Summit 2014: Day 3 Takeaways

Last day! So much information! There is no way to capture all the important information (especially since I can only be in one place at a time), so be sure to review the slides if you have access and watch the encore webinars when they occur.

Charting you Can’t do out of the Box – Adam Vero

Before you start working ask: Who? What? When? Where (Device, Resolution)?

Tools: Blank paper and pencil or white board and colored pens (get buy-in, determine how it will look); Notepad, Notepad++ or Visual Studio

Goal: “Use simple charts in clever ways”

Method: build what you can with out of the box tools, export, edit, reimport and repeat. Keep in mind if you “Keep Both” on your initial import you will need to export the newly created chart because it has a new GUID.

To save space, make the chart title descriptive so we can remove the axis labels.

You can easily change colors in the XML by listing the RGB values, if you give 4 numbers instead of 3 the first number will set the transparency.

Errors on chart import: Invalid XML means missing < > or similar issue, Specific error probably means a property name is incorrect (generally must be Camel Case).

Use ToolTips to display data on demand. Can be used for information or values. Keep in mind the values cannot be formatted.

“Palette Shift” – colors are assigned in order, not related to the data. You can fix this by using multiple series rather than 2^nd category. Filter each series by value.

Upgrading CRM Panel – Chris Cognetta, Bob Kanzler, David Goff

Scope

You can postpone updating your 2011 forms but it is recommended that you do this with the upgrade so you do not need to train twice. The forms must be updated before moving to SP1.

Form merge feature will include all default fields plus your form. Recommendation is to start with blank new form and add all your fields to it.

Do not add new functionality with the upgrade. Wait before deploying Business Process Flows. You can use new functionality to replace existing code (replace JS with Business Rules) but do not add new features.

When going live, go right to the latest!

Business Process rules will probably continue to be improved and eventually replace dialogs.

Test ISVs and Integrations in Dev/Test environments.

Outlook Add-in

CRM 2013 for Outlook does not support Citrx (may work but not supported, no longer part of documentation)

Resource Challenges

Need FULL TIME Project Manager

IT must be involved in day to day, do not just let partner do it. They must be able to provide support starting day 1.

Requirements

Try to freeze development during the upgrade. If fields are added in both places, those fields are NOT the same (different GUIDs). This can cause an error when importing solutions.

Testing and Training Plans

Use front-line users as testers.

Custom security roles will not be upgraded (they will not include new 2013 permissions). Recommendation to resolve is remove custom roles, go back to Out of the box roles and trim down permissions as necessary.

Tips from the CRM Tipsters – George Doubinski, Gus Gonzalez, Joel Lindstrom, Jerry Weinstock

Check out the daily tips at www.CRMTipOfTheDay.com and submit your tips at jar@CRMTipOfTheDay.com

Tip #92 – review cascading relationships to evaluate and understand behavior.

Tip #158 – review Security Roles when you upgrade. Do a full review. Start with Out of the Box roles and trim them down. There is a codeplex tool to determine what roles people have. May want to hire a developer to write a tool to replace old roles with the new roles. Do NOT ever modify built in roles, make a copy and edit there.

Tip #121-125 – Workflows and Wait conditions. Be careful using “waiting” workflows because these are always running. When using wait, separate into parent/child workflows where the Child is called after the wait condition. Also be careful with “Canceled” – only use when something must be done.

Tip #84 – To resolve date issues across multiple time zones set the time to 10:59 AM UTC. This will cover most of the world.

The Confidence Code – Kelly Rosvold

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

Sit at the table – be a participant not a spectator

Don’t leave before you leave – commit until you can’t, don’t step back too soon

Making your partner a real partner – give up control and let your partner support and help you

Check out: Lean In Circles to find support in your community

The Confidence Code by Katty Kay, Claire Shipman

Learn to be confident by: Failing Fast (take risks, fail smaller), Acting instead of holding back, practice making decisions, self compassion for missteps, move on!, banish negative automatic thoughts, reframe

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

Summit 2014: Day 1 Takeaways

I am going to try my best to summarize what I learned on Day 1 of Summit. There was so much more information but I could not possibly process it let alone try to put it into coherent sentences. (But of course the most important piece to note is that Tony Stein called me out in the CRMUG General Session and told everyone to read my blog!!!)

Upgrading CRM – Chris Cognetta

 2015 is more like an R2 version of 2013. It is just additional features so more like an update than an upgrade.

Today 95% of CRM deployments are virtualized. This is great for Security, Disaster Recovery, etc.

Upgrade Checklist:

1.      Review upgrade path

2.      Review infrastructure set up, current users, DB Size, etc.

3.      Review User Access (web, Outlook Client, Mobile, IFD)

4.      Review usage of Jscript for security, sub grids, and web service calls

5.      Review SDK enhancements for plugins or workflow assemblies

6.      Review integrations with 3^rd party IVS

7.      Review data integrations with scribe, SSIS, etc.

8.      Review data for decision on upgrade or reload

Rollup Rules: Read (make sure there is something you want), Wait (stay 1 behind)

Opening General Session: CRM 2015 – Jujhar Singh

Product Growth – Customer Service, Social Listening, Marketing and acquisition of Capptain (mobile marketing)

Sales productivity solution from Microsoft: Zero In -> Win Faster -> Sell More

Check out these slides about the future enhancements:

Techie Talk: Upgrading Complex Systems –Alex Fagundes, Jerry Weinstock

Upgrading is not a strategy, it’s a tactical exercise

CRM 2013/2015 is about 40% more efficient than CRM 2011 because of the consolidated tables.

On Premise Upgrade Scenarios: (1) In Place, (2) Connect to existing, (3) [RECOMMENDED} Side by Side

Some codeplex tools to check out to enhance your 2013 experience: (1) One Click Navigation, (2) Quickview Menu, (3) Quick Navigation

Partner Showcase: Resco Glass, wearable CRM – Ivan Stano

They have a working version of a CRM App for Google Glass – so cool!

Security and Performance – Adam Vero

Try to use a layered security model – start with a base role for all users, add roles for specific functions that ONLY contain the additional privileges

Security Roles assigned to teams are giving access based on the team (BU access would be the BU of the team NOT the user)

Access Teams are still regular teams and sharing but they remove the admin overhead of team creation. They are easier for users because they do not need to use the Share dialog and choose permissions.

Owner teams have security roles. Access teams do not have security roles.

If the Access team template is modified, this will not change any existing shares. It will only affect shares from that point forward.

When creating new lookup fields remember you are creating the RELATIONSHIP. You must think about and configure the cascading behavior.

Cascading Options for Delete:

1.      Cascade All – Kill all the orphans

2.      Remove Link – create orphan records

3.      Restrict – prevent orphan records