Processes: Types of Processes in Microsoft Dynamics 365

It can be overwhelming when getting started using workflows and other processes in Dynamics 365. So let's start by breaking down the types of processes that are available and how you might use these.

When creating a Process from the Settings -> Processes area you have 4 options:

1. Action - An Action is a set of steps configured by a CRM Administrator and then called through code (such as a plugin). This allows you to have an Administrator control the business logic but the developer could determine when that logic is used
• This is something to consider when you have limited access to a developer so you can minimize your dependence on them
• For example - You could have a Plugin firing when a task is added to a queue and it calls an Action to assign it to the manager. The Plugin could determine when it needs to fire, but the Action could control how the manager was set.
2. Business Process Flow - Business Process Flows allow you to create the ribbon across the top of a record that helps walk a user through a process
• The most common example is the sales process where a salesperson is guided through the Lead to Opportunity to Account process and encouraged to enter all the appropriate data along the way
• This can span multiple entities and include conditional branching logic based on input data
3. Workflows - Workflows are automated processes that fire behind the scenes
• These can fire automatically or be manually triggered by a user (on demand)
• Workflows do not allow for any user interaction in the process. It will not pop up and ask the user for more information to direct the process. It can wait on a specific action to occur.
• These can fire in the background (asynchronous) or in real time (synchronous)
4. Dialog - a Dialog is basically a wizard that will walk the user through a series of questions and then acts on the entered data
• Manually triggered on only one record at a time
• Relies on manual intervention
• Deprecated in v9 so don't get too attached

Business Rules are similar to processes in that they allow more complex logic to be achieved without code. These are configured within the entity or form that you want to work on. Business Rules ask for a condition and then allow actions based on that condition. The actions can be show/hiding a field, setting the value of a field, setting a field to required, etc. In 8.2 a "Recommendation" option was also added which allows you to suggest an action for a user and they can choose whether to implement or not.

Hopefully this gives you a high-level overview of the types of automation you can implement in Microsoft Dynamics 365!

December 2016 Blog Review

I hope all of you have been warm and enjoyed this holiday season! Let's catch up on all the CRM news from the past few weeks so we are ready to start the New Year off right!

Ledgeview Partners shared a list of their Top 10 Tips of 2016. These are some great tips to be an effective CRM user.

PowerObjects posted Make Your Own Custom Shortcuts on a CRM Dashboard in Microsoft Dynamcis 365. This is a step-by-step guide showing you how to add a list of shortcuts to a section of a dashboard.

PowerObjects also walked us through how to Change Business Process Flows Using a Workflow. This will allow administrators to automatically switch processes based on certain conditions so that users do not need to click Switch Process.

Hitachi Solutions had some holiday fun while helping us learn more about Dynamics 365:

• Santa Trains the Reindeer with Dynamics 365 Learning Paths
• The Eighth Day of Christmas: Yes Virginia there is a Common Data Model
• The Grinch's Heart Grows with a Little Help from the Dynamics 365 Relationship Assistant

Hosk shared Dynamics 365 - What does Include entity Metadata do. For those building solutions and curious about this little checkbox this should give you the information you need.

Sonoma Partners also talked about Dynamics 365 and posted Updates to Business Rules and Actions. This discusses changes and new features you can start using.

Mitch Milam shared a great article on Always Maintaining control of your Dynamics CRM/365 Assets. This discusses the need to have control of your system and awareness of what is going on in which environments. Also be sure to keep backups of all solutions and use Source Control for any code.

As always, make sure you look at the recent posts from CRM Tip of the Day to see if this can help with any questions or issues you are having now.

That's all for this December day. Have a Happy New Year and a CRM-filled 2017!

November 2016 Blog Review

Before everyone runs off for Thanksgiving, we can take a few moments to be thankful for all the CRM blogs in the world and the knowledge that they bring us. I am so thankful for CRMUG and how much I have learned over the years. This past year I was stretched and presented in webinars and at CRMUG Summit. It was such a great experience and I hope to present even more in 2017!

Now let's catch up on the news from the past few weeks.

Speaking of CRMUG Summit - check out Ledgeview Partners post: CRMUG Summit '16 Highlights Dynamics 365 Announcement. 

