Michael Cross – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Consultant

Do you think that different types of organizations (e.g., customers, prospects, vendors, etc.) or people (customers, prospects, service providers, etc.) should be tracked in different entities within Microsoft CRM 3.0?

For example, should you leave customers within the Account entity, and vendors within a custom entity? Why or why not?

One reason why you should do your best to keep organizations within the Account entity, and individuals within the Contact entity is so that you can take advantage of as much native functionality within CRM as possible.

For example, did you know that sending an e-mail only works with Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Users, and Queues? So if you create a custom entity with an nvarchar attribute in the format of e-mail, Microsoft CRM will not be able to use that entity or field to send an e-mail, either manually or via workflow.

Want to use the Case Management functionality to track cases for customers and other types of organizations tracked using custom entities? Sure, you can do that. What they don’t tell you is that you should not expect to be able to send automated e-mails to the organization shown in the lookup for the custom entity.

This is just one example of limitations of custom entities.

So when it comes to companies and people, be smart and stick with Accounts and Contacts.