EXPERT RESPONSE
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.
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