July 2017 Blog Review

To get started, Microsoft released a new Dynamics 365 Documentation site. This makes sure all the training and information you need is front and center. Also check out Ledgeview Partners Overview of the site.

Ledgeview Partners also posted on Planning for CRM Success: 4 Key Characteristics of a Successful Project. This talks about the important areas to focus on when releasing a new CRM or even doing an upgrade to ensure the project is a success.

On a related note, Sonoma Partners discussing Driving Project Value through Change Management and Project Management integration. These tips are helpful in the initial implementation of CRM but also in the on-going product support and CRM expansion within your organization.

PowerObjects shared a tutorial on Auto Capturing Emails. Learn why you would want to automatically capture emails and how this will display for users.

PowerObjects also walked us through how to capture audit data using Real-Time Workflow: Capturing Pre and Post Values. Keep in mind that out of the box audit records do not allow for Advanced Finds or Workflow interaction so solutions like they demonstrate are necessary if you want to act on Audit changes.

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Team Blog shared Predicting Business Outcomes with Customer Insights. This gives us a look into how Customer Insights can be used to drive business.

As always, make sure you check out the new tips on CRM Tip of the Day before getting back to your summer fun!

January 2017 Blog Review

Welcome back to another exciting year with Microsoft Dynamics CRM!

I hope all of you are already involved in your local CRM User Group. For those in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area please check out the groups in Richmond, Reston and Chevy Chase (DC). At the DC Chapter, we have scheduled all of our 2017 meetings and these dates/links are below. Please come out and join us for our first meeting of the year on February 22. We will have a presentation on Power BI and a user upgrade success story.

CRMUGDC 2017 Meetings:

• February 22
• May 17
• August 2
• November 15

Let's jump into the CRM blogs and news from the last month.

Leon Tribe posted on Actions: The New Workflow Function. Actions are steps designed in a workflow but called from code. This allows business-side administrators to control some steps or logic in a larger coded effort. Now in Dynamics 365 these can be called from workflows with the added benefit of accepting and returning values.

Sonoma Partners shared Driving CRM Adoption through Effective Communication. This discusses the need to determine where the business is and where you want it to be and then building a strategy to bring you there.

The Dynamics 365 Team blog discusses how to Make Business Recommendations Based on Business Intelligence with Dynamics 365. This gives some examples of how you can guide users and help provide recommendations using Portable Business Logic.

Everyone has been super excited for Editable Grids in CRM. PowerObjects takes this opportunity to show you 2 Rockin' Ways to Enable Editable Grids with Dynamics 365.

Ledgeview Partners shared Dynamics CRM workflow: Mapping Data between Fields. This is a quick walk through of how to create your first workflow and set up dynamic field updates.

As always, be sure to review the CRM Tip of the Day to make sure you didn't miss anything. Have a great day!

October 2016 Blog Review

October has been a very busy month for CRM. We have had the announcement for Dynamics 365 and of course CRMUG Summit (my recap coming soon, see Sonoma's right now). Let's jump right in to all the blogs that have been flying around throughout the month.

Ledgeview Partners showed us how to create mappings in Auto-Populate Opportunities with lead Data in CRM.

PowerObjects walks through a workflow example in Using Workflows to Switch Between Business Process Flows Automatically.

Hitachi wants to keep everyone's CRM systems running smoothly and shared 15 tips and Safegurards to Speed up your CRM Server.

Sonoma Partners also posted performance tips this month in Dynamics CRM Performance Considerations. This focuses on changes inside of CRM (security, views, etc.) whereas Hitachi focuses a bit more on server and more technical items.

Also check out RSM's Two Easy Ways to Improve CRM Forms. This shows some ways to use web resources to quickly make changes such as moving check boxes to the other side or adding instruction boxes.

Everyone struggles with CRM for Outlook troubleshooting. To assist with this the Microsoft support blog posted a multi-part series giving information and troubleshooting tips. Here are a few parts I would recommend:

• Settings that affect Synchronization and Tracking
• Highlights and Simple Methodology for Troubleshooting
• Simple list of Troubleshooting Tools

Of course we should also talk about Dynamics 365. So start off with PowerObjects' What is Dynamics 365? and then for more information read Hitachi Solution's Understanding Dynamics 365: What you Need to Know and How it Affects your Business.

That's all I have to share. Anything I missed? What exciting news have you been following?

September 2016 Blog Review

One of the big events of September was Microsoft Ignite. There are lots of highlight blogs available for you to check out or you can even watch the recordings of the key sessions. I did not watch all the sessions but I particularly enjoyed this Demo of HoloLens with Lowes. So many amazing possibilities in the future!

