Records update feature is another one of those features I learned to hate in
CRM. First we were teased in the Titan previews with it. Then it wasn’t in the
RTM of the CRM, and then rumors were that one of the rollups (I forget which
one) for CRM included this option. I say rumors because I never found it after
applying the rollup.
Well, not until I bumped into it one day by chance. And I was so happy I took
a screenshot and sent it out to a few colleagues to share my happiness. A few
days latter I was back at the home office and wanted to try it out, prepared a
test import for update and it wasn’t there to be found!
But it is, and here is how you can get the mysterious Enrich data by
updating records rather than creating new records option to show up in your
data import too.
Export the data you want to update
Build your query, or
export the data from a view. You can omit mandatory fields if you are not
updating them. Now for the tricks that make the update work:
Export the data into a Dynamic worksheet, open the Excel
file and edit the data as needed.
Select the whole worksheet, not just the records, then right click on any of
the columns and select the Unhide option. Non Excel users watch out, right click
Unhide on a filed will not unhide the columns we need.
Now you should have gone from this:
To this:
The record ID is what makes the magic of the update work. But this is not
enough. Now you need to move the ID column to be the first one and rename it to
Record Name, in my example - Opportunity. The export added two spaces in front
of the exported column name, make sure you remove them when renaming the column.
The end result should look a little like this:
The GUIDs in the first column, and the record name in the header row are the
key for this operation. They are enabling the CRM to recognize that you are
using the existing records and what entity you are trying to update.
Save the file as a CSV; and if you are using any special characters remember
to save it in Unicode format.
Enrich your records
Now that you have your file you can
go to the Import Data wizard. Pick out your data file and delimiters (by default
Excel 2007 will use no delimiter for data and semicolon as a field delimiter).
On the second screen you should see the checked Enrich data by updating
existing records rather than creating new records option; the record type
drop-down should be filled in and disabled; and data map should be set to
Automatic and disabled as well.
When testing I was using the sample data set you see in the screenshots
above, and trust me those two fields are not the only mandatory ones. So why am
I not getting any errors from the wizard? Because we are updating. The ignored
column is the Owner, which is not valid for create and update
actions.
You can proceed with the Data Import wizard, and see it running on the
Imports page.