In the following lines, you will find an overview of the Global Address Book concept, that's key for any implementation regarding Dynamics 365 applications.
What is the Global Address Book?
Where the magic relies on. This means where is located all the master data regarding an organization. This master data could be people (internal and external) or organizations that are connected or work with your organization. For each of them, party records are associated, and depending on the nature of the data there will be different form fields. See examples below.
An organization will contain the following fields:
A person will contain the following fields:
Alert: configuration needed
As you know, we need to configure and set some parameters before starting. This is an easy but mandatory task, so do not underestimate it.
Log into the main Dynamics 365 Human Resources dashboard > Organization Administration > Global address book parameters.
You will find two tabs, and both are very important. Pay attention to all the configurations you are setting now.
In the first one you will set up all general parameters, where you select default values and settings for the party records.
And in the second one information related to private location security information, in here you will select which roles can access private address and contact information
Done! Now we can continue.
Let's talk about the roles...
Every record is asigned to a party and each of them will be associated at least with one party role in a company. The available party roles are the following:
🙋♂️ Applicant: someone who requests to fill an open position in an organization.
🏆 Competitor: an organization that offers similar goods and services that you provide.
📞 Contact: an internal or external person that has been created.
🛍️ Customer: who purchases services or goods.
🔎 Prospect: a party able to provide a service to a legal entity.
👤 User: who uses the system.
📦 Vendor: a product supplier for at least 1 legal entity that gets payment.
👷 Worker: employees or contractors.
Don´t panic! As you can imagine some organizations or persons require more than one party role. That is totally fine and even good for your company, the well-being of your system users, and of course as a good-smart practice. Some benefits of assigning more than one party role to a record is an easy understanding of the relationship between people/organizations with the company and specific department or areas, as well as an easier and simpler way to maintain data. Update only once instead of 3 or 4 times.
Two situations while creating a record in the Global Address Book
I don´t know the role 🤔
Just create the record within the Global Address Book and add the role later. Remember to add the role later!!! Don´t be a pain to yourself or your colleagues.
Log into the main Dynamics 365 Human Resources dashboard > Organization Administration > Global address book
Select New and add all the information you know. Then select Save.
I do know the role 😉
Lucky you! In this case, is simpler, you go to the appropriate page where the new records need to be created. The record is automatically created in the Global Address Book because you are using the proper page for the party's role type. If you need to create a worker you go to Personnel Management > Workers, if you need to create a user you go to System Administration > User.
I hope you find this article interesting and insightful. If you have any question or feedback let me know!