Is it possible to auto-merge during bulk import of data? Specifically Contacts?

0
votes

We are going to use CRM for some email marketing, currently all our client's contacts are in our service desk (AutoTask)

I have written a script to export all contacts in AutoTask to CSV, and have a data import mapping set up to automatically import these contacts into CRM.

My issue now is that if a change is made in AutoTask (our case is that sometimes when forwarding tickets to our email-to-ticket subsystem, contacts get created for the client in AT but with the technicians email attached and not the original customer's email address), I need to merge that change with Dynamics - however, the default behavior with duplicate detection during import is to not import the duplicate. I need this to essentially overwrite the existing contact object's fields with whatever data I am importing, rather than ignoring the duplicate field and keeping the old data.

Is this possible?

It seems right now that to do what I want, I have to allow importing duplicates and run a bulk dupe detection job, then manually merge the resulting contacts.

This is for Dynamics 365 on prem, running on SQL Server 2016 and Windows Server 2016

1
dynamics-crmmicrosoft-dynamics
I don't believe there are any hooks in the OOB bulk import process whereby you'll be able to automatically trigger a merge. You'd be looking at building a custom import process. Or, is there a way that you can maintain the customer's D365 ID while it's being worked on in AutoTask? If so, then you should theoretically be able to match to the existing Contact in D365 when importing. - Aron

1 Answers

0
votes

It is possible. You can use KingswaySoft to extract your duplicates with SQL and then merge them. Here's the complete list of features. Since you are on-premise, it's easy to develop an SSIS package and the KingswaySoft licence is very low. Note that you can use it for free as long the package is ran in developer mode.

Merge: Merge action takes two CRM records as its input and performs a CRM merge action on them by retaining one of them while retiring another one. Merge action is only possible with the following CRM entities: account contact lead incident

https://www.kingswaysoft.com/products/ssis-integration-toolkit-for-microsoft-dynamics-365/help-manual/crm/destination