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Whilst visiting a client last week, I was introduced to the CTPS (Commercial Telephone Preference Service) it occurred to me that this would be great to integrate into MSCRM as part as a qualification/data cleansing routine.
The data is available to download for a small fee, your data should really be updated every 3 months.
The process currently implemented at this client was very time consuming and required a fair amount of manual interaction included downloading the data in the first place.
This took me to my browser searching for a more effective way to use this rather useful service.
After searching, I came across Data-8
Data-8 are a data solutions provider that offer services that revolve around data cleansing and validation area. More importantly to this article, Data-8 provides a CTPS/TPS web service that allows you to input a telephone number and it will tell you whether the number is in fact on the CTPS/TPS list and therefore disallowing you to call this number.
This was exactly what I was looking for, what made things even easier was that they have even provided samples in the 2 key languages that I was interested in for Dynamics CRM 2011 development (C#.net & JavaScript)
In order to make this solution as flexible as possible, I decided this function was better placed in a custom workflow activity for the following reasons.
1. Flexible enough to be triggered on certain events within CRM such as the creation of a lead record.
2. The custom workflow activity can have its parameter as any telephone field on a record and output anywhere in the workflow process.
3. The user can add this functionality to their existing processes such as a lead qualification workflow.
Once registered you should be able to see the workflow activity in the options
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Add the Telephone Number field you would like to check into the "Telephone Input" value.
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Add the Custome Workflow Activity Result to the workflow output (Used in a Condition)
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Below is the full workflow process created to make use of the custom workflow activity.
In this workflow, the processes are as follows when a new lead is created:
1. Start
2. Workflow checks if the Business Phone field has been populated.
3. Checks phone number against CTPS database and return a value
4. If CTPS returns TRUE, update the ALLOW option in the contact methods and update description to say CTPS PASS and supply the current date
5. If CTPS returns FALSE, update the ALLOW option in the contact methods and update description to say CTPS FAIL and supply the current date
6. End
As well as developing a Workflow activity, this function could be placed into a web resource script and fired from an ISV button on a CRM record, taking any telephone field as the input parameter. This will then allow the user to do this on the fly.
The source code for this workflow is available here (all you have to do is add your username and password in the code and rebuild) though it may be in your interest to create two more input fields for the username and password to be entered for a more flexible user experiance.
A big thank you to Data-8 for their help & their permission to use their product in this article.
Thanks
Jonathan