July 19th Blog Review

Last week was far too exciting. This week has been a very mellow blog week only a few things to report.

My favorite blog this week can from a guest blogger at Power Objects – Planning a Wedding? Here’s a Novel Use for CRM…. This blog reminds me of my own Real Life CRM blog a few weeks ago. It also makes me really wish I had used CRM for my wedding. My very large spreadsheet seems so silly now.

At the end of last week Update Rollup 14 was released. Microsoft’s CRM in the Field blog has a great summary and all the links you need. See last week’s blog review for the important pieces in this rollup.

Leon Tribe also had a good post this week about Importing Appointments with Multiple Attendees. This can be difficult because lookup fields will only accept one value through import. So Leon suggests we use two imports – one for appointments and one for connections – along with a workflow.

Short and sweet. We need this blog break to recover from last week’s big announcement of CRM 2013, news from the WPC2013 and the release of UR 14. Have a nice weekend!

July 12 Blog Review

It has been far too long since my last “weekly” blog review. Lots of interesting things have been happening in the CRM world.

Most importantly, the new version of CRM was officially announced as CRM 2013. We have some news from the Partner Conference as well as Update Rollup 14. Let’s cover the other notable topics of the last little bit.

PowerObjects had a great tutorial on Maintaining CRM for Outlook. I have found the Outlook client to have many odd problems and am always looking for quick fixes. This describes how to use Diagnostics utility (Advanced Troubleshooting area) to delete the temporary files and resolve issues such as disabled ribbon buttons, records not displaying properly and sync issues.

CustomerEffective posted about a good way to set up your Outlook filters so your most-used contacts will sync to your Outlook. This allows you to be more prepared for your calls with clients.

Also, for those in the Health sector, we learned about how CRM is not innately HIPAA Compliant but it is HIPAA Capable – learn methods for securing the information here.

Finally, CustomerEffective also posted a good list of questions to ask when choosing a software vendor. The best vendor for one company is not necessarily the best vendor for every company. When choosing a vendor your company needs to be prepared to discuss your system; needs and future goals, then find out how this vendor can help. Also make sure to ask for and follow up with references.

Chris Cognetta is keeping us up to date on all the exciting news in the CRM world. Check out these great posts:

• Orion Announcement and related posts
• World Wide Partner Conference Subscription Update
• CRM 2013 Screenshots

Leon Tribe has a great blog on The Difference Between Selling and Consulting. I love it because of this line, “idea that the client needs a consultant who will say yes to any request is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster.” This is so true. If the consultant is always saying yes here is the way we can do that, even if it’s complicated or not supported, this is a problem. The system will end up over-complicated and not useable. Consultants always need to have the best future interest of the customer in mind even if it means saying no to something they want – or perhaps looking harder at an easier solution to their issue.

Madrona provides some good tips for Effective Release Meetings. How to avoid the dreaded day-of-release questions/changes.

As already mentioned Microsoft announced that CRM 2013 (formerly known as Orion) will be released in the fall. MSDynamicsWorld has been keeping us up to date on all the news to do with this including the Press Release, Pricing Options and Product Roadmap.

Preact CRM has a good preview of the new CRM 2013 interface, lots of great screenshots. I love the new ribbon look and the easy access to recent records.

Sonoma Partners also has their take on the new release again highlighting that this will feature only the process-driven forms but JavaScript is said to be supported. Also we get a glimpse into Update Rollup 14, more on that below.

Update Rollup 14 – Released on 7/11/2013: Download, Knowledge Base Article

Fixes to take note of:

• Better performance around User and Team caching. For example, a user is a member of 15,000 teams. You login as this user and it takes a long time to cache all the data. If you login as another user, you see the same problem due to clearing the cache.
• Description field in activity views shows HTML style information.
• Outlook folders are filtered only per the user’s security, and does not take into account the security of the team the user is a part of.
• Memory errors in 32-bit CRM for Outlook when you go offline.
• Formatting exceptions occur during data import.
• "Show only my records" in lookup dialog box doesn't always show just my records.
• When you click View existing record in CRM in the Outlook client, nothing happens.
• Sum of currency type field displays an incorrect currency symbol.
• Printer prompts for 8.3" x 11" paper when you print a report that was created in the report wizard.

Sadly nothing as interesting as UR 13’s “You cannot install Update Rollup 11 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on a computer that has a French version of Windows, SQL Server, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 installed.” Or UR 12’s “When the "Preview all items in Auto Preview" setting is enabled for the Japanese language option in Outlook, Outlook crashes.” But that is probably for the best.

Adam Vero also wrote a great blog explaining Security Roles and Teams. It is long but definitely worth the read. The main takeaway for me was that assigning a team a security role gives the users in the team that access relative to the team. Meaning, if the team had a role with Business Unit access to Accounts and it is in business unit A and I am in business unit B. It would give me access to the accounts in Business Unit A (the team’s Business Unit) not my Business Unit.

That’s all for tonight. I hope I covered all the important bits. Sweet CRM Dreams!