Let's jump into other blog news with some articles shared by PowerObjects:

• How We Get Marketing and Sales to Play Nice - with CRM as the parent in Charge - this reviews the common arguments from both sides and how CRM can help by providing transparent data and ways to better define the transition between marketing and sales as well as identify issues.
• Make a Field Required in a CRM Dialog - Use check conditions and child dialogs to effectively make a field required in this examle
• Color me CRM: Matching Theme and Logo Colors in CRM - This shows you how to quickly determine the right color for your navigation bar

Server-Side Sync is still relatively new so Microsoft produced a white paper on how it works. Check this out to gain a better understanding of the ins and outs of how your data is syncing.

If you are looking to migrate to CRM Online check out these Tips and Tricks from Dynamics CRM in the Field blog.

How to pick a partner is always a hot topic. There are so many factors to consider and things to keep in mind. Sonoma Partners offered some guidance in 5 questions to Ask When Evaluating CRM Consulting Firms.

Let's finish things off with a few notes from CRM Tip of the Day:

• Add Variables to you workflows - this is a great tip to remove explicit references from your workflows by using a custom action to set a variable
• You can now use timezone in your appointments - you can now build logic to mimic timezones in Outlook
• Add the number to your phone call records - great usability tip to display the phone number in your phone calls and then use a workflow to append this to the subject to make it even easier

That's all folks!

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!

December 11 Blog Review

This time of year is very busy with parties and gifts. So we will keep this quick so you can rush off to your cookie exchange.

Microsoft sent us the gift of CRM 2016 last week. This week came all of the documentation and more information about new features. The CRM Team shared the CRM 2016 Product Wave Documentation. This has links to many different documents and videos to help you prepare and transition to 2016.

The CRM Team also shared information about the new Task Flows feature. Check out, What are Task Flows and how do they compare to other tools in CRM? 

Then, when you are ready to build your own you should read, Creating and Customizing Task Flows.

Lastly for today, if you are looking to make a change in the new year you can review Sonoma Partner's Infographic on Resume Tips from the Recruiting Desk.

That's all for today folks. Have a lovely weekend!

September 18 Blog Review

 With CRMUG Summit quickly coming up, let’s start this review with an article from Microsoft – the Do’s and Don’t for Striking up Conversation. This gives some quick networking tips and ideas to consider.

The CRM Team Blog posted an update to the Scalable Security Modeling White Paper. This includes new information about hierarchy security modeling and optimizing your design for security.

Ledgeview Partners shared – Lookup Field vs Option Sets in Dynamics CRM. This talks about option sets, global option sets, and lookup fields and the values for each type.

PowerObjects posted about Enhanced Field-Level Security Features in CRM 2015. System Fields are now available with field level security and there are several other enhancements to look into.

PowerObjects also shared 10 Data Export and Import Redesign Features in Dynamics CRM Online 2015 Update 1. This talks about improvements with the export functionality as well as new features like being able to update through Excel Online.

That’s all I have to share today. Have a great weekend!

September 11 Blog Review

We have lots of CRM tips and news to catch up on from the last 2 weeks. First of all, the big news is the CRM 2016 was officially announced. Check out the press release, video and release preview guide for all the information. This is scheduled to be available at the end of the year as a new version for online and on-premise. It appears that Microsoft is working hard to improve the integrations with other Microsoft offerings like Outlook, Excel and Cortana. It will be exciting to see what is to come!

Ledgeview Partners posted about Using Calculated fields in CRM 2015. This walks through the different formulas available for different field types and how to set up the calculation.

In the last blog I shared the Outlook Synchronization in CRM 2015 white paper. If that was too long to read, check out the EMEA Support Blog’s Recap of Outlook Synchronization. This talks about what happens when you hit Track or Set Regarding, what happens if you delete an email or appointment, etc.

The CRM Team shared my favorite feature of TechNet – Finding you way around CRM topics on TechNet and MSDN or how to be a CRM Technical Documentation Zen Master in 5 minutes. This was one of my top takeaways from CRMUG Summit last year. When viewing an article there is a version drop down you can use to switch between versions. So if your search takes you to 2015 but you need the 2011 article you can find it in just a few clicks!

The CRM Lady tackled the Easy and Hard Questions to consider as we think about Managed and Unmanaged Solutions. Understanding how different solutions interact is one of the hardest parts of CRM. This blog is a great way to build the foundation for that understanding.