PowerObjects was sharing lots of great content here are a few I recommend you take a look at:

• Everything you need to know about Task Flows - Task flows allow you to configure a process that users can walk through on a mobile app. This can be used the simplify data entry and focus on the function. This article walks through what you need to know and how to set up
• How to Use Workflows to Find Cases Not Yet Assigned to a Queue - This walks you through how to create the necessary fields and workflows to effectively monitor cases that need to be assigned
• Dynamics 365 Q&A with Our Sales Team - Read the answers to all of your Dynamics 365 questions

RSM shared Fully Utilizing the Business Process Flow in CRM. This shows some ideas for how to combine Business Process Flows with Workflows, custom fields and other out of the box customization to make a more robust solution. Your Business Process Flow can do more than just show users which fields to fill out when.

Sonoma Partners shared Activity Feeds are Made of This. There may be some confusion about Activity Feeds vs Yammer vs Activities so this blog walks through what entities are involved in Activity Feeds and how to use them effectively.

 Jukka Niiranen also posted about 365 in Reflecting on Dynamics 365. This talks about the change in CRM technology and how Microsoft is changing with the introduction of PowerApps and Flow.

As always, I encourage you to stay up to date with CRM Tip of the Day!

That's all for today! Have a great Thanksgiving!

August 2016 Blog Review

Let's start the month of August off right with some CRM Tip of the Day:

• Tale of a Small Change - great example showing the work that goes into "small" changes
• Record Merge fails when assignee has insufficient privileges - merge issues when reparenting records owned by administrative access users
• Get your Tab order in order - a few quick tips to help users tab through fields and enter data in your system

Ledgeview Partners posted Setting Up a Sales Follow-up Workflow in Dynamics CRM. This walks through a workflow example showing the planning and final logic.

Ledgeview also shared Customize Color of Dynamics CRM Icon Backgrounds. Use these steps to theme your entity icons to match the rest of your system.

If you are interested in testing out a portal solution check out Donna Edward's CRM Online Portal Trial - Step by Step Installation.

Sonoma Partners was busy this month and shared:

• How to Use CRM Business Process Flows: The Checklist Strategy - Pros and Cons of using Business Process Flows and what it means for your system and users. Major takeaway: Have a clear, defined process and report on usage of it.
• Troubleshooting the Dynamics CRM Outlook Addin - everyone has issues with CRM for Outlook so Microsoft has provided some new diagnostic tools to assist. This article walks you through how to get started with this tool.
• What did Johnny Cash know about CRM? - this discusses the importance of planning your CRM implementation and working with a good team to make that a reality.

Hitachi Solutions posted How to Create a Voice of the Customer Survey in Dynamics CRM. Walk through these steps to create surveys that you can send to your customers directly from CRM.

Mitch Milam shared Dynamics CRM Security: Crossing Your I's and Dotting Your T's. This is a great example of the need to double check everything and never make assumptions in your system.

Speaking of security, you can also check out Leon Tribe's post on Securing Records by a Field Value in CRM. This gives an overview of how to handle a complex security situation.

PowerObjects also shared several posts this month for you to check out:

• Best Practices for Business Process Flows - this gives tips to keep in mind during the design and build phase for BPFs
• How to Disable Exporting or Printing Reports in CRM 2016 - you always want to be careful with dangerous permissions in your system. This post shows you how to turn off Export to Excel and Print access for a particular security role. Be sure to ensure that it is removed from all roles that the user has.
• Using Security Roles to Disable Custom and System Dashboards - you can now limit dashboards to only certain security roles. In this way, you can hide unnecessary dashboards from certain user groups.

That’s all for August!

March 11 Blog Review

Let's jump right in to the blogs posted this week!

CRM Tip of the Day shared The "Silent Observer" Custom Activity. This talks about how you can set Custom Activities to not appear in Activity Menus. This allows you to hide them from users but still use them for tracking of certain communication or events.

Jukkan Niiranen posted on Everything as a Service - Not Just Your CRM. This expands upon Microsoft's announcement of the CRM 2016 Spring Wave just last week.

Sonoma Partners blogged on Surfacing the Right Business Process Flow. Here they walk through a bit of information on Business Process flows such as making them available for certain Security Roles, setting the order/priority and allowing users to switch between processes.

That's all for today. Have a great weekend!

February 3 Blog Review

This blog review will encompass the updates for the weeks of January 29th and February 5th. Let's jump right in to it!

PowerObjects posted about Business Process Flows: Conditional AND Statements in Branching Logic. This explains how to properly use branching logic in Business Process Flows.

