Addresses in CRM explained....

We recently came across a request for data correction where the customer had lost some of their address data. No addresses were displayed on the Account form. One would think all that was corrupt was the address and having them type in the address on the form should do the trick. But no, with the address missing even when they tried to manually re-enter the address in these records, they were unable to, it would throw an error. That’s when we found out the following

When you open an Account, you are presented with a set of fields for storing address. If you check the CRM account entity details, you will find there are actually two sets of address fields available. By default only address_1 set of fields are placed on the form, but you can also add the second set of address_2 fields.

Besides this we are also provided with the option to add multiple other addresses under the More Addresses section on the account form.

Common perception of this design would be that 2 default set of address fields have been added on the account entity for ease of access and use. They have the Customer Address entity to store the more addresses associated with the Account.

We just happened to find out that this is not really the case. All addresses are only stored in the Customer Address entity.

When you create a new account/contact, it would by default in the background add 2 entries in the Customer Address entity for the 2 set of address fields available on the Account form. CRM distinguishes these entries from the rest of the entries to be displayed in More addresses using the Address number column. Address number 1 and 2 are reserved for the 2 set of address fields available on the account form.

The reference to these is stored in the Account entity schema using the address1_addressid and address2_addressid.

Hope this would help someone out there understand the technical concept of addresses much better from now on