PowerObjects talked about Customizing Entity Icons in CRM 2013 and 2015. This goes through step-by-step how to update your icons and everything you need to know.

PowerObjects also walked through Expanding the Field Label Widths in CRM 2015. This is something to look into if your field labels are being cut off on the form.

Finally, there are always great tips on the CRM Tip of the Day. Check it out this week to learn more about Unified Service Desk and OneNote integration.

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

August 28 Blog Review

It was very exciting this week that CRMUG announced the CRMUG All Star Nominations! I am so honored to be nominated. I can’t believe I am even in the same league as the rest of those awesome people. Make sure you check out the survey and vote!

Let’s jump right in to the blog review!

Ledgeview Partners talked about Hierarchical Security with Dynamics CRM. This describes the CRM 2015 feature that allows you to configure security to respect records owned by people you manage.

PowerObjects posted A Day in the Life of a CRM Admin. This talks about the general tasks, how to learn, and what to do to become a CRM Admin.

CRM Tip of the Day posted a Friday video – Tipster Guide to Immersive Excel. This shows you how to use Excel within CRM 2015.

McGladrey shared Four Top CRM End User Training Tips. This talks about the importance of power users, training materials and other things you need to keep in mind when you are training your user base.

The CRM Team also announced a new white paper: Dynamics CRM Synchronization: How it Works. This walks through the architecture of the Outlook Synchronization in CRM 2015.

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

August 14 Blog Review

It seems like a quiet week in the CRM world but we did have the CRMUG Washington, DC chapter meeting! If you are a CRMUG member, make sure you check out the Blog Recap from our presentations on Customer Service.

PowerObjects posted about Adding JavaScript to Quick Create forms in CRM 2015. This talks about how to access the Quick Create form and what you need to know to add JavaScript to it.

The Dynamics EMEA CRM Support blog shared CRM Online Themes won’t work if Enahable High Contrast Option is Checked. This is a quick tip if you are having trouble using the Themes feature available in CRM 2015.

Let’s also take a quick look at some posts from CRM Tip of the Day:

• Tipsters Guide to Calculated Fields – Video about how to set up and use calculated fields as well as limitations to be aware of.
• Locking Field in Business Rule Can Be Tricky – keep in mind if a business rule changes a field to read-only, any data that was entered in that field before the change occurred will not be saved.
• Tipsters Guide to CRM for Phones: Customizer View – Video walk-through of the CRM for Phones app

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

July 17 Blog Review

Welcome to this week’s blog review! The most important takeaway today is that all of you should join me at the Nationals Game tomorrow (July 18). This is a meet up for the Washington, DC area CRMUG chapters. It will be a great way to meet other CRM users and learn a bit more about CRMUG even if you haven’t come out to our quarterly meetings.

Back to other CRM news, check out PowerObject’s Dynamics CRM 2015 Spring Update 1: Date and Time Data Type. This is talking about the new data types of User Local and Time Zone Independent. This gives customizers a way to ensure that all users see the same date when they look at a date only field.

PowerObjects also posted on How to Define Scope for a Dynamics CRM Project. This talks about the steps you should take when you plan out the project and what pieces need to be identified.

The Microsoft Dynamics Team Blog announced a way to Track Incoming Email from Anywhere with the new CRM App for Outlook. This allows you to use the CRM for Outlook features from the Outlook web app or desktop app.

CRM Tip of the Day also talked about CRM for Outlook and posted Read Only Users and CRM for Outlook. This discusses how the CRM for Outlook configuration requires a user to have write access to CRM.

That’s all I have for today folks! Have a great weekend!

July 1 Blog Review

This week’s blog review is a bit early due to the Holiday but the CRM news-machine is still running. Lots of great tips and tricks to share with you today.

PowerObjects posted two great how-to articles. How to Hide the Lead Qualify Button without Coding talks about how you can remove the Account and Contact create permissions to prevent some users from being able to qualify their leads.

Also see Aging using the ‘Older Than’ Clause with Advanced Find. This talks about the new “Older Than” option in Advanced Find with CRM 2015 Update 1. This will allow you to look at calls that are older than 24 hours or even Leads that were created 5 minutes ago. The possibilities are endless!

There are also a few CRM Tip of the Day posts that you should read. If your Child Workflow needs more than One Entity describes two options for getting the information to the child workflow. In CRM 2015 Update 1 you can create a process as global or you can use an intermediate entity to pass all the data (don’t forget to clean these records up!).

