Topic: ‘Dynamics CRM’

This toolbar is frequently neglected, and very commonly unnoticed by a large majority of CRM Users. However, if used correctly, this toolbar can save you hours of valuable time down the road.

Here’s a quick highlight of what the Basic CRM Toolbar has to offer:

1. New Activity creation: You can quickly create brand new Activities from this dropdown. A lot of people will create brand new Activities from the Account, Contact, Opportunity, etc. in question. However quick typers and CRM experts can save time by creating them from scratch from this toolbar. Click Save & New at the top of the screen if you’re creating more than one, and you can create 10 Activities in less than 2 minutes.

2. New Record creation: There’s no reason to navigate all the way through the system to find what you’re looking for in order to create a brand new record. By creating a new record from here, you can save time by not hunting for the entity listview.

3. Go To: This allows you to only click once and land on the location to which you want to navigate. Are you going to Duplicate Detection Rules inside of Settings? This would take you three clicks to go to. IF you use the Go To, you only click once – just scroll down to Settings, Data Management, and then Duplicate Detection Rules.

4. Tools: Want to set your personal options? Are you trying to import 500 Leads into the system? Are you wanting to run a Duplicate Detection job in one click? This is where you need to go. No need to travel all the way to the Settings area.

5. Advanced Find: Hands down my absolute favorite part of CRM – Advanced Find (Workflow almost ties for first, but I’ve been on an AF high for a while). You can search for just about anything inside of CRM with a few simple lines of criteria. Editing columns is easy as pie, and you can export anything you pull to Excel in a flash. And it’s real-time….there’s no “wait until the next morning to see the updated results.” Nothing beats instant gratification.

Really like the toolbar, but work from Outlook? The Basic CRM Toolbar is there, too! Just look for the CRM ribbon among your toolbars at the top of Outlook.

Click here to view an article illustrating the basics of Outlook synchronization. Here’s a snippet from the Microsoft Download Center regarding the article:

“Both the online and offline versions of the CRM Outlook Client support synchronizing CRM contacts and CRM activities to Outlook folders, or Outlook synchronization. Outlook synchronization enables Outlook users to view Dynamics CRM information, including contacts, tasks, phone calls, letters, faxes, appointments, and e-mails, within the Outlook interface.”

Please note: you need to have Update Rollup 7 or newer in order (or Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online November 2009 Service Update or newer) for this to be applicable to you.

Not on a recent rollup? Click here to download Update Rollup 9.

Setting your Personal Options is like choosing the right playlist on your MP3 player before going on a road trip. It’s not required, but it’s going to be a pain when you try and choose the playlist going 70 down a four lane highway. Getting your ducks in a row before entering data into CRM will keep inefficiency – and stress – at bay.

I usually advise clients to set at least their basic Personal Options before diving head first into utilizing CRM. Choose your currency, apply the correct Time Zone, select what you want to view as soon as you log into CRM – these are a few of the options on the General tab.

Here are my top three reasons for setting your Personal Options before using CRM:

1. Access Speed: Are you in Marketing? Maybe you would want to view Campaigns, Marketing Lists immediately from your Workplace pane. Are you a sales representative who spends time analyzing Leads? You can select to default to your Active Leads view as soon as you open CRM in the morning.

2. Time Saver: Would you want to fill out the Currency field every time you create an Opportunty? I wouldn’t. Unless you specify your default currency, you will have to enter the Currency field before you populate any monetary fields.

3. Maximum Record Availability: No one wants to spend 5 minutes scanning through a collection of 50 record per page listview. Set the Records Per Page to 250. This will minimize your efforts and maximize your results.

If you set your Personal Options beforehand, you will save time in the future and be a more productive CRM User in the process.

Already using CRM? You can still set your Personal Options. If you’re wondering why you’re still only seeing 50 records per page, it’s because your Records Per Page has not been altered from the default.

I have received a lot of questions regarding Advanced Find views, both from blog viewers and current clients. Most of the questions circle around sharing or assigning Advanced Find views. There are two ways to allow other Users in the CRM system to view an Advanced Find view you create: Assigning or Sharing.

Assigning an Advanced Find view: this will allow the other User(s) to have full privileges with the view (read, write, delete, etc.). At the same time, you are giving up your ability to perform actions upon it. So if I assign one of my views to another User, they now own that view and can do anything they want with it. Unless they give me view access through Sharing, I will not even know the view exists anymore.

Please note – when you are assigning the view, you are not relinquishing ownership of any records contained in the view or pulled by the view’s criteria. You are merely giving the User(s) the ownership of the filter criteria. If I share a view of My Leads from Trade Shows, the person viewing the results of the view will see those specific Leads that are still owned by me.

To assign an Advanced Find view, go to the Saved Views tab inside of the Advanced Find window. The listview pulled contains all of the personal AF views that you currently own. To assign a view (or multiple views), highlight the view(s) and then click the Assign icon (it looks like a guy in a blue suit with a green arrow pointing to the right).
 

Click this, and toggle the Assign to another User option. Specify the User, and then click OK.

Sharing an Advanced Find view: this is the most popular option, especially from a management POV. You can allow your team members to view the filter criteria as long as they have permission to view the records pulled by the search.

Please note – when you share a view, you are not sharing the records pulled by the criteria. You are merely alllowing others to utilize the filter criteria specified within the view, and utilize the view in the entity’s dropdown options. They will still only be able to see, edit, or assign records upon which they currently have privileges.

To share an Advanced Find view, follow similar steps towards assigning (see above), however instead of clicking the Assign icon, click More Actions. Then select Sharing. This will allow you to utilize the basic Sharing functionality.

