Can anyone assist with a report that extracts the External ID field in the CRM

OK... thanks to those who offered assistance and I now feel somewhat a goose but then not altogether.

BC in its usual style of help documentation, are not at all clear in their explanation of how the Unique Id (which is actually the field 'External ID' in th CRM under the Misc section). Below is the description extracted from the import template

• The above columns represent all the available columns that can be imported using the standard contact import feature. Columns do not need to contain information but they must be present on the page, especially if a proceeding column contains information.
  
• If your organization uses its own unique identification number to differentiate between customers then use the Your ID column. If a value is present in this column then it will serve as the unique identifier. This means if the contact was previously imported and it is being re-imported then his or her details are updated, otherwise a new contact record is created regardless of whether a similar contact already exists in the system.
  
• If the Your ID column is not used then contacts are generally identified by their email address. The minimum requirement to import a contact into the system is that either Your ID, Email Address, Fullname, firstname or last name must be present on a single row. If these values are missing the the row is not imported and the import will move to the next row.
  
• If you don't provide Your ID nor an email address and only a name then the contact is added each time regardless of whether a similar one already exists in the system.

Now my understanding is that if you have used the Your Id then being the unique identifier and as such all future imports would have to use that... Well no this isn't the case at all.

If you import a set of records that all use the Your Id you can simply update those same records with just the email address - you don't need to Your Id or External Id at all!!!  So what is the purpose of this field at all? I have no idea myself as it can't be reported, it can't be exported, it can't be referenced - in fact the only way you will ever see it is to open the CRM record and expand the Misc details and buried at the bottom you will find it. Now that is what I call an undocumented feature !

So end of it all is - my concerns all proved baseless and you don't have to concern yourself with the External / Your Id field no matter what the customer does.

My advice - forget this field exists and don't bother trying to use it unless you might happen to be interfacing into some 3rd party system through PAI's as this seems to be the only use I can think of for it.

As a postscript... if you are also dealing with usernames on your CRM  records for secure zone access there is another catch...

All is fine if you users have email addresses but yes I have a client who has a large number of members who need access but don't have email addresses...

When you import these the username becomes the unique identifier - yes you can add 2 contact records with teh same name, no email, no External ID but with different usernames.

Your problem occurs if you try to do an import update on such records - if you use the same username the import will fail (and yes 1 record error message at a time on the import so check your data first).

So you can't update a CRM record that has no email address using the same username - trouble is if you provide a new username you actually create a NEW CRM record and yu don't update the original record (which makes sense).

This is where the External / Your ID does come in handy - if you use this you can update the original record including changing the username - trouble now is - you have to know what the External / Your Id is and use this in any future updates which of course you can't find out unless yuo keep some external register.

So the learning here is - try and avid setting up CRM contact redords for accessing secure zones where the contact has no email address.

If this has all confused yu - don't feel too bad... you could have shown yur ignorance of all this as I have publcily here... hope this helps others

Your only choice would be to delete those - in another post (sorry can't remember where) it was suggested thatthe only way to dlete CRM records is to apply an update with the records you want to delete and to then reverse the import which in fact delets the CRM records or soemthing to that effect. Convoluted and crazy solution I know and I just wish BC would sort out this matter of CRM updates cleanly