Code fixes to update lead contact dates in Microsoft CRM

Code fixes to update lead contact dates in Microsoft CRM

I'm having a problem when using Campaign Activity in Microsoft Dynamics. The anti-spam option in Campaign Activity considers only those leads that were contacted using the campaign. If a person was contacted by any other means (such as Quick Campaign, or any other activity) the last date included in the campaign is not updated.

Do you know if Microsoft has released a patch for this issue, or if there's another solution?

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Microsoft uses the "last contacted" field in Dynamics CRM on accounts, contacts and leads to determine when the customer was last contacted, but only by a campaign. It is possible that ongoing communications with customers could be occurring before or during a campaign, but it is not always clear whether or not that interaction could be relevant for excluding them from a new marketing initiative. As a result, Microsoft opted to only update the last contacted date when a campaign activity was sent to the user.

The date, however, can be manipulated. The recommended approach would be to use custom code (Visual C# or Visual Basic) via the post call-out on the activity form to update the last contacted field on the account, contact or lead. A simpler, but not necessarily recommended, approach would be to create a background SQL process that would update the last contacted value. This approach is not recommended because Microsoft could opt to make changes to the schema in a future release that would render the custom SQL solution unusable.

We have not heard if Microsoft plans to change this functionality in a future release.

This was first published in June 2007