PowerObjects also shared Who Wore it Best: System Views vs. Personal Views. This gives some comparison information about the types of views and where they can be used and accessed.

Adam Vero added a post on the Exams for Dynamics CRM 2016 and 2015 Update 1. This talks about the exams that are available and some information about each.

CRM Tip of the Day posted Avoid Cherry-Picking in the Queues. This discusses some solutions for people grabbing easy items out of queues. This talks about several routing and automation ideas.

For those using the Social components in CRM please check out the CRM Team's blog video: Exciting New Features in Microsoft Social Engagement 2016 Update 1.2.

That's all for today folks. Enjoy!

June 26 Blog Review

Apparently everyone is off on vacation except for me. I just have a few quick posts to highlight for you this week.

First of all, several weeks ago we talked about the importance of people in your CRM deployment. This week Leon Tribe talked about the Top Ten Secrets to a Successful CRM Deployment: Part two – Process. This stresses the importance of planning the system with the future in mind and fixing data quality issues early before they get too out of hand.

Next I love Hosk’s blog on CRM 2013 – How to stop these Annoying Things in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This talks about fixes for annoying things such as the Outlook download reminder, pending emails notification and send error report question.

Finally, PowerObjects provided a step-by-step walk-through of Collapsing Business Process Flows in CRM 2013/2015. This shows you how to create a web resource that will hide all the Process Flow details until the user needs them.

That’s all I have. Have a great day!

April 10 Blog Review

Welcome everyone! Let’s jump right in with the CRM News from this week.

There is still lots of news coming out about the CRM 2015 Spring Release.

Mitch Milam had an interesting tidbit in Delete Plug-in Trace Log Records. As we learned last week, you can now view plugin trace data from within CRM. Interestingly enough, there is an automatic delete job set up to remove these trace records. So make sure you review that and make sure it fits your needs.

PowerObjects talked about the Seamless OneNote Integration. This allows users to quickly record notes on the record through the use of OneNote. This provides additional features like pictures which may make this easier for some users as opposed to the traditional Notes area.

Sonoma Partners posted on the CRM Online Spring Release ’15 Theming. This talks about how easy it is to change the color and logo for your CRM system. These changes can be exported/imported but not through a solution. This is a great way to brand your system or distinguish between your different environments.

PowerObjects shared a good tip on How to Fix the Omnipresent “CRM Auto Reloading” Issue. I’m sure many of you have struggled with this issue as I have and you will be happy to know that it can be resolved by changing a registry setting.

PowerObjects also discussed how Hiding a Field Does not Hide the Data in CRM. This is talking about how hiding a field via JavaScript or Business Rules only hides it on the form and the data is still accessible. Instead consider using Field level security. I also have an older post on the subject of Field Level Security vs. Not Searchable which may help you out.

Finally, we will top it all off with the top tips from the CRM Tip of the Day:

• Use an Exchange Distribution List for CRM Email Notifications – avoid having workflows that send emails to defined individuals, use a distribution list when you can.
• Why don’t I see any records in CRM Online – If you have signed up for a CRM Online trial recently, you may log into CRM and only see Service and Settings. If this is the case, double check that your user has a CRM License assigned to it in Office 365.
• Workflows on Change of Process Flow Stage – Be careful when making workflows based on the process flow stage advancing as users tend to click multiple times and then may need to go back.

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

April 2 Blog Review

This week’s blog recap is a bit early with the long weekend. Still lots of news coming in from Convergence and the Spring 2015 release. Let’s take a quick look.

Most importantly (of course) it was April Fool’s this week. To celebrate, Leon Tribe created CRM: Corpse Relationship Management. If you ever need to customize CRM during the zombie apocalypse then this is the information you will need to know! (Or if your Pets use CRM there was Pet CRM last year.)

Ledgeview Partners gave a quick overview of future features in CRM 2015 Spring Release Details from Convergence. This lists the features we can expect to see soon.

For more information check out PowerObject’s Top 10 New Features in CRM 2015 – Update 1. This includes the ability to change the color and add a logo as well as the Export to Excel change to a flyout menu instead of a wizard.

One of the changes is improvements to the navigation you can get a taste of this in Sonoma Partner’s CRM Online Spring Release ’15 – Navigation Enhancements.

