August 28 Blog Review

It has been a quiet week in the CRM blog world as everyone prepares for the long weekend. Let’s see what has been going on.

PowerObjects wrote about Editing XML Charts in Dynamics CRM 2013. This goes through how to export your charts and update them to fit your specific needs.

Hitachi Solutions blogged about Adding CRM Shortcuts in Outlook in Windows 8 – previously you could simply drag your CRM folders up to the Favorites, since you can no longer do this they developed a workaround to make CRM easier to access.

CRM Tip of the Day posted how to Make Dashboards More Touch Friendly. This gives some ideas on how to help users who use an iPad to look at their CRM dashboards.

If those iPad users are having trouble accessing CRM you should check out Jukka Niiranen’s Troubleshooting CRM for Tablets Login Issues with ADFS.

That’s it. Have a great weekend!

August 22 Blog Review

Let’s check out the CRM news from this week!

CRM Tip of the Day had a series of blogs this week about the Spring ’14 features. They compiled some great videos on: Mobile, Sandbox Instances, Developer Features, Service and Cases, and Other Stuff.

Hitachi Solutions walked through How to Change the Tiles on the Menu using the Sitemap Editor. This shows how to remove tiles you don’t need to make it easier for your users to navigate.

Hitachi Solutions also talked about Lessons Learned using Business Rules in CRM 2013. This walks through situations that are good cases for Business Rules as well as when you should consider a different option.

Also related to Business Rules, McGladrey posted Business Rules in CRM 2013 are missing One Key Feature. This goes of the limitation that Business Rules will only run on forms that have already been saved.

That’s all for today. Have a great weekend everyone!

August 15 Blog Review

Let’s take a quick look at the CRM news and blogs that came out this week.

Dynamics Café posted 7 Social Listening Tips for Customer Service. Fred Studer talks through tips on how to keep your organization’s social strategy on track including empowering employees and creating a social media policy.

A common trouble administrators have is ensuring their Development environment matches production. PowerObjects talks through How to Create a Copy of a Poduction Instance in Dynamics CRM Online. This describes the process of replicating production in a development environment for CRM 2013 online, through Office 365.

If you need to do more intense analytics than available with the built in options of Charts, Advanced Find, and Reports you can try Exporting Dynamic Pivot Tables out of Dynamics CRM (Thanks again PowerObjects). This walks through how to create a PivotTable from your CRM data and how this can be dynamically updated from CRM.

One of the exciting features of CRM 2013 is the Business Process Flows that can move between entities. Hitachi Solutions discusses Dynamics CRM Cross-Entity Business Process Flow. This discusses a Lead to Opportunity sales process, some items to keep in mind and notes on what the process is actually doing. An important consideration that is highlighted is how this affects your existing records – what will happen for records that are already mid-way through the sales process but at the beginning of the process flow?

Joel Lindstrom of Hitachi Solutions was involved in the CRM 2013 Quick Start book. He posted an excerpt from the book on Quick View Forms on the Hitachi Solutions blog. This discusses the benefit of using Quick View forms and some important information to remember.

All of the new developments in social and marketing are very exciting but it can be difficult to find the information that you need. Leon Tribe compiled all this information into Getting Demos for Social Listening and Dynamics Marketing.

Let’s finish up by looking at a couple CRM Tips of the Day from this week:

• Don’t forget the Cascading – security is more than the Security Role. Also check the relationship properties on the entity to see what kinds of permissions are cascading.
• Understanding Upgrade Options – another excerpt from Joel Lindstrom and the CRM 2013 Quick Start Guide. This walks through the CRM 2011 to CRM 2013 upgrade options and the benefits and risks of each.

That’s all for today.

August 8 Blog Review

Two weeks to review this week.  Let’s take a quick look at the tips and tricks that have been floating around about CRM.

PowerObjects posted a great tip to help you tell the difference between your DEV and LIVE environments. Check out How-to: Change the Default Blue Color in CRM.

CRM Tip of the Day had several great tips worth checking out:

• Recurring Goal Creation Strategies – Goals are a nice feature but you need to create a new one for each time period, I cannot just say I want this same goal every month. However, there are some ways to make this recreation a bit easier. This post goes through those methods and what each entails.
• Check your Duplicate Detection Rules after Solution Imports – I have personally needed this tip within the last few weeks. Make sure you check your Duplicate Detection rules after each release to make sure the rules you need published are still published.
• What does “reparent” Mean? -  This walks through what the Reparent cascading relationship means and the security effect it has on your system.
• How to Display Entity Image on CRM Form – in CRM 2013 you have the option of adding images to your records. This shows how to take advantage of that feature.

The Microsoft CRM Team Blog posted a video last week – Learn a few new Tricks in Quick Tips for CRM for Tablets video. This goes through some features of the Dynamics CRM Tablet app to help you work more efficiently.

Salentica posted a good blog describing a CRM 2011 Rollup 17 issue – Rollup 17 Breaks Deployment Manager. If you are having an issue importing solutions with plugins into your Rollup 17 environment, check the deployment manager and see if this is your issue.

That’s all the CRM blogs I have for you this week. Have a nice weekend!