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Question: We are doing a mail merge to hard copy. Unfortunately many contacts were not typed correctly. For example, some upper and lower case is mixed. Is there a fix in word template that will fix this? Is there a fix in formatting of Contacts cells records? It could save me 25 to 60 hours.
Answer: This sounds like a data cleansing issue. Unfortunately, any automation of this will require some development skills. I don't know what your programming skills are or what resources you have at your disposal - so I'll list all the solutions I can think of.
As I see it you have 5 ways to approach this.
1. It seems that you are looking for a solution within the Word Merge Template. The Word Merge template uses the data you have and doesn't make modifications to it. While that may be possible using a Macro or something - I have no special information about enabling that. That would be done entirely within Word - and it is not controlled by Microsoft CRM. Information about creating Macros can be found at Office Online - https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100997691033.aspx
2. One idea would be to export the data into Excel first. In Excel you can probably apply changes to the way the text is formatted more easily. Then, create your Word Merge using Word using the Excel workbook as the data source. This article describes how to create a Word Merge for use in sending a bulk e-mail or printing letters: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA010349201033.aspx. However, this approach won't address the underlying problem with your data.
3. In many applications data is often cleansed using scripts against the SQL Database Tables. However, in Microsoft CRM direct modification of data in the database tables is not supported. The supported way to do this would be creating a .NET application using the Microsoft CRM Web Services.
4. The best way to prevent this in the future is to scrub the data as it is being entered. There are two ways to do this in Microsoft CRM.
a. Use the client-side form events. When the data in a text field is changed by a user it is possible to include JavaScript code to examine the text and apply formatting rules. This approach only works when users are interacting with the form. Information about using the events is found in the Microsoft CRM SDK client programming guide but it does not include specific information about defining or applying the formatting rules. However, it does include a sample that is similar - automatic formatting of telephone numbers: changing [4355551234] to [(425) 555-1234]. See https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa681843.aspx
b. Use server-side callouts to scrub data that changes. This involves registering a callout on the server side. Again, information about creating server-side callouts is available in the Microsoft CRM SDK but it doesn't include specific information about defining or applying the formatting rules appropriate for your organization.
5. Unfortunately, the last resort is probably the one you are thinking of when you talk about requiring a large amount of time: Manually scanning and changing the data in Microsoft CRM.
It sounds like you would like Microsoft CRM to have a feature that allows specification of formatting rules for text fields in the application.
We have a specific page on our Web site for customers and partners to make suggestions for future features/product updates. Please go to the following page (https://www.microsoft.com/Businesssolutions/Community/Newsgroups/dgbrowser/en-us/wizard.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.crm&lang=en&cr=US&type=suggestion) and either add to or vote for this suggestion to be sure our product planning team has this information to consider for future releases.
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June 01, 2009
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October 07, 2011
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