The External Interaction module provides a structured approach to capturing, routing, and managing incoming communications from external parties across multiple contact channels. The module enables organizations to track correspondence with partners and stakeholders, manage public inquiries, document constituent engagement, and maintain comprehensive interaction histories with consistent follow-up and resolution tracking.
Typical use cases include tracking correspondence with partners and vendors, managing public inquiries and citizen requests, documenting stakeholder meetings and engagements, constituent management and casework, and coordinating responses to external communications across organizational teams.
Using the Module
The module provides forms and views to capture external interaction information from initial receipt through assignment, progress tracking, and final resolution. Foundational reference data is established using External Interaction Topics to categorize inquiry subjects with hierarchical parent-child topic relationships enabling detailed subject taxonomies, and External Interaction Sources to document originating channels, programs, or referral organizations that generate incoming interactions.
When external communications are received, External Interaction records can capture identifying details including reference numbers, received date and time, and method of contact (in-person, phone, email, social media, web form, mail). Contact information can be structured with fields for first and last name, phone numbers (home, mobile, work), email addresses (personal, work), mailing address with country and state/province lookups, and social media URLs. When the submitter is an existing contact, Person (Contact) lookups can establish persistent relationships. Each interaction can document topic classification, source attribution, interaction type, priority level, and detailed descriptions of the inquiry or communication content.
The module supports internal routing and assignment workflows through integration with standard Dataverse Queues. Interactions can be placed into Queue Items for team-based workload distribution, enabling organizations to route inquiries to specialized departments, subject matter experts, or geographic service teams. Action status tracking provides visibility into interaction lifecycle stages from new receipt through in-progress work to final resolution. Follow-up dates and due dates can be established with separate first response due dates and resolution due dates supporting service level commitments.
Throughout the interaction lifecycle, Progress Notes fields can maintain running commentary on actions taken, questions asked, information gathered, and coordination efforts. Supporting activities can be tracked through standard Dataverse activity entities including Appointments for scheduled meetings, Phone Calls for documented conversations, Emails for electronic correspondence, Letters for formal written responses, and Tasks for action item tracking. These activities provide an auditable timeline of all engagement touchpoints related to each external interaction.
The module includes an Interaction Assistant custom page that streamlines common interaction management tasks. The assistant provides a unified interface for updating progress notes, drafting acknowledgement messages using AI (optional feature), resolving interactions to existing or new contacts, routing to queues, and marking interactions as resolved.
When interactions reach resolution, Resolution Notes fields can document final outcomes, answers provided, actions completed, or reasons for closure, building an organizational knowledge base of common inquiries and standard responses. Custom page state fields can preserve user interface context for complex multi-step interaction management scenarios.
graph TD
appbase_Country(Country)
appbase_ExternalInteraction(External Interaction)
appbase_ExternalInteractionSource(External Interaction Source)
appbase_ExternalInteractionTopic(External Interaction Topic)
appbase_StateorProvince(State or Province)
appbase_ExternalInteraction --> appbase_Country
appbase_ExternalInteraction --> appbase_ExternalInteractionSource
appbase_ExternalInteraction --> appbase_ExternalInteractionTopic
appbase_ExternalInteractionTopic --> appbase_ExternalInteractionTopic
appbase_ExternalInteraction --> appbase_StateorProvince
The External Interaction data model provides structured tracking of incoming communications and engagements from external parties across multiple contact channels. It supports reference data for topic categorization and source attribution, detailed contact information capture, internal routing and assignment workflows, progress tracking, and resolution management with integrated activity timelines.
Tables
External Interaction
Represents a single incoming communication or engagement from an external party. Captures reference numbers, received date and time, contact information (name, phones, emails, address), method of contact, topic and source classifications, interaction type, priority, action status, due dates (first response and resolution), detailed descriptions, progress notes, resolution notes, and relationships to Person, Queue, and related activities.
External Interaction Topic
Categorizes external interactions by subject matter or inquiry type. Supports hierarchical parent-child topic relationships enabling detailed subject taxonomies for improved routing, reporting, and knowledge management.
External Interaction Source
Documents originating channels, programs, referral organizations, or intake mechanisms that generate external interactions. Used for source attribution, trend analysis, and partnership tracking.
Queue
Standard Dataverse entity representing team-based work queues for routing and distributing external interactions to specialized departments, subject matter experts, or geographic service teams.
Queue Item
Standard Dataverse entity linking external interactions to specific queues for workload distribution and team-based assignment workflows.
Person
Core module entity (Contact) representing individuals who submit external interactions. Enables persistent relationship tracking, contact history views, and constituent management when the submitter is a known contact.
Country
Core module reference entity for standardizing country values in external interaction mailing addresses.
State or Province
Core module reference entity for standardizing state or province values in external interaction mailing addresses, linked to countries.
