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!

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 24 Blog Review

Good afternoon everyone! Let’s take a quick look at the CRM information that was posted this week.

First of all, there was a new Rollup released for CRM 2013. This is update Rollup 3 for CRM 2013 Service pack 1 (6.01.0003 for those keeping track). Check out the Blog, Knowledgebase and download page for more information.

Another interesting announcement is the new MVP Virtual Conference (read Julie Yack’s blog on it here). This is a free session that has MVPs from all Microsoft Products talking about different topics. You can review the agenda and determine if there is anything that interests you. On May 14^th at 5pm (PT) there is a CRM MVP Asks the Experts session that I’m sure will be very beneficial.

PowerObjects posted a tutorial on how to Calculate the Number of Days between Two Dates with a Workflow. This uses a Custom Activity type so you can enter your dates as the start and end dates and then use the Scheduled Duration field.

Adam Vero blogged on Where to Learn about Data Visualisation and Building Better Charts (Visualization for the American readers). This talks about several places to look as you are learning how to do your reporting in CRM and otherwise.

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

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 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

August 28 Blog Review

It has been a quiet week in the CRM blog world as everyone prepares for the long weekend. Let’s see what has been going on.

PowerObjects wrote about Editing XML Charts in Dynamics CRM 2013. This goes through how to export your charts and update them to fit your specific needs.

Hitachi Solutions blogged about Adding CRM Shortcuts in Outlook in Windows 8 – previously you could simply drag your CRM folders up to the Favorites, since you can no longer do this they developed a workaround to make CRM easier to access.

CRM Tip of the Day posted how to Make Dashboards More Touch Friendly. This gives some ideas on how to help users who use an iPad to look at their CRM dashboards.

If those iPad users are having trouble accessing CRM you should check out Jukka Niiranen’s Troubleshooting CRM for Tablets Login Issues with ADFS.

That’s it. Have a great weekend!

September 20 Blog Review

More and more news is beginning to surface about CRM 2013. Today we start with a success story and some CRM 2011 tips. Then we move on to learn a bit more about CRM 2013.

DynamicsCafe featured the Success Story of New Belgium Brewing. This is to drive interest in the upcoming webinar featuring the brewing company, however they planned it during CRMUG Summit so that will be a problem for some people. This company uses a “Beer Ranger” app for field agents to work off of. You can learn more about this in Sonoma’s Press Release from when this was initially deployed.

In my experience, the E-mail Router can cause a large amount of heartache. Even though it is going away in CRM 2013, we still need to deal with it now. PowerObject posted a great blog on Email Router Troubleshooting 101. It describes how to identify where the problem exists, checking everyone involved has access to the router and what to do next.

CRM in the Field Talks about Multi-Series Bar Charting. Sometimes when you design a bar chart it will have a secondary y-axis; so some of the bars are related to the primary and others to the secondary. This can be corrected by modifying the chart XML to remove the secondary axis reference.

CustomerEffective discusses the Benefit of CRM Activity Management. In the example presented, the author was in a meeting with a customer and trying to remember who was in previous meetings, what they said, etc. This is an excellent use of CRM. We can keep track of all these details for reference later. You never know how the little details could benefit you in the future.

In CRM 2013, we will be able to include a Bing map for an address in the system. Chris Cognetta discusses how to enable Bing Maps API Integration. First of all you will need to buy your key to use the Bing API. This information is entered into the System Settings area. Then you can simply add the map to the form through the form customization Insert tab.

MSDynamicsWorld reviewed the Favorite Features emerging from CRM 2012 Partners. Here is a list of what is highlighted in more detail in the blog:

• Quick Create vs. Quick Forms
• Real-time/Synchronous Workflows
• Search by Phone Number (simply create a call and enter the number in the “Call To” field and CRM 2013 will search for the corresponding record)
• Access Teams
• Form and Field Notifications
• Improved View Filters

Sonoma Partners wants to make sure we are Ready for 2013 and also get us excited about new Lookup Functionality. The new lookups are very nice in that if we enter text into a lookup box and it displays multiple options, it will also display some information from the record. This will make it easier to choose the correct related record. However, you will not be able experience those fabulous lookups if you haven’t fixed and direct SQL Calls, updated all your endpoints and checked all your custom code passes the Code Validation Tool. Follow Sonoma’s Flow chart to see where you are in the process.

There are lots of new features to be excited for in CRM 2013. I feel like we learn about a new feature every week. It will be a big change, but definitely a welcome and beneficial change.