October 25 Blog Review

This week was extremely busy for me soaking up knowledge at CRMUG Summit in Tampa. It was a great conference with lots of information. I had hoped to be posting all week but due to an unforeseen computer dropping incident needed to be postponed. I hope to get all my notes posed very soon. When I get through this I will also probably have some links to other blogs that were discussed at the conference.

In other news the CRM 2013 Mobile Client was released this week. Conference buzz implied there have been a few issues with the release but I have not tried it myself. You can read a bit more on Sonoma Partners blog: Dynamics CRM 2013 Phone App Released.

Also Microsoft announced a Partnership with InsideView. InsideView is a product that integrates with CRM and can provide data and social insights about your Accounts/Contacts. This partnership means that CRM Online customers at the Professional level will receive the Social Insights of InsideView at no additional cost. A broader rollout will be coming sometime next year. The press release also talked about some Industry Templates that Microsoft will be releasing. These are solutions that will be available on the Dynamics Marketplace to help businesses get up and running quickly with CRM 2013.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team was also very busy this week posting several exciting blogs:

• Form Merge Post Upgrade – When you upgrade your CRM 2011 system to 2013, your classic forms will be left as they are as the default form. To move these into the new 2013 style you will need to use the "Merge Forms" button. This will simply move everything on your classic form on to the new 2013 entity form. Then you can adjust as necessary.
• Fluid Forms – The new forms for CRM 2013 were designed with Responsive Web Design in mind. This means that the layout adjusts for different resolutions and window sizes. So you do not need to worry about data being cut off or odd formatting issues that sometimes arose in old versions.
• Using the Business Process Flow Designer – This articles gives some deeper details into the Business Process Flow we have been hearing so much about. The important pieces to note are that the flow can include a maximum of 5 entity switches and the process can only be linear with a maximum of 30 steps (per entity I believe). Note: users can change the process manually right now in 2013, but automatic branching logic should be included in future releases.
• Composite Controls – This is the new functionality that allows you to enter data into one field and it will split into separate fields (think of full name and address).

For those more technical than I, you should check out CRM in the Field’s How to Debug JavaScript in CRM 2011 post-UR15. Non-technical summary: in UR 12 the way JS scripts loaded changed to improve perceived performance; however this meant they may not load in the intended order. This was "fixed" in UR 15 but it is still different than pre-UR 12 and needs to be debugged using a new method. So, if your forms are doing weird things, check this out in case it applies to you.

PowerObjects posted some screenshots and information about new CRM 2013 features: Business Rules and Auto Save. No real new information here but some good screenshots/examples if you haven’t seen this functionality yet.

Sonoma Partners demonstrated the 2013 Inline Editable Grids. Check out the video demonstrating some of this functionality. Keep in mind this will be available for some system entities in 2013 but will not be available for all entities (including custom) until a later release.
That’s all the news I have for today. Hopefully I will be back soon with Summit news. Have a nice weekend!

 

October 18 Blog Review

Relatively quiet in the blog world this week. Everyone is beginning to use CRM 2013 and posting about its features. Of course everyone is also getting ready for CRMUG Summit next week! I will be there and hope to be posting about all the knowledge I acquire.

In CRM 2011, you could set a default view simply by hitting the “Set as Default View” button. This has changed in CRM 2013. PowerObjects talks about Default Views in CRM 2013. Check out the different Pin positions to see how it relates to what is the default and how to pick a new default view.

CustomerEffective discusses CRM 2013 and working Browser Independent. Browsers that are not yet supported will automatically open in Mobile Express, there are several ways to prevent this but you also need to be aware of the limitations and work that is still being done.

Candlewest prepared a great Infographic – One CRM to Rule Them All! It shows us how much faster the Lord of the Rings could have gone if they had a CRM system to keep them organized.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team posted several helpful blogs for us this week – Manage Auto Save, Collaborate with new Access Teams, and New Capabilities in CRM Lookups. All of these give great insight into some of the benefits of moving to CRM 2013. 

Dynamics Café posted about using CRM to Support the New Customer. Customers today have a new way of buying. They research, read reviews, and look to social media. Today marketing is not what it used to be – “It is about social, it is about video, it is about turning customers into future advocates.”

