Friday, January 10, 2014

January 10 Blog Review

I have been a horrible blogger. The holiday seasons got the best of me. My last recap was November 21, so I guess we are talking about all the news from the last 7 weeks.

PowerObjects has been busy blogging away. Here is a recap of the top articles:
  • Creating Dialogs in CRM 2013 – walkthroughs creating a sample dialog in CRM 2013. This is very similar to CRM 2011.
  • Control Access to Business Processes by Security Roles in CRM 2013 – One of the features of Business Processes in CRM 2013 is role-based processes. That means you can determine which processes are available for which security roles. This is similar to role-based forms (understandably since the process appears as part of the form).
  • How to user CRM Workflow Templates – workflow templates can be very powerful as they all a round-about way to “save as” a workflow. Basically you can turn your existing workflow into a template then create a copy from that template. Workflows can be changed from Process to Process Template and back at any time.
  • Table Merge Error with Upgrading 2011 Organization Database to 2013 – When upgrading from 2011 to 2013 there is a change that will require you to merge the tables within the database (no more extension base tables). When you go to make this change you may encounter an error, this blog explains how to resolve it.
  • Adding Custom Rules for Ribbon Buttons Using JavaScript in CRM 2011 – How you can define a custom rule on the ribbon using JavaScript within a web resource.
  • Removing the Guided Process Bar in CRM 2013 – To remove the Guided process bar, simply deactivate the running process.
  • Formatting a Phone Fields in CRM 2013 – Presents the JavaScript code necessary to automatically format phone number fields when they are modified
  • Best Practices Analyzer for CRM 2013 – The Best Practices Analyzer is a new tool for CRM 2013. It allows administrators to test the server’s configuration and receive recommendations based on best practices. Check out the end of the blog for other helpful links to prepare for CRM 2013.
  • Retrieving Data from a Related Entity with Real-Time Workflows in CRM 2013 – Relationship mappings can be very helpful if the child record is created from in the parent and if the parent never changes. However, if the child is created in different circumstances you need a way to get this data. Real-time workflows allow you to fill in those fields as soon as the parent field is set.
  • Actions in CRM 2013 – Actions are a new type of process in CRM 2013. Default actions are things like Create, update, and delete. Custom Actions allow us to build functionality that is then called by a plugin. Then this functionality can be updated as necessary without the help of a developer.

PowerObjects also announced The CRM Book. This is an online resource that is free for everyone. Check it out the next time you are researching.

 CustomerEffective was getting into the spirit of New Years with a recap of the best blogs – 2013: The Year In Microsoft Dynamics CRM from the Customer Effective Blog. This highlights their top blogs in different categories such as solutions, technical or general news. They also celebrated Christmas with 12 Days of CRMas, this features 12 blogs on their favorite CRM features.

For those of you that have upgraded to CRM 2013 the Microsoft Premier Field Engineering team posted some helpful information:

Richard Knudson discussed Conditional Field Requirements with Business Rules and Real-Time Workflows. Previously requirements such as these needed to be coded in JavaScript on the form. Now anyone can create these rules in CRM 2013.

Jukka Niiranen posted several interesting blogs over the last few weeks:
  • Similar Opportunity Analytics with CRM 2013 Quick View Forms – interesting scenario where a customer wants CRM to tell it which products to recommend to a customer. This solution uses the Quick View forms to do it.
  • Auto-Numbering with CRM Workflows – The basic concept of this solution is to create a “Counter” entity to hold the current counter value, this is linked to the entity you want to count and then you use a workflow to set the value on the record and increment the counter. This can be done with a regular asynchronous workflow but your values will not be unique. Instead use a Real-time workflow so that the processing happens right away.

 Chris S posted a good two part blog on how to handle E-mail bounces: Part 1: Creating the entity to capture the bounce and Part 2: Importing the bounce record.

That is all the news I have time for today. Hopefully we will be able to continue this new year on a more consistent schedule.

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