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Date Fields on Activities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Post Author: Joe D365 |

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 date fields, when you are looking at Activities in the Activities area, you are looking at something called the Activity Pointer. This is essentially a rollup of the various activity types (Email, Phone Call, Appointment, etc.) into a single view. When you look at the Activities area in the Workplace, by default you are looking at the Activity Pointer. You are also looking at the Activity Pointer when you view Activities and History on an individual record.

What can be confusing about this view is that the names of some of the fields are different in the Activity Pointer than they are when you drill into each activity. For example, the Appointment shows a "Due Date" in the Activities view, but when you open the Appointment, you will not find a Due Date field. You will see that the Due Date represented in the View is actually the Start Date on the form.

To further complicate our understanding of what is showing in the Activities area (Activity Pointer), some of the fields shown are not usually on the form AND even though they are not on the form, some of them are still populated automatically by CRM.

Below is a matrix showing the behavior of each of these fields, what they are called on the form and what the behavior is. Those highlighted in grey are not usually on the form with CRM out-of-the-box, and therefore they must be added by a system administrator if the users ought to edit them.

Activity Type

Name on the Form/Behavior

Name in the Activity Pointer

Start Date

Due Date

Actual Start

Actual End

Last Updated

Date Created

Regarding

Appointment

Start Time

End Time

Actual Start
(Fills in with Created On and then can be changed)

Actual End

(Fills automatically on unless filled in)

Modified On

Created On

Regarding

Campaign Response

Scheduled Start

Follow-up By

Modified On

Created On

Customer

Email

Start Date
(Fills in with Due Date if available, but is typically not filled in)

Due Date

Modified On

Created On

Regarding

Fax

Start Date
(Fills in with Due Date and then can be changed)

Due

Modified On

Created On

Regarding

Letter

Due

Modified On

Created On

Regarding

Phone Call

Due

Modified On

Created On

Regarding

Task

Due

Modified On

Created On

Regarding

Hopefully, this matrix will help you decide which fields would be most valuable to your users as you design which fields to display on Activity Pointer views.

If the CRM Experts at PowerObjects can help you out please reach out to us!

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.

One comment on “Date Fields on Activities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM”

  1. Thanks for the summary.

    I've found some interesting uses in reports for the fact that the Start Date of phone calls and Tasks is filled in with Due Date on creation, but not changed if Due Date is updated later.

    In other words, you can see the difference between when someone originally planned to do an activity and when they pushed it back to, which might indicate someone who has too much on their plate, or is putting off undesirable jobs. This can also mean you might measure Actual End vs [planned] Start as a measure of whether things have been done on time, rather than Actual End vs Due Date, since Due Date can simply be changed by the user before marking the activity as complete.

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