November 27 Blog Review

It is a shorter blog review today with so many on vacation for Thanksgiving. That means you should start it off by reading a few themed blogs Hitachi Solutions shared CRM Features to be Thankful For and CRM Tip of the Day posted about the Top CRM Turkeys.

I would say the CRM features I am most thankful for are Workflows and Advanced Find along with Export for Re-import. Workflows allow me to automate processes without needing to involve a developer. Advanced Find allows me to find detailed information about a record or isolate instances where a particular situation is occurring. I’m also very thankful for the CRMUG Community and how it has really helped me learn and grow as well as make so many friends in my field.

But back to the regular blog review as there are a few quick items I want to focus on.

PowerObjects shared Troubleshooting Tips: Why isn’t my Business Rule Working? This walks through how to troubleshoot a few common issues you may run into with Business Rules. A helpful tip that was mention was that Calculated Fields cannot be used in a Business Rule or to trigger workflows. Keep this in mind when you are planning your logic.

Develop1 posted Option-Set, Lookup or Autocomplete. This talks through the different options you have to avoid using free-form fields. They talk about the options for each and the best options for specific scenarios.

That’s all for today. Have a lovely weekend!

November 20 Blog Review

Let’s jump right in to the CRM news of the past few weeks!

Update 0.2 for CRM 2015 On-Premise has been released. For all the information review CRM in the Field’s Overview Blog.

PowerObjects shared Manipulating the Value of Days Remaining between Today and the Expiration Date in Calculated Fields. This shows you how to modify the Days Remaining field so that it will not show a “-ve” value when the expiration date is in the past.

Adam Vero the CRMGuru posted an interesting post on Figuring Out Shares in the PrincipalObjectAccess POA Table in CRM. This provides more information about how shares are saved behind the scenes and how to view/interpret that data.

Chris Cognetta shared the Great Microsoft Cloud InfoGraphic! This shows the number of users that are on the different Microsoft cloud offerings. It shows why this is such a large area of emphasis and why this continues to be important for future growth.

Leon Tribe blogged about the Post MVP Summit Roundup. Unfortunately not too much information can be released yet but at least we can see everyone’s smiling faces and get a little glimpse into what it is like to be a CRM MVP. Also mentioned was that the CRM 2016 features that have already been announced were presented and provided a much better understanding of the capabilities. So be excited for more information at the end of the year!

Finally, one quick tip from CRM tip of the day is what to do with Disabled User’s Personal Views. Everyone runs into a situation where a user leaves and their views remain assigned to that now disabled user. Check out this post to see 3 possible solutions.

That’s all for today folks. Have a great day and Happy almost Thanksgiving! (In America, or happy almost Christmas, Thanksgiving was forever ago why are you still talking about it in Canada :) )

November 6 Blog Review

This was a lovely week for CRM because it was the Washington, DC Chapter meeting! We had a full house to talk about Marketing. See all of the notes on DC Chapter Community Blog.

If those notes don’t give you enough information about the topic, also check out Sonoma Partner’s Microsoft Dynamics Marketing: A Few Tips and Tricks.

For general tips, look at PowerObjects post on Copying a Workflow. We have used this fairly often in my environment to start a similar workflow by making the original a template temporarily.

User Adoption seems to be the ever present problem. Ledgeview Partners presents some ways to help in 8 ways to Increase CRM User Adoption on Rollout Day. There are some great tips in here including storing videos in CRM. (I loved the tip of linking to a SharePoint folder of videos with the custom help from Summit Day 3.)

Finally, for a taste of the season check out CRM Tip of the Day’s Pumpkin-Spiced CRM. No description required but let’s just say it makes me want to go get another red cup.

That’s all folks. Have a great weekend!