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crm-cat / Dynamics365-Community-Schema

https://blackcat-.github.io/Dynamics365-Community-Schema/
MIT License
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What is the account & company schema when multiple addresses are recorded? #3

Open scottdurow opened 7 years ago

scottdurow commented 7 years ago

The address1 and address2 fields can be used for so many different purposes. Can we standardise their use?

AdamVero commented 7 years ago

Also bear in mind the three standard addresses on Contacts are assumed to be Business, Home, Other when synchronising to Outlook (if you enable all three). But in a purely B2B scenario, Home is unlikely to be needed.

On Account it is har to say whether they should be used for Bill To and Ship To, or whether Address 1 should always be the "official" correspondence address (=registered office for incorporated companies). This might not be the address you send invoices too (sometimes the registered address is their lawyer or accountant), nor an address you visit (invoices might go to a specific branch with back-office functions).

I think the order of these three main address types depends on which is most useful to most users. Registered / official (=Primary?) is useful for finance, but not for sales visits unless it is also where the decision makers are. Bill-To is likely to often be the same as Primary, except where primary is a lawyer / accountant / other proxy Ship-To could be the place you also visit, but might be the factory (when the sales decisions take place in an office downtown).

For customer service, you probably visit where the goods were shipped to, in order to fix them. Am I overthinking this, or is it actually so variable between businesses to figure out which they want to use?

crm-cat commented 7 years ago

I don't think your overthinking it at all, on the face of it appears a quite simply 'defining' exercise but i think when you consider it some more in different scenarios it really does become complex.

Good call on the Outlook note - that is really important to remember actually!

I am of the thinking that this is linked to Issue#1 which looks at official uses/contractual/invoicing uses of Accounts - but also the hierarchical structure and relationships with Parent/Child Accounts too - i think by using those it may become less complex and the requirement to log so many addresses may become more redundant?