No email Without Activity reminds us that if you enable an entity for email you also need to enable it for Activities.

We have looked at Leon Tribe’s Secrets to a Successful CRM Deployment over the last few weeks. This week he released Part Three – Technology. This includes embracing and using the new features CRM offers such as Hierarchical views, Business Process Rules and Business Process Flows. All of the improvements in CRM 2015 (especially update 1) make CRM a very appealing product which will help make your project a success.

As organizations are updating from older versions to CRM 2013/2015 many questions come up in regards to what should stay in code and what should take advantage of the new features. If you are in this situation, be sure to read C5Insight’s article – Business Rules or JavaScript in CRM…that is the Question. This talks about the benefits and limitations of Business Rules to keep in mind while you are making your decision.

Finally, the CRM Team is continually working on providing better training and documentation for CRM customers. This week they announced a CRM eBooks and Videos Page. This is a great tool for finding the resources you need.

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

June 12 Blog Review

Welcome everyone! Let us quickly review the CRM news this week so you can get back to enjoying your summer!

The CRM Tip of the Day posted several great tips this week:

• Some things are Irreversible – Keep in mind anytime you create a currency function the system will create transactioncurrencyid and exchangerate fields. These will not be deleted even if you delete the currency field.
• The Mysteries of Sync – this discusses a few interesting behaviors of the CRM for Outlook sync
• Convert your SQL to FetchXML the Easy Way – this talks about using the SQL2Fetch Converter to change your CRM on-premise SQL to FetchXML statements for CRM Online

PowerObjects posted Product Bundles with Variable Product Quantities. This walks through how to create the Product Bundle and how to use this on an Opportunity.

The CRM Team announced this week that there is a new Web API for CRM Online 2015 Update 1. Make sure you check out the available documentation and samples.

The CRM Lady shared Time for Graphics, Easy Graphics from CRM with Excel PowerBI. This walks you through how to export data and plot it on a map using Excel PowerMap. This is a very cool feature to play with!

Finally who doesn’t love a good infographic? Check out, Somoma Partners INFOGRAPHIC: 2015 State of Knowledge for Customer Service. This reviews some stats about customer service about things that customers are expecting and employee challenges. This points out how important it is to have a robust, user-friendly CRM system to help your employees get the information they need quickly.

Don’t forget – the CRMUG Chapters for DC and Baltimore will be meeting up for a summer networking event at the July 18^th Nationals game. You can register here and buy tickets from the Nationals directly. Meet us at the Red Loft Bar anytime during the game!

That’s all for today folks!

June 5 Blog Review

I cannot believe it is June already and summer is in full swing! Unfortunately I am not at the beach but we can make the most of it by looking at the CRM posts from this week.

CRM in the Field posted Improve CRM query performance using Compatibility version 120 with SQL 2014. This describes how some users saw performance issues in CRM for Outlook after upgrading from 2011 to 2015. To resolve check the Compatibility level of your SQL server to ensure it is set to SQL 2014.

Leon Tribe wrote Upgrade vs Rebuild, Interest vs Responsibility. This is a case study on the options available to upgrade from v3 to CRM 2015 and the implications of each method.

You should also check out Jukka Niiranen’s Tracking Pipeline Development Over Time in CRM 2015. This is the third article in his Smarter Sales Processes series.

A quick tip that is easily forgotten is that you can hold the Shift key to sort on multiple columns while in Advanced Find. Review Ledgeview Partner’s post on Sorting Multiple Columns in CRM for more details and screenshots.

The CRM Team announced this week the Dynamics CRM Dynamic Help Feature. This allows you to get help on an error within CRM for Outlook (CRM 2015) and be directed to an article for that specific issue. To get this all set up, they need assistance from users! So if you encounter an issue send them the error details and the redirect link so they can develop the necessary KB article.

Finally, here are a few quick tips from CRM Tip of the Day:

• My form Script Changes Aren’t Working – if your script changes did not take effect, try clearing your cache or using ctrl+F5
• Calculate the Difference Between Two Dates – With the CRM 2015 Update 1 you can now use the DiffinDays function to use a calculated field to show you how long an opportunity has been open

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

May 15 Blog Review

The most important CRM News this week was (of course!) the Washington, DC CRMUG Chapter Meeting on Wednesday May 13! If you are a CRMUG member, you can view all the notes in the DC Chapter blog. If you are not a member, check out the CRM Lady’s Blog from that day as she captured some of our top topics.

