March 2017 Blog Review

Let's jump right in and catch up on all the CRM News and Training that has been floating around this month!

PowerObjects shared several great how to articles:

• Creating a Bookmark that Shows the Schema Name for a CRM Field - this allows you to quickly click a favorite and change all the display names on a form to show the schema names. This can also be done using Sonoma's CRM Dev Tools which is a great chrome extension!
• A Study in Editable Grids in Three Parts - Walks through setting up Editable grids in your environment
• A Must Know Shortcut: Adding Hyperlinks to an Email Template in Dynamics 365 - this is for anyone who has created an email template in an HTML editor, opened it in IE, copied and pasted into a CRM Template just to get a link to show up correctly.

Ledgeview Partners shared how to Turn your Report into a Dashboard in Dynamics 365/CRM. Take all your beautiful reports and make them easily visible within the dashboards your team is accessing.

For those interested in getting certifications, be sure to check out Hosk's post containing Dynamics 365 Certification Study links.

Sonoma Partners posted Bulkify Bulk Edit which walks through several ways to improve the out of the box Bulk Edit functionality with the help of workflows and plugins. In addition it gives some great background information on Bulk Edit.

Sonoma also shared Dynamics 365: Miscellaneous Security Permissions. This explains what those extra permissions actually control in your system.

And of course you should check out the CRM Tip of the Day!

Releasing Field Level Security Profiles

Field Level Security (FLS) is a great feature which allows you to lock down certain fields to specific users or teams. You can control who can read the data, create the data and edit the data. This allows administrators to account for many security needs. For more detailed information on Field Level Security review this TechNet documentation.

It is also a good idea to use solutions when moving customizations and this includes customizations to your security model and security settings. These are areas that can greatly impact users so they always should be tested in a development environment if possible.

Here are some things to keep in mind when moving Field Level Security Profiles between environments:

1. The field must have FLS enabled before the FLS Profile can be updated. This means your release process must be a 2 step process: (1) Import a solution containing the field and publish, then (2) Import a solution containing the FLS profile and publish. If all is contained in one solution you will get a warning on the FLS profile but not an error. Then all permissions for the field (with FLS freshly enabled) will be set to No. This means that only Administrators can view and edit the field.
2. When creating a new FLS profile, members must be added in each environment. The linked teams and users are not included in the solution and must be added manually.
3. Test thoroughly in each environment. Remember Administrators will always have access to any field with FLS enabled so other users need to be involved in testing. If one users is doing the testing for multiple roles, double check your changes and have them clear their cache between test cases. This will ensure any issues from items 1 and 2 do not occur.

How have you used Field Level Security? Any other tips for Administrators to keep in mind?

February 2017 Blog Review

Let's quickly catch up on the CRM news floating around this past month.

First of all, the December 2016 update for Dynamics 365 is available so you should check out the release notes and podcast. Keep in mind this is just version 8.2 so more like a 2016 update then any kind of upgrade.

PowerObjects posted a great resource on Troubleshooting Solution Import Failures. This walks through common error scenarios as well as gives some general customization tips to avoid these issues.

Ledgeview partners shared 10 tips to Improve User Adoption. This has some great tips for your training and keeping your team informed. Also remember to have strong executive buy in and ensure managers are involved so they can keep their people accountable.

Hitachi Solutions shared What is the Dynamics 365 Common Data Model? The article explains what the Common Data Model is and how you can use it as an Admin or Developer.

As always, you should keep an eye on the CRM Tip of the Day for help with all kinds of issues and questions.

Any articles I missed? What topics are you interested in about CRM right now?