With the Contact Plan feature, you can select contacts that meet specific criteria by using a query. These contacts will be automatically inserted into the first node of a Workflow for later performing automatic, custom operations on.
Setup
To setup your Contact plan enter the Dynamics CRM general setup page:
In the right setup menu, select the Contact plan option:
Before proceeding with your setup, you have to update metadata for Campaign Responses from MS Dynamics CRM by clicking on the corresponding link:
Once the metadata have been downloaded, you have to enable the Contact plan feature.
The next step is to set up what time Contact plan will run.
Then, select the lookup field for campaign responses created in MS Dynamics CRM. Please remember to first setup this custom field into your MS Dynamics CRM as follows:
Finally click on the button.
Workflow integration
Before running the Contact Plan, make sure you previously created and published a workflow.
It is required that its first node be a Contact plan Dynamics node type.
After creating the workflow, you can run the Contact Plan function.
Running the Contact Plan
Choose the Contact plan button in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM menu on the right:
You will enter the Contact plan dashboard, which will be empty the first time you get in. Every time you run a Contact plan, that plan will be added to the list.
To create a new contact plan, click on the button top right of the page. You will access the New contact plan page:
In the Name field, write the name of the Contact plan you are creating. Select the MS Dynamics CRM Campaign from which to get the contacts and the workflow node to send these contacts to.
Enable the following option:
If you want to only consider the subscribed contacts saved in MS Dynamics CRM.
In the Next start date fields (date and time), you need to enter when (date) and at what time Contact plan will run for the first time.
In the Daily start time, instead, you can schedule the next execution time of your Contact plan.
Now, select what kind of MS Dynamics CRM entities will constitute the target of your query (leads, contacts or accounts) and input your query to select all the fields you need for each contact.
Find a complete Contact plan page example below.
Once your query is ready, you need to check it with the Analyze query tool. If the check runs without issues, the GUID (Global Unique Identifier) menu will be displayed.
Select your GUID value.
Press the Save button and your Contact plan will be ready to run.
Click on the Enable button on the top right corner of the page.
You will be asked to confirm this operation.
By selecting the Enable button, you will run your Contact plan.
The Contact Plan dashboard
If you come back to the dashboard page, you will now find the Contact plan you created.
In this page, there are buttons for performing quick actions:
Suspend the Contact plan immediately
Access to the selected Contact plan properties page
Of course, if you create new Contact plans, they will be added to your list.
Each time Contact plan runs, it will execute your query. The selected contacts will be sent to the first node of the workflow to perform the activities you assigned to it.