Screen pop & phone number formatting

One of the biggest challenges for Dynamics organizations is the formatting of phone numbers. Dynamics stores phone numbers as a string. As such, searching phone number values with various formatting options for the same number and various country formats make it near impossible to cover every variation to enable consistent search results across all InteractionSync customers. Currently to solve this, InteractionSync has a consistent approach to searching phone numbers while allowing customers to search based on their own formatting situation. Both methods are described in this document.

Genesys Cloud has standardized on the E.164 number formatting as it has become the accepted international standard for number formats. The number is prefaced by a ‘tel:’ behind the scenes to indicate the correct protocol when being used by web-based communications products. For example, if an incoming call in the US had a phone number of (302) 232-5555, then Genesys Cloud would present that number as tel:+13022325555. A number from the UK that has the phone number of 020 7123 7805 would be reformatted by Genesys Cloud to tel:+442071237800.

While E.164 is the international standardized format, it doesn’t mean the phone numbers in all systems are formatted that way. Often, new leads are imported into Dynamics 365 from a spreadsheet or other data source which didn’t to ‘clean’ the numbers on import.

The first challenge is to determine there is a standard phone number format throughout your Dynamics instance. Is there a predominant format for numbers inside of your Dynamics instance even if it’s not the E.164 format? If yes, then this document will help you search effectively for screen popping your contacts/accounts/leads with InteractionSync. If you have multiple different formats because no standardization has occurred within your Dynamics instance, then you’d be best served to first consider taking steps standardize your numbers. We’d be glad to help with that! But you’ll also potentially be able to use the following steps as well, or combinations of them to achieve good results.