Duplicare can standardize the formatting of the telephone numbers on your rows to improve matching of telephone numbers in a Dedupe+ Rule regardless of the punctuation that may be entered around a telephone number, and can also assist with CTI systems that require the telephone number to be entered in a specific format.

Creating a Phone Number Field

A Phone Number Field row identifies the column that holds a telephone number and specifies the type of formatting that should be applied. To get started, go to Phone Number Fields and click New.

Enter the table name that holds the telephone number. This should be logical name of the table, e.g. account, contact, lead. As you type a drop-down list will appear to help you out. Once you’ve entered the table name, enter the column name as the logical name of the column within that table that holds the telephone number. Again, a drop-down list will be shown as you type.

As most people tend to enter telephone numbers without a country code, enter the Default Country Code as the dialling prefix that should be assumed if one isn’t specified, e.g. 1 for North America, 44 for UK.

A new column will be created on the table to store a standardised version of the telephone number. If you want the original telephone number column to be updated with a standardised version, use the following options to control how it should be formatted:

• Current Country Format Type
  For telephone numbers that are in the same country code as that entered in the “Default Country Code” column, use this formatting.
  • None
    Leave the telephone number as originally entered by the user.
  • National
    Change the telephone number into national format, removing any leading international dialling code.
  • International
    Change the telephone number into international format, adding a + and the default country code if required.
• Default Format Type
  For telephone numbers that are in any other country code, apply this formatting.
• Format Punctuation
  If set to “Yes”, applies the country-specific punctuation rules that apply to the telephone number. Depending on the country this could involve adding spaces, parentheses, dashes, or other characters to make the telephone number appear in a more natural format to the user.

When you save the Phone Number Field, the row will show in “Initializing” status. At this point, any telephone numbers added or modified will have the relevant formatting applied to them. At the same time, a background job will start extracting all the existing telephone numbers, standardizing them and re-importing them into Dataverse/Dynamics 365. Once this is complete, the status will change to “Active”. At this point, the standardized versions will be used for matching in Dedupe+ Rules.

Technical Details

When the Phone Number Field is saved, an additional column will be added to the table. This will have the same display name as the original column but with “(Standardized)” appended to it. Regardless of the formatting options specified, this will always store the telephone number in full international format without any punctuation. This is used by the Dedupe+ Rules and can also be used for CTI systems. This column will be removed when the Phone Number Field is deleted.