When the ClickDimensions solution is installed, it adds custom entities to your Dynamics 365 (D365) database and UI. These entities are provided to allow your users to access ClickDimensions features as well as to store data generated by the integration. Two primary data drivers can potentially result in large volumes of data—email and web analytics.
Email Analytics
- Sent Emails (cdi_sentemail)
Store a summary of interactions for each recipient of a particular bulk email (Email Send). - Email Events (cdi_emailevent)
Store the granular interactions. One Email Event record is created for each interaction—opens, bounces, clicks, etc.—with an email. - Unsubscribes (cdi_unsubscribe)
Hold global unsubscribe data whether that data has been imported from a legacy email marketing system or generated over time using ClickDimensions. - Excluded Recipients (cdi_excludedemail)
Store why a recipient was excluded from an Email Send—previous bounces, an unsubscribe (or opt-out preference), a missing email address, etc.. - Posted Preferences (cdi_subscriptionpreference)
Store a recipient’s opt-in and opt-out preferences for your subscription lists.
Sample of Email analytics data
The amount of data generated will vary depending on usage. For example, if an Email Send has 100,000 recipients, then 100,000 Sent Email (or Excluded Recipients) records will be created. Email Events records for bounces, opens, clicks, and more would also be created, with each record containing one interaction per a recipient.
So if that Email Send results in a 25% open rate, 4% bounce rate, and 12% click-through rate, approximately 140,000 total new records would be added to the D365 environment the email was sent from.
| Sent Email (or Excluded Recipients) records | 100,000 |
| Email Events (bounces) | 4,000 |
| Email Events (clicks) | 12,000 |
| Email Events (opens) | 25,000 |
| Unsubscribes | 500 |
| Total records created | 141,500 |
If your company plans on sending weekly emails to 100,000 recipients, this could result in over 560,000 new records being added to D365 each month.
Web Analytics
- IP Organizations (cdi_iporganization)
Stores the IP address of visitors to your site; not duplicated if multiple visitors share an IP. - Anonymous Visitors (cdi_anonymousvisitor)
Stores unknown visitors from your site. - Visits (cdi_visit)
Stores each visit by an Anonymous Visitor, Contact, or Lead. - Page Views (cdi_pageview)
Stores each page on your site which a visitor has viewed.
Sample of Web Analytics data
For example, let's say your site attracts 10,000 visits per day with most visitors originating from different IP addresses and each visitor views an average of 1.5 pages per visit. If each visitor only visits your site once a month, then more than 1 million total records per month would be created in your CRM.
| IP Organization records (95% from different IPs x 30 days) | 285,000 |
| Visit records (10,000 visitors/day x 30 days) | 300,000 |
| Page Views (10,000 visitors/day x 1.5 pages viewed x 30 days) | 450,000 |
| Total records created in 1 month | 1,035,000 |
TIP—for high-traffic sites, place the ClickDimensions tracking script only on pages that are most important for your sales and marketing users to see within CRM. (For example, a page representing a PPC ad conversion.) Placing the script globally would record every single page view, regardless of importance, and potentially flood your CRM with too many records to process.
Additional Types of Data
While these types won't add as much data as web analytics or email, they are still worth noting so you're aware of what data can be created.
- Forms and Surveys
A Posted Form/Survey record will be created in D365 for each submission along with a Posted Field or Survey Answer record for each field on the Form or Survey. - Event Connectors
Event records are created for each event from a connector (GoToWebinar, Eventbrite, Webex, and Cvent). Event Participation records for each participant who registers for an event. - Campaign Automations
Participants receiving an email from a Campaign Automation will have an individual Email Send record created. (If many participants go through the Send Email action at the same time, they will all be on the same Email Send record.) Sent Emails, Email Events, and Unsubscribes would be created as expected with a regular Email Send. - SMS messages
Messages sent through ClickDimensions or incoming replies to them will be recorded as Text Message activity records.
Database Size Growth
Keep in mind that your D365 database will grow in size over time and the rate at which it grows will vary depending on your overall usage of D365. ClickDimensions, other integrated applications, and your maintenance plan (i.e., bulk delete jobs) will all impact that growth.
As a rule of thumb, D365 records created by ClickDimensions will take up 1kb-2kb per record in disk storage space. Using the examples cited above (sending a weekly bulk email to 100,000 recipients and tracking 10,000 website visitors per day), you could expect to see approximately 1,600,000 new records created a month. Meaning approximately 1.6GB to 2.4GB of storage space needed each month. So please plan in advance which data (especially web tracking) is important to capture, which data you will keep, and how long you will keep it.