The summer busyness continues to take a toll on my blogging.
This will be a review of basically the last month of CRM news. Let’s get
started with all the Spring Wave news and then we will go through the other
blogs over the last few weeks.
Spring Wave CRM 2013
Updates
A hot topic these past few weeks has been the Spring ’14
Wave of features. To get all the information you need, first check out CRM in
the Field’s Podcast
and Overview of CRM 2013 Service Pack 1. Then read all these other blogs as
well:
PowerObjects wrote a great tutorial on Instalingl
Spring '14 Wave, Leo Product Updates on CRM 2013 Organization.
CustomerEffective also talked about Getting
Ready for Spring ’14 and gave some tips on things to keep in mind.
The Spring ’14 Wave had a major focus on the service area,
Jukka Niiranen talked to us about Case
Creation and Routing. Check this out to better understand the service
improvements that could help your organization. PowerObjects also talked about Spring
'14 Wave Closing Case with Open Activities, the update gives user the
option to complete the case with open Activities and those Activities will be
canceled. They also went through many more of the service features in their blog, but there is not enough time
to cover them all today. CustomerEffective chimed in with What’s
New With Queues.
CustomerEffective also talked about the Spring Wave with
more information on the Server-Based SharePoint integration - CRM
Online Spring '14: Server-Based SharePoint Integration.
Scott Durow talked about the Command Bar updates in the
Spring ’14 wave in And Then
There were seven! Now the command bar allows 7 buttons instead of the 5
previously.
Several Blogs produced their top feature list: PowerObjects Top
10 Spring Wave Updates, CustomerEffective’s Top
5 Features You Might not Know about, Scott Durow’s Top 3
Fixes, and finally Preact CRM’s Top
12 Service Improvements.
However, the feature I am most excited for is Workflow
OR Conditions in CRM 2013 SP! (Thank you
Adam Vero for giving this insight.) Currently if you wanted to create an OR in
a workflow condition you would need multiple ifs and duplicated logic and more
thinking than should be necessary. This will save so much time in complicated workflows!
Tips
Reporting is a very valuable feature in CRM. It can be even
more valuable if you set the reports to run on a schedule and email them out to
people. Learn how in CustomerEffective’s walk through - CRM
Report Scheduler.
PowerObjects posted a helpful tip is Color
Code Tracked Appointments in Outlook. This shows you how to set up
conditional formatting so that your CRM appointments will appear in a different
color on your calendar.
As new features are released for CRM it is important to know
what system requirements need to be met. CRM in the field released Supported
Configurations in Next Version of CRM which relates to the “Vega” release
of CRM.
Sonoma Partners talked to us about Controlling
Access to Access Team Templates. If an Access Team template is deleted, all
of the associated Access Teams will be deleted. This could cause a major
problem in your system so ensure you lock down this security and train your
users.
PowerObjects gave a quick tip - Adding
Columns to Marketing List Members Sub Grid. This describes how to add
columns to the default view of members of a Marketing List. Keep in mind, if
you just need to pull this every once and a while you could also build a find
for all Contacts who are a member of a certain Marketing List. This will allow
you to pull in all the information you need as well.
CustomerEffective taught us how to Retrieve
a Record GUID in CRM 2013.
Scott Durow talked through important system pieces to be
keeping an eye on in Monitor!
Monitor! Monitor!
If you have ever had issues with workflows utilizing certain
records but needing to update the links between Dev and Live, check out
PowerObjects’ Utilizing
GUID’s for Importing Data to Multiple Orgs. This shows you what can be done
to resolve that issue.
CustomerEffective wrote a great blog on Business
Process Flow Lessons Learned. This described the benefits and issues with
Business Process Flows and what to consider when you build them for your
organization.
I think that is enough for today! Have a lovely weekend!