Also for everyone in the Washington, DC area – block of July 18^th on your calendar! CRMUG DC will be having a joint event with the Baltimore user group at the Nationals game vs the Dodgers. You can come with your family and friends then come meet fellow CRM users at the Red Loft Bar throughout the game!

Also important this week is that Microsoft announced the Annual Dynamics Product Satisfaction Survey! Take a few minutes to go through this and let your feedback be heard!

Now let’s get to the other CRM Blogs posted this week.

PowerObjects posted on How to Retrieve all the Access Team Members for all Accounts in CRM. This talks about how you can grab Access Team data so that you can use it in other queries and reporting.

Sonoma Partners discussed the CRM Online Spring 2015 – Plug-in Trace Log. We have talked about this before but it is a great new feature so it never hurts to share more! This new option allows Administrators to view plug-in errors easily from within CRM.

Jukka Niiranen shared Customizing Lead Qualification process in CRM 2015. This walks through how you can use Business Rules and edit your processes to fit your needs.

CRM Tip of the Day posted an interesting tip – Why aren’t my Workflows running? This explains how Real Time workflows do not show up in the System Jobs as you might expect.

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

May 8 Blog Review

The most important news this week is that you need to be coming to the CRMUG Washington, DC Chapter meeting next Wednesday May 13^th (Blog, Video, Register). You can also see other news and posts below.

This week the CRM Team announced the General Availability for Spring 2015 Release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing. Their post discusses the key improvements to be aware of (and excited for!).

If you need more information, Anne Stanton compiled a list of Great Resources for Dynamics CRM v7.x.x. This links to the Microsoft videos as well as the different announcements.

Related to this update, Sonoma Partners posted CRM Online Spring 2015 – Folder Level Tracking. This is a great new feature which allows users to set up specific Outlook folders which automatically track and even set the Regarding to a specific record.

Adam Vero continued his charting series with “Mind the gap” to make your CRM Charts look better. This describes how to use the PointWidth and MaxPixelPointWidth properties to ensure your chart looks good on all size monitors and devices. These properties set the amount of the screen filled with columns and (from the opposite perspective) the max size that your columns can be.

I also found these two blogs from a few weeks ago from Ms. Dynamics CRM – Import Case, Account and Contact at once in Single File in CRM Import Wizard and Tips & Tricks: How to solve the Common Bulk Import Problem: ‘The Lookup Reference Could Not Be Resolved’ in CRM Import Wizard. Both of these are things that I have never tried but sounds very interesting. I can’t wait to experiment with it!

Finally, from the CRM Tip of the Day – Training? On New Features? Free? Yes, Please! This directs you to some training for the 2015 Spring release that is available on YouTube.

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

May 1 Blog Review

Welcome to May everyone! Let’s hop right in to this week’s blog review.

As promised last week Adam Vero published a couple articles on charting within CRM. Check out Highlighting Contribution using conditional formatting in CRM Charts and Conditional Formatting in CRM Leaderboard Charts.

The CRM Team blog posted some great documentation on Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Update 1,  Microsoft Social Engagement 2015 Update 1 and Parature. They also posted on the New Form Rendering Engine with CRM Online 2015. This provides performance benefits to the users as well as some changes for developers working with the form.

Sonoma Partners blogged on CRM Online Spring 2015 Immersive Excel. This describes how you can use Excel Online directly through CRM. You can edit records using this method or just work with them and close out.

A common limitation with Advanced Find is that you cannot search for say Accounts without any Activities. CRM Tip of the Day solves this with NOT IN for the Rest of Us. This presents the option of using a Rollup Field to calculate the number of child records which you can use in Advanced Find.

That’s all for today folks. Have a great day!

April 17 Blog Review

Welcome everyone! It is a lovely spring day here and I hope all of you are enjoying the same luxury. Just take a few quick minutes to catch up on your CRM news and then you can go outside and frolic. That’s probably what I will be doing.

So we have 3 very important things to cover and then some other blogs and tips.

First of all, Microsoft has updated their naming policy see New Naming Conventions for CRM Updates on the CRM Team blog. The goal of this is to help the update numbers and the version numbers line up better and be easier to understand.

Second CRM 2015 Update 0.1 has been released see the Knowledgebase, Download Page and Blog. Note this is not the 2015 spring release, this is just the on-premise rollup. The spring online release is update 1. It looks like there are a lot of small fixes in here so make sure you review the list and determine if you want to look at doing the update.

Lastly, the 2013 CRM Field Guide is now available! This is a book written by a group of MVPs to provide you with everything you need to know to ensure your CRM system is set up in the best way possible.