Don’t forget to register for the CRM 2013 Global Premiere Event on November 4^th! This will be an hour long virtual premier live from Barcelona.

Since it’s a quiet week I want to take this opportunity to brag on CRM Rock Star. CRM Rock Star is a place where you can record your CRM and SharePoint experience and it rates you against other Microsoft professionals. This is a great way to showcase your skills and see how you stack up. I am currently #11 in the United States! (You will have to log in to view profiles.)

That’s all for today! I am looking forward to passing on all the news from CRMUG Next week!

October 11 Blog Review

This week was extremely busy for me. It also was busy in the CRM world. The latest Rollup for CRM 2011 was released and CRM 2013 became available as well. Check out this week’s top stories and blogs.

Update Rollup 15 has been released for CRM 2011. You can get all the details from CRM in the Field. The big changes in this rollup are improvements in CRM for Outlook. You can also check out the Knowledge base article for all the details.

Leon Tribe talked about how even if we do not have the Flow UI we can still design Work Processes in CRM 2011. The concept here is to create a workflow off of certain actions that causes tasks to be created. Then we can wait for those tasks to be completed prior to moving forward.

As you prepare for the upgrade, make sure you review your implementation for legacy code that is no longer supported. Check out PowerObject’s Using the Legacy Feature Check Tool to Prepare for CRM 2013.

CRM 2013 is now available. Donna Edwards posted all the links and information you will need to get started. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team also announced the CRM 2013 Customer Center, Implementation Guide and SDK.

PowerObjects discusses how to Create Business Processes in CRM 2013. Business Processes were partially available in CRM 2011 (after the Polaris release) but will be available on all Entities in CRM 2013. The process allows the system to guide users through what they need to do. These are easily created and edited by any users with the appropriate permissions.

CustomerEffective discusses another new feature of CRM 2013, Business Rules. This allows you to create rules on your form without the use of JavaScript. Some rules that can be created are setting fields to required, locking fields, displaying an error message, or doing a calculation.

Chris Cognetta posted about the CRM 2013 mobile offering. Check out the iPad Screenshot Tour and his tutorial on how to Pin CRM Tiles in Windows 8 Mobile Client.

If you are not already convinced to move to CRM 2013, check out Jamie Miley’s 7 Great Reasons to Upgrade to CRM 2013.

That should cover the top stories. Have a nice weekend!

October 4 Blog Review

It was a quiet week in the blog world this week. I think everyone is busy getting their systems and solutions ready for CRM 2013. Here are this week’s top stories:

CRM 2011

CustomerEffective was posting this week about integrating your CRM system with your phone system. The specific example was CRM Integration with Avaya one-X. They also talked about how to create a Pop-up with the Phone System.

Leon Tribe posted saying, You Know You Need a CRM System When you Have a BONA. BONA stands for: Business cards, Outlook, Napkins, (Microsoft) Access. You could also switch out Access for Excel. The problems with these sorts of systems are things getting lost, difficult to find contact information or meeting history and no way to collaborate with co-workers because data is all separate. These issues can be resolved by moving to a centralized CRM sytem.

CRM 2013

PowerObjects posted a review of Activities in CRM 2013. They show the different places to access Activities, how to create them and give a brief overview of the different Activity Types.

The Microsoft CRM Team is trying to help us prepare for CRM 2013 with Tips on Checking JavaScript code to Prepare for your Upgrade. They discuss why this needs to be done, what has changed and how to get started resolving the issues. They discuss using the Custom Code Validation Tool, Sonoma Partners also posted about it this week in: These Aren’t the 4.0 API Functions you’re Looking For. They discuss how to interpret the results and some false positives they identified.

Sonoma Partners also posted about some Administration Enhancements in CRM 2013. In CRM 2013, the performance of Quick Find queries is optimized by creating indexes automatically when searchable columns are configured. Also there are improvements to PowerShell support in that scripts can be executed remotely as well as improved error handling and reporting. There is also the addition of the CRM Best Practices Analyzer which looks and CRM Server Roles installed on your CRM Server and provides guidance about best practices and how to address potential issues.

That covers this week’s news. Have a great weekend!