September 27 Blog Review

As we approach the impending release of CRM 2013 I suspect that this review will continue to be divided. Half is for the future, half is for the past. Let us begin.

News about CRM 2013:

PowerObjects describes the new Inline Lookup Controls in CRM 2013. When clicking the search button on the lookup, records will display with basic information about the record. If the records shown are not what you are looking for you can either choose “Look up more records” or use the new Quick Create functionality to create a new record.

CustomerEffective describes some of the new Quick Features in CRM 2013. One of Microsoft’s biggest objectives with this release was Reimagined Experience. To aid with this (as well as Mobil and general user adoption) they have created quick features to help users accomplish tasks faster. There is the Quick Create which allows users to create a new record with just basic information without leaving the screen where they are working. There is also the Quick View to see the important highlights of a record. Magnetism also posted a good comparison of these features: Quick Create vs. Quick Forms.

For our CRM Online folks, Chris Cognetta explains what you need to know about the New License Model for CRM 2013. There are now several different license types and you can be flexible and assign different licenses to different users. How do you decide who gets what type of license? See Chris’ response:

Here’s the key – If the user is creating Sales Entities (Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities etc.) then they need the Professional License. If the user is a backoffice user only updating (Not creating these records), then they could use the basic license. XRM applications not making use of the main these records types can really benefit from the Essential license to access Customized Entities.

Correction: Basic User licenses cannot use Opportunities.

Preact CRM posted CRM 2013 FAQ’s. They go through some of the top questions they have received from users with their answers.

Also this week I attended the MSDynamicsWorld Webinar What Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 will mean for the Enterprise customer. Most of the topics discussed were items that have been highly publicized already. They discussed the “One Microsoft” (integrated product suite) with the 4 key goals of: Reimagined Experience, Process Agility, CRM on the go and Social in Context. Also there will be twice-yearly releases for Online with a yearly On-Premise release that will be a rollup of the Online releases. Update Rollups will be delivered every 12 weeks. These twice-yearly releases do not include the Marketing Update releases. See Slide Below.

Most of the interesting points came out in the questions. The mobile apps that will come with the release are built on a new mobile framework called MoCA (Mobile Client Application). This allows developers to write apps that will work on multiple platforms. This will be available to ISVs and partners so they can write their own apps using this framework.

On the topic of marketing – Marketing Functionalities will never be available for On Premise deployments. These features will ONLY be available with CRM Online. This is because of the functionality involving working with other marketers and organizations, sending working copies, etc. This would not be able to work correctly On Premise.

News about CRM 2011:

PowerObjects also wrote about how to Assign Records to Inactive Users. This can be beneficial if you want to migrate old data. You do not want to give it a generic owner but you also don’t want to use too many CRM licenses. So create new users and then deactivate them. If you ensure they have a Security Role, records can still be assigned.

CustomerEffective introduces the CRM Data Detective! This is a cool tool available on CodePlex that allows you to look at how fields are being used in your organization. It is a good way to find fields that you may need to emphasize or remove. This topic has come up in my organization and I look forward to trying out the tool.

Leon Tribe talks to us about how to Report on Activity Parties. The User fields on an Activity (Owner, Required Attendee, Regarding, Sender, etc.) have Activity Party records. So Activity: Regarding = ABC Company; this means that the Activity has a related Activity Party for ABC Company with the Participation Type = Regarding. This is helpful to keep in mind when you build Advanced Find views. You cannot build an Advanced Find based on Activity Parties but you can include them in the filter criteria as a related record. Also, you can create Reports using the Report Wizard and pull in Activity Parties as the Related Record type. Then you can list the Activity Parties directly in the report.

This concludes the review of all the key things that were posted this week. The excitement is building for CRM 2013. We are only a few weeks away. CRMUG Summit is fast approaching as well. I hope to see all of you there!