Another interesting enhancement is the ability to include plugin tracing information in a new entity in CRM so it can be easily reviewed. Read about this in:

• CRM in the Field – Monitoring and Statistics for Sandboxed Plugins
• PowerObjects – CRM 2015 Spring Update 1: Plug-In Trace Log
• Hitachi Solutions – Plug-in Tracing Enhancements in the Spring Release of CRM 2015

PowerObjects also posted about some existing CRM 2015 functionality. Check out: Branching and Programmatically Branching Process Flows as well as CRM 2015 Custom Hierarchies.

That’s all for today. Enjoy the long weekend! 

January 30 Blog Review

It looks like there are lots of great posts to talk about this week. Before I do, a quick reminder, if you are in the Washington, DC area you should check out the DC CRMUG Chapter Meeting happening next week – Wednesday February 4^th.

Alight now on to the news of the week.

David Yack posted a great tip on the Risk of Adding Field Level Security Layer. This is a good reminder to consider all the implications before you turn on this feature.

PowerObjects posted about Testing Incoming Mailbox Configuration for Server Side Sync. This discusses what the Configuration Test Results mean when you are configuring Server Side Sync.

Hitachi Solutions posted a great walk through about calculating the Last Activity Date in CRM 2015. This build upon an old blog that calculated the last activity date with workflows. Now in CRM 2015 we can use rollup fields to greatly improve this process.

McGladrey walked through their favorite new features in CRM 2015: An Upgrade with more Conveniences. This touches on some features like the multi-entity search and managing synchronization filters within CRM.

The Microsoft Dynamics Team Blog released some videos for Microsoft Dynamics Marketing 2015 Update.

Mitch Miliam announced his 21 Squared CRM Administrator Course. This is a great course for CRM System Administrators. It covers the tools you need as an administrator as well as the basic tasks you will need to do within CRM and on the server.

In CRM 2015 you can now use JavaScript to interact with the process. Sonoma Partners discusses this in their post CRM 2015 – Scripting Options for Business Process Flows.

Also a few quick tips from CRM Tip of the Day:

• Change Labels on Composite Controls – Have you ever wanted to change the label of composite fields (address pops out to street 1, street 2, etc.; Name pops out to First, Middle, last)? Well here is your answer!
• CRM Server Licensing 101 – So perfect. There are no words.

So it has been a busy week! I hope I covered all the best bits. Have a great weekend!

January 23 Blog Review

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

PowerObjects gave a few quick tutorials to help with CRM 2013. First check out, What to do when: The ‘Set As Default’ button for Dashboards Disappears in CRM. This talks about how to resolve an issue that occurs when your Homepage is set to Dashboards. Then also check out, Accessing the Business Process “Name” in CRM. This shows you how you can create a workflow to populate a field with the current process that is running. This allows you to do charts and reports on that data.

Hitachi Solutions discussed Complex Goal Calculations Using CRM 2015 Calculated Fields. This describes how to use Calculated Fields to determine the weighted percent achieved.

CRM in the Field wrote about the Dangers of Guid.NewGuid();. This is more technical than I usually include but it is very interesting. Apparently when GUIDs are automatically created they are sequential to provide better SQL performance. So don’t try to create your own through plugins/integrations unless you have a very good reason.

Mitch Miliam posted a tutorial of how to Find All Activities for a Particular Entity Type. This is a very helpful tip if you want to only look at Activities regarding Accounts or something like that.

CRM Tip of the Day had an interesting Truckstop discussion about turning off e-mail tracking with CRM for Outlook. You should also check out their tidbit on Dynamic Excel Export Not Working (hint: it has to do with CRM for Outlook too).

That’s all for this week. Have a great weekend!

December 19 Blog Review

Welcome everyone! This is the last Blog Review of 2015! Where did the year go??

To start off, everyone must be sure to check out the Q4 CRMUG Magazine (look at page 33 especially)! I was honored to have been chosen as the volunteer of the quarter because of this very blog!

This week Hitachi Solutions continued their 12 Days of CRMas discussing CRM 2015 features. Here are a few days to check out:

Stop Sync Grinch – In CRM 2015 you can configure the sync pipe so you can control which fields sync between CRM and exchange. This can prevent CRM data from being overwritten by incorrect phone data. Keep in mind that with Server Side Sync, changes to the appointment will automatically be sent out to the customer. That means your notes could be sent out, even those recorded after the meeting. This is also discussed in the CRM Tip of the Day (Prevent meeting notes from going to customers).

