We all know that whenever we create an entity in CRM, CRM creates few fields by default. Some of these like Owner, Owning Business Unit, Created On, Modified On, etc. are used extensively while working with Dynamics CRM. But there are some fields that we use very rarely or even never; thus we tend to forget about them. But some of these fields are really important and can save a lot custom work, it’s just that we should be aware of them.
Recently there was a question on Dynamics Community regarding use of same fields which inspired me to search for them and have it documented. Few fields can be understood from their name but some fields don’t even have proper description in CRM. For such fields, below table can help. Links against the fields has more explanation and scenarios where these can be used.
Field Name | Description |
CreatedBy | User who created the record. |
CreatedOn | Date and time when the record was created. |
CreatedOnBehalfBy | To create records on behalf of another user. Used for impersonation in CRM 2011 |
ExchangeRate | When I create a record, such as an opportunity, and use a non-base currency, such as GBP in this hypothetical scenario, this is what happens:
Afterwards, when the dollar makes that incredible comeback, |
ImportSequenceNumber | The import sequence number is a whole number field. The range can be customized if needed. The basic idea behind this field is to store the sequence number (ID) of the source record during data import to CRM. If this field is mapped during migration package/script design, it provides a one-to-one link between source row and destination CRM record.
|
ModifiedBy | User who modified the record. |
ModifiedOn | Date and time when the record was modified. |
ModifiedOnBehalfBy | To create records on behalf of another user. Used for impersonation in CRM 2011 |
OverriddenCreatedOn | Date and time that the record was migrated. http://www.magnetismsolutions.~_crm_2011_part_1 |
TimeZoneRuleVersionNumber | The definition of a recurrence pattern of how local time is converted to/from Universal Coordinated Time (UTC). This includes information about Daylight Savings Time (DST) versus Standard Time. Time zone rules can change over time, thus a time zone can have multiple rules from a historic point of view, but can have only one rule that is current and in effect.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2008/05/14/time-zones-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0.aspx |
TransactionCurrencyId | Currency associated with the entity. |
UTCConversionTimeZoneCode | Time zone code that was in use when the record was created. |
VersionNumber | This column is used mainly for concurrency support. The VERSIONNUMBER field is a unique value that gets incremented as records are updated – it can be very useful. |