September 13 Blog Review

News about CRM 2013 is starting to be released. Earlier this week the Release Preview Guide came out. Now partners are starting to talk about some of the features we should expect.

Let’s talk about the CRM 2013 posts first.

PowerObjects talked to us about two new features in CRM 2013: Quick View Forms and Portable Business Logic. A Quick View form allows you to view information about a record from within another record. To do this create the Quick View form and then edit the form for the related entity where you want the information to be displayed and add the Quick View form component there. This feature enables you to display more of the required information in one place. Portable Business Logic is a built-in way to perform actions usually handled with JavaScript. The blog works through an example and shows how to set up the full rule. This Portable Business Logic is called “Portable” because it can be used on multiple forms and works on all browsers/platforms/devices.

Here is a quote from PowerObjects Portable Business Logic blog:

Portable business logic allows you to define business rules for each record type. You can use it to do any of the following:

• Show a message to the user

• Change a field value

• Set a field as business required/not business required

• Show or hide a field

• Lock or unlock a field

 You can set all of these actions to occur based on conditions you set in the business rule. Conditions can be based on one of the following:

• If a field contains data or doesn’t contain data

• If a field contains a certain value or doesn’t contain a certain value

• If a field equals or does not equal another field value

Richard Knudson also posted on this logic also known as Business Rules. He works through a more complex example and includes lots of good information. There are some limitations to this functionality. For instance, you can only do a single set of conditions. So you can say if A is true, do B; but you cannot add an otherwise (else) if to this. Branching requirements will require multiple rules or going back to JavaScript. You also can only use fields in the Entity that the rule was written form.

McGladrey talks about the Business Process Enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. Process can now span multiple entities. Also the concept of synchronous workflows has been incorporated so users can see the change take place real-time. There is also the addition of Role-Based processes so a workflow can be triggered based on the user’s security role.

Some other new features for CRM 2013 include the new clickable Phone Number fields and Access teams which allow dynamic record access.

As mentioned previously, the Release Preview Guide came out this week. There were several blogs in relation such as CustomerEffective and CRMSoftwareBlog. The Preview Guide covers many of the features we have already talked about today. Most of it is still general but there is insight into the goals of the changes. Obviously better user experience is key with simplified data entry and flat forms. Also it is clear that we are moving into a code-free experience. So many things can now be down with built-in features. This will enable Microsoft to move forward with yearly releases because having all of this built-in with greatly simplify the upgrade process.

Also some great posts came out about CRM 2011.

CustomerEffective describes how to use Cases in CRM to Manage your Email. When you track an e-mail you can convert it to a Case. This is related to the customer and others with access to the customer can assist you when working on the issue or question.

Leon Tribe posted a great blog: Setting Long-Term Workflows in Dynamics CRM. This describes how to set up a workflow that will set up a date 1, 3 and 5 years in the future and wait until that date before resetting the date. It demonstrates how to use the Set To operators as well as Timeouts.

That concludes all the exciting news for today. I hope you enjoyed all the CRM 2013 news on this Friday the 13^th. It is spooky how close we are getting to the release.