Business Process Flows: The Gift that keeps on Giving! – this talks about the enhancements to Business Process Flows including improved look and feel, branching, and being able to loop back to entities multiple times.

Rollups Help Santa with Naughty/Nice Conundrum – This works through an example of using Rollup fields to compare the number of good things you did this year to the number of bad things. You can continue to learn about Rollup Fields in Jukka Niiranen’s Analyzing Customer Behavior Data with CRM 2015 Rollup Fields.

Related to Rollup fields are Calculated Fields. To learn more check out Leon Tribe’s MVP Blog – CRM 2015 Calculated Fields.

PowerObjects released a good tip – Email Attachments Related to an Opportunity Record in Dynamics CRM. This walks through how to use the Sales Literature area to store documents at the Opportunity level.

CRM Tip of the Day posted a few good tips as well. Check out Security Needed to Pick and Route Queue items which discusses the change in 2015 from “Work On” to “Pick”. Pick does not just changed the Worked By field but also updates the Assignment of the item. Also take a look at Going Personal with Microsoft Dynamics Marketing which talks about the MDM product and data security.

The Microsoft CRM Team Blog released the CRM Basic Training ebook this week. This is a downloadable ebook that quickly teaches users what they need to know. You can download this and customize to fit your business needs.

For those upgrading to CRM 2015, be sure to read Sonoma Partners’ blog on Unsupported Customizations in CRM 2015. This gives you some things to check for in your system before you upgrade.

That’s all for today. Have a great weekend and happy holidays!

December 12 Blog

Keep warm by the fire tonight and read up on the CRM blogs of the week.

PowerObjects had a good tip in Setting Visibility of a Business Process Flow with JavaScript in CRM 2015. This allows you to show and hide the Business Process Flow ribbon by using a yes/no field.

PowerObejcts also gave on overview of the Enhanced Business Rules for CRM 2015. This includes the addition of branching and a change so the rules are executed server side so that workflows and plugins cannot get around your logic.

Hitachi Solutions has been working through the 12 days of CRMas to go through CRM 2015’s new features, I will just highlight a few here. On the 2^nd day they discussed Hierarchical Security which allows you to define your security based on position, moving a user to a new position can then impact their security. On the 3^rd day, we learned about CRM 2015 Custom Help. This talks about the new customization options to provide help and instruction for your users. On the 5^th day of CRMas my true love gave to me EASIER SEARCH OPTIONS. This is talking about the new Global search feature and how to configure it as well as how the Advanced Find button is now included in the top navigation ribbon.

Finally, we have a few quick tips from the CRM Tip of the Day. Check out Entities not available for CRM for Tablets to get a good list of what you can and cannot display and edit through the tablet interface. They also presented the idea of Creating a Limited Customizer Role. The example discusses creating a role to allow users to create system charts but not touch other customization but this same principle can be applied in other areas. You can create roles to allow certain users to view/manage processes and system jobs but not do any customization or you can allow users to view everything in “Customize the System” but not allow them to delete or modify anything. It’s great to limit these permissions especially in your production environment. You don’t need to worry about them messing something up if you don’t give them access to!

Have a great weekend folks!

Summit 2014: Day 2 Takeaways

Sorry for the delay in Day 2 and 3 takeaways, I determined sleep was slightly more important. So let’s get caught back up.

BPM and Process Automation in CRM 2013 – Gus Gonzalez

Always keep in mind the following: (Admin rule #1) keep it simple and (Admin rule #2) check if something already exists before creating a new one.

Sales teams that adopt a sales process experience a 35% higher win rate than those with a random process.

Think about bottlenecks in your current process to find ways to automate.

Business Process Flows

Microsoft has provided Business Processes for download that you can use as a starting point (Settings -> Data Management -> Add Ready to Use Business Processes).

Required fields in the Business Process are only required to pass that stage. If they are passed that stage when the change is made, the field will not be required unless they go back.

2011 BPFs do not upgrade to 2013. In2013, you can only move to child records and then back to the parent as the last stage (closed loop).

There are many enhancements in 2015 including Conditional Branching.

Real-Time Workflows

You can leverage the “Run as” option to run as either the owner of the workflow or the user that caused the workflow to fire. Keep in mind that they will need to have access to do what the workflow is doing.

