Maximizer CRM Tips: Creating unique IDs with formula UDFs
As the dark days of winter turn into the (hopefully) sunny days of spring, what better time to do a spring clean on your CRM data!
Imagine you are going to export your data to give to a third party data cleansing company (call us if you need any recommendations). As you are probably aware, it can be easy to extract data from Maximizer but have you thought this through? How are you going to match the data to the original records when you reimport the data?
The answer is simple… you need a unique ID for each record in Maximizer!
But surely this is an out of the box feature in Maximizer, you say? Well, yes but the unique ID that you see in the product is actually a calculated field (two fields concatenated together) which you can’t match against on the point of reimporting.
Previously to version 11, this involved purchasing a Collier Pickard application that can run across a database and create these in different formats if needed.
With the introduction of formula UDFs (User-Defined Fields), this is now something you can do for yourself!
Adding an alphanumeric formula field will create a unique ID based from the Maximizer Client_Id and Contact_Number with an underscore as a delimiter.
If([Contact Number]==0,[IDentification] + "_0",Substitute([IDentification],":","_"))
NB: This has been tested on Maximizer CRM 11 SR2 and Maximizer CRM 12.
So what are you waiting for! Spring clean your data now! This tip is not limited to exporting/importing data. You might want to integrate your CRM database with a third party software package and need a unique link between the two.
Caroline Robertson is a Solutions Architect at Collier Pickard.
