How to Enable Queues to support Contacts and Use Workflow to add Contacts to a Queue in Microsoft CRM 2011

Recently, I have been involved with how Microsoft Dynamics CRM could help with the education sector.  One interesting scenario is how to reach out to each student at least once a month by a pool of different department representatives (Teachers, Counselors, Admission/Administrative/Registration/Finance Staffs, etc.) within the school that the student is attending.

A typical approach would be to create corresponding CRM Activities and add them to a queue.

However, another creative approach is to put the Student (CRM Contact) records into a Queue and have them accessible by the pool of different department representatives to take actions on.  This is possible with MS CRM 2011 – CRM Queues can support most of the CRM entities including custom entities.

Here is how to enable MS CRM Queues support for a CRM entity:

• Open the CRM entity General tab under customization and select the “Queues” option

Then we can use Microsoft CRM Workflow to assign the CRM Entity to a Queue based on some workflow event and condition:

• Use Create Queue Item to assign a corresponding CRM Entity to a specific Queue

 

Frank Lee
Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP since 2006