Select a User by clicking Add User/Team. Then apply the privileges you want to allow them to have. Then click OK.

I hope this clears the air and explains a little more about sharing and assigning personal Advanced Find views inside of CRM.

DynamicsCare: Expert Dynamics GP Advice & Tips Webinar Series. 

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GP Fixed Assets – I.B.I.S. Analysis Cube for Excel
Date: 3/2/2010 11:00-12:00 EST
Speaker: Amy Walsh, I.B.I.S. Senior Consultant and David Duncan, I.B.I.S. Consultant
I.B.I.S. has developed a custom Excel Analysis Cube around Dynamics GP Fixed Assets. This webinar will demonstrate utilizing the Cube to better report on Fixed Assets data in Dynamics GP.

Click here to download the latest Rollup from the Microsoft Download Center.

The E2 team at Microsoft has released another informative whitepaper: Security and Authentication in Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Connectivity and Firewall Port Requirements in On-Premise Deployments. You can download the document here at the Microsoft Download Center.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog has posted a great summary of the article. You can view the post here.

Workflow is one of the most desired functionalities inside of CRM implmentations, and one of the driving forces behind the utilization of CRM. The Microsoft CRM Team Blog has posted some great information regarding workflow best practices on their blog.

Click here to read the article.

When working with clients, I get plenty of questions surrounding Advanced Find, especially from companies that are utilizing SSRS Reports. “What can it do for me?” or “How do I do this?” or “I don’t want to have to run this every day. Can I save it?” All of these questions are great for many reasons, including educating the client on things that they can do on a day-to-day basis in terms of informal “reporting,” and generating personalized views to see on a daily basis for personal or group utilization.

Advanced Find, which in my opinion is kind of like an informal BI tool, allows you to manipulate the data in numerous ways, giving you ad-hoc insight into the data you have in your system without having to shell out the big bucks for a SSRS Report. This is something that end users can do anytime of the day without the need for a technical consultant. I am going to highlight a few questions that I am usually asked as well as answers to those questions, and I will also provide some AF ideas for you to use inside of your system.

First of all, here is a quick Q&A:

1. What can it do for me? AF can manipulate the data contained in your system by allowing you to create what are called “clauses.” You can create AND/OR clauses to display conglomerate or mutually exclusive results, or you can create one single clause to display a large amount of data with less specific properties. How many Leads have been created in the past week? Month? Year? How many of these have not been modified in 7 days? 14 days? How many customers do I have in Atlanta, GA? New York, NY? Miami, FL? How many Leads do I have without an email address? As you can see, you can find all of this information easily by adding one or two clauses to the AF query. After you have the results, you can do a number of different things with it: save it as a personal view (or share that view with related parties who are CRM users), export it to Excel, perform a mail merge, etc.

2. Is it easy to use? Yes, it’s very easy to use. Once you get used to the language of the Advanced Find criteria queries, you’ll be fine. But it does take some time to get used to. If you’re a technical user, you may understand it and how to use it the first time. However, some others may find that they need to spend about 20 minutes trying a few different queries before fully understanding it. All I can say it – do not give up if it is frustrating. The value you get from utilizing this ad-hoc search feature is priceless.

3. Can I choose what fields I want to see in the results view? Yes, the columns are completely customizable. Before you click Find to pull the query results, you simply click Edit Columns on the main criteria window view. This will allow you to add or remove columns as you wish. You can add columns from related entities as well (for example, if you’re searching for Contacts, you can add a field from the Parent Customer (or the Account) related to those particular Contacts).

4. What if I don’t want to run this every day? You can save it as a personal view for yourself (it will appear as an option in that entity’s listview options), or you can create it as a personal view and share it with other users. This is handy for regional views – you can create one for each region and share it with the respective users.

I use Advanced Find extensibly on every project, so I’ve been exposed to many view types and criteria. I’ve generated some great view ideas that users can easily generate themselves and use on a day-to-day basis:

1. Lead turnover query: Open Leads created more than 1 month ago
 

Leads should be in the system no longer than one or two weeks (one if you have a large amount of Leads coming in, two if you have a large amount of Leads coming in). Sometimes Leads may slip through the cracks, and going back and seeing which Leads are past due may not be on your priority list. Having this quickly accessible view on hand will keep you from having to do unnecessary research.

2. Opportunity pipeline queries: Open Opportunities closing in the next three months

There is already an Opportunity view that displays all Opportunities closing in the next month; however this new view allows you to look at a kind of “quarterly” opportunity pipeline. It may not be the exact 1st, 2nd, etc. quarter, but looking at a three month pipeline will give you a good view of future income without looking too far into the future. You can add additional clauses if you would like, or adjust the months.

3. Prospect list: Active Accounts that have an Account Type of Prospect
 

The out of the box environment does not have views that separate the different Account Types. This view allows you to see all of the current Prospects in the system. You could also streamline this into all of the current prospects that YOU own.
 

This allows you to easily access an exhaustive, real-time Prospect list within seconds. You could manipulate this view to look at any other Account Type in the system, as well.

As you can see, Advanced Find has the ability to allow you to manipulate data inside of the CRM system. You can create these ad-hoc “reports” almost instantly and without much effort, and the amount of value you can gain from utilizing this functionality is exponential.

How much do you know about Microsoft Dynamics xRM? If you’re a Dynamics CRM Consultant or Partner, I’m sure you’ve heard some exciting rumors about the growth of the concept and potential that xRM has to offer. Click here to view a new article on MSDynamicsWorld.com regarding the urge by Microsoft to take xRM “to a new competitive level.”