Change Primary Address of Account/Contact records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Introduction
In CRM, an account or a contact can have more than 1 address out of which primary address is shown on Account/Contact form in address fields. This blog explains how can we set any other address as a primary address and show on the form.
Requirement:
An account can have more than 1 address which are shown under more addresses tab of an account record. The Primary Address is always shown on Account form and it is not shown under More Addresses section.
User has customized address entity and added a checkbox field on Address form to decide whether the address is primary address or not. Now when user sets this field as True, the address should become primary address on account/contact form and existing primary address should be shown under more addresses section.
How addresses are stored in CRM?
- Addresses in CRM are stored in Address entity.
- Address entity has unique identifier field as Address Number for each of the parent record i.e. either Account or contact.
- Whenever an account or contact is created in CRM, by default 2 address records are created in Address entity for the respective account or contact record. Address Number of the primary address is always set as 1.
- For one account or contact, address number field cannot contain duplicate values.
Solution to the requirement
As primary address is identified with the help of Address Number field, i.e. when Address Number is set as 1, it becomes primary address. Hence, when user sets the checkbox to YES, we just have to change the address number field to 1 to make that address as a primary address. On main form of account or contact, details of address will be shown where account number is 1.
Catch in the solution: As already said above, for one account or contact, address number field cannot contain duplicate values, hence if we directly try to set address number field to 1, it will throw an error saying duplicate record found. Below is the solution to this problem.
Deploy a plugin on update of ‘Is Primary’ field on Address entity
We will see the solution with the help of below example:
Assume we have A. Datum account with 5 addresses.
| Account Name | Address Number | Is Primary? |
| A. Datum | 1 | YES |
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 5 |
Now, User updates ‘Is Primary’ Field of Address 5 as YES. Below is the data update done by User.
| Account Name | Address Number | Is Primary? |
| A. Datum | 1 | YES |
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 5 | YES |
Below data operations should be performed in Plugin.
Step 1:
| Account Name | Address Number | Is Primary? |
| A. Datum | 1 | YES |
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 0 | YES |
Step 2:
| Account Name | Address Number | Is Primary? |
| A. Datum | 5 | NO |
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 0 | YES |
Step 3:
| Account Name | Address Number | Is Primary? |
| A. Datum | 5 | NO |
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 1 | YES |