The last few weeks we have been talking about the CRM Online Spring Release (CRM 2015 Update 1) and there were a few more blogs published about that this week.

PowerObjects discusses the CRM Spring Wave Update 1: Folder Level Tracking. This allows users to set up a new folder in their Outlook where the emails will always track to a specific Household. The user does not even need to have CRM for Outlook installed! It utilizes Server Side Sync and personal options within CRM.

Sonoma Partners talked about the CRM Online Spring 2015 – OneNote Integration. We have seen a few other blogs on this topic but this lists all the features as well as best practices to keep in mind.

A big topic of conversation in my CRMUG Chapter meetings is always certifications. This week Leon Tribe talked about Passing MB5-705: Managing Microsoft Dynamics Implementations. This goes over things to keep in mind for that exam but also some general tips for preparing for any of the Microsoft certifications.

Last but not least, CRM Tip of the Day posed Date Field Options in CRM Online 2015 Update 1. Now there will be new options for date and Time fields – User Local (takes into account time zone), Date Only (always the same), and Time-zone independent (includes time but always shows the same time).

That’s all I have to share today. Have a lovely weekend!

March 13 Blog Review

Happy Friday the 13^th and almost St. Patrick’s Day! It may be tempting to get lost in the excitement but I need you to focus for just a few minutes on the CRM blogs that came out this week.

Hitachi Solutions posted CRM Business Rules + Calculated Fields = Amazing. This discusses how to use Business Rules to set a default value for all of the fields that you want to rollup. This will ensure you do not run into any issues because fields don’t have values or things like that.

Jukka Niiranen also talked about Rollup Fields in Monitoring Rollup Field Values with Workflows. This describes how you can use a workflow batch process to check for certain conditions and send out notifications if the rollup fields have hit a certain threshold.

PowerObjects wrote How to: Open Quick Create from a Sub Grid. This talks about a few options to make the + icon when filling in a lookup open up the Quick Create form.

McGladrey walked through Using Marketing Lists to bypass the limitations of Advanced Find functionality. Often people are asking for how can I find Accounts without contacts or similar requests, this blog walks through how to do that using Marketing Lists. Keep in mind this can only be used if the record set you are looking for is Accounts, Contacts, or Leads.

A few weeks ago the CRM Team Blog announced a new CRM for Outlook ebook. This week they posed the new CRM for Outlook User’s Guide Page. This is a place to send users for generic training or get some customizable trainings that you can personalize for your organization.

CRM Tip of the Day posted several tips to take a look at:

• In Dynamics CRM we Trust – This talks about the CRM Trust Center and gives you an overview of what is says and what you need to know.
• Demystifying pop3/smtp for CRM Online – this describes what configurations are not allowed for Server Side Sync with CRM Online and how to set up those that are allowed.
• Sky is the limit for the Workflows – There is no limit for the number of workflows in CRM Online, at least not an enforced one.

Also for those of you shipping off to Convergence next week, be sure to check out Ledgeview Partners Hitchhikers Guide to Microsoft Convergence 2015. Then make sure you review PFE Dynamics @ Convergence 2015. This talks about the sessions that the Premier Field Engineers will be leading meaning they will be packed with excellent content.

That’s all for tonight. Have a great weekend folks! Please share all your news from Convergence so we can look at it next week!

February 27 Blog Review

Let’s get right to the CRM news of the last week of February.

PowerObjects gave a quick tutorial on Creating Monthly Goals in Bulk via Importing. Goals can be a great feature but there is no way to copy a goal. So to overcome this you can import your goals to create a large number at one time.

PowerObjects also discussed Customizable Help Now Available in CRM 2015. This describes how to set up custom help for the system and entity specific within CRM 2015.

Hitachi Solutions posted Great FetchXML Tool for CRM. This talks about the “Download FetchXML” button in Advanced Find and how you can use the XRMToolbox to work with the results.

Hitachi Solutions has also been working on a series about the Social Pane in CRM. Check it out to learn what posts are and how to use workflows to create and intact with them. It consists of Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

The Microsoft Dynamics Team announced this week that there is a new CRM for Outlook ebook. This talks about everything you need to get started with using CRM for Outlook.

Mitch Milam discussed System-Wide Alerts in CRM 2015. This is a new feature in CRM 2015 that allows the user to see new alerts that can be triggered from things such as an import finishing. Still not much is known about this feature but it could be very powerful because it is viewable in Advanced Find and accessible via code.

I think that is all I have for today. Have a great weekend!