Post Author: Joe D365 |

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, a "short-cut" to assist a user in creating a Spouse Record from an existing record does not exist. By using a couple new fields on the existing contact record in conjunction with a workflow, some of the pain of this task can be alleviated.

Existing Contact Record.

As shown below, we have added two new fields to the contact record. These fields are 'Spouse First Name' and 'Spouse Last Name'. By simply populating the 'Spouse First Name' field (and last name if they do not have the same last name), the workflow shown later in this document will automatically create a new 'Spouse Contact' record.

Workflow

The workflow below is designed to run "upon change" of the 'Spouse First Name' field. We have created a 'Condition' step first to make sure that the 'Spouse First Name' contains data. This step will cancel the process in the event that the 'Spouse First Name' initially contained data but was subsequently deleted. In this instance, there wouldn't be any need to create a new record.

If the 'Spouse First Name' field is populated the workflow will execute the 3 steps outlined below.

Step 1 will create the Spouse record. The Address, City, State, Zip Code and Home Phone will be populated with the same data from the primary contact record. The First Name will be populated with the data from 'Spouse First Name' from the primary record. If the 'Spouse Last Name' was populated, on the primary record, the workflow will use it as the last name for the newly created record, if not; it will use the last name of the primary contact as well. This step will also populate a 'Look-up' field named 'Spouse' on the newly created record. This Look-up' field is a link back to the spouse record allowing the end user to simply click on it to open the spouses' record.

Step 2 will populate the Spouse Look-up link on the primary record.

Step 3 will create a 'Spouse Connection' (new to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011) between the two records.

In summary, this simple process allows the end users to create a spouse record by simply entering the spouses' first name into a field on the primary spouse record. If your Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment contains additional fields on the Contact record that you would like to be automatically populated on the spouse record, you would simply need to add them to the properties of Step 1 in this workflow.

Hope you find this useful and if there is anything we can help with please reach out to the CRM Experts at PowerObjects.

Happy CRM'ing

Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

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