If the workflow is stopped as canceled you can return a message to the user.

Best Practice: always start workflows with a check condition.

Business Rules

Limited to one entity (cannot search parent records like in workflows).

Benefit over JavaScript is that the dependencies are automatically tracked.

If an error is returned it is displayed in a small bar, Real Time Workflows display a large pop-up error.

Actions

Actions are like workflows but called from code.

Easy to administer, allow changes without a developer.

Can be created to be used on multiple entities.

Bonus: for Duplicate Detection check out Jason Lattimer’s tool that will prevent duplicates from being created.

Partner Showcase: FastPath – Security, Audit and Compliance – Andy Snook, Nate Boettcher

FastPath provides a variety of tools to check who is editing or even just viewing data. They also have tools to help standardize and automatically assign security roles and teams.

They handle the auditing using SQL triggers on tables and add this to a custom table on the CRM server which is moved to their database overnight.

CRM 2013 Email Architecture – Gustaf Westerlund

If you have questions about your sync options check out this whole presentation for the pros and cons of each method.

Server Side Sync – [Incoming Email] cannot do “Set Regarding” so Outlook Client is still required; uses exchange web services; part of Async service; probably future investment. [Appointment/Contact/Task] filters are hard to set, some scenarios not supported, still a new technology and tracing could be better.

Custom/3^rd party program – keep in mind this will need to keep up with Microsoft Development

Note – beware of blacklisting. This can be a problem if you are sending large volumes of emails from your personal Outlook or the CRM server.

Outlook Client Troubleshooting – Derek Braun, Jon Bimbaum

When tracing the Outlook client the following types of traces can be generated: (1) OUTLOOK-CLIENT (Outlook Nav, Manual Tracking), (2) WebFormsHost-bin (web forms in Outlook), (3) crm-addin (Background synchronization), (4) ETL Tracking (event tracing) and (5) Configuration Wizard (more details than config log file).

If duplicate items are being created check the crmid (text) and crmlinkstate (number) in Outlook.

If an issue with Appointment/Contact/Task – check the SubscriptionSyncIssue table using the Outlook sync subscription ID.

If an email appears tracked but is not in CRM, use the “View in CRM” button to determine if it has been deleted.

Tools you will need: Fiddler, Debug Diagnostics (automated crash/hang analytics), Diagnostics Tracing, Notepadd++

Resources you can use for the Spring ’14 Release – Jackie Smith, Jim Daly

Review the blog: Looking for help in the CRM Product Family

All help for CRM 2013 and beyond can be found at www.CRMCustomerCenter.com

On Tech Net pages there is an “Other Versions” selector near the top of the page if you want to see the page for a different version.

Through the customer center you can download training and adoption kits. These are customizable presentations, quick videos, etc.

For developers, all resources are linked to the CRMDeveloperCenter.com

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.

July 11 Blog Review

Today is such a busy day here in America – free Slurpees at 7-11 and Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-Fil-A. Why isn’t it a holiday? How do they expect us to work under these conditions?

Moving on. Let’s take a look at the CRM news this week.

Hitachi Solutions posted New Shoes and Dynamics CRM Upgrades. This contains a great Features Cheat Sheet that describes the new features in 2013 and the Spring 2014 update.

PowerObjects posted a helpful tip: How to Open a CRM XML File on a Windows 8 or 8.1 Device. When you Export some data to Excel from CRM on a Windows 8+ device it will not automatically open in Excel. Follow the directions to fix this.

PowerObjects also posted about how to Display Business Process Values on Forms in CRM 2013. Adding these fields to your form can assist while you figure out reporting or other automation options.

There were several great CRM Tips of the Day. Check out Tip #175: Miscellaneous privileges with multiple access levels to learn where you can trim down the access those miscellaneous privileges offer. Also take a look at Tip #173: Don’t disable Quick Create for Standard Entities. This discusses what happens if you turn off quick create and try to use the tablet app.

Mitch Milam posted Refreshing you Development or QA Environment with Production Data. This goes through the important steps when you want to update the data in your other environments to match production.

Sonoma Partners loves to talk about mobile and this week is no different. Check out The Seven Use Cases Your Mobile CRM Sales Application Must Nail. This talks about the important features that your mobile workforce needs to be able to accomplish on their device. These things are necessary to achieve good user adoption.

That is all the news I have to pass along this week. Have a great weekend!