February 26 Blog Review

Let’s jump right in to this blog review!

PowerObjects shared Five Awesome Benefits of Parature, from Microsoft. This talks about some of the features of Parature so you can figure out if it would work for your organization.

CRM Tip of the Day answered a great question – Why don’t I get all of my characters? This explains why large text fields do not hold the number of characters you expect them to.

For those who have ever been curious about what a being a CRM MVP means check out Jamie Miley’s post – An Insider’s Overview of Microsoft’s MVP Program. This talks about what you need to do to become an MVP and the benefits of that status.

Sonoma Partners shared several great blogs that should be discussed. First of all, Performance Considerations for Creating Custom Reports in CRM. This talks about some things to keep in mind when creating SSRS reports to ensure they have optimal performance. Side note: if you want to learn how to create SSRS Reports, check out the CRMUGDC Presentation from February 24.

Secondly, they posted on How to Get Your Executives to Pay Attention to CRM. This is crucial because you need your executives to support CRM so that they can mandate and drive user adoption!

Finally, check out Microsoft Convergence Morphs into Two Conferences. This helps clear up any confusion about the changes and let you know your options when choosing which events to attend in the future.

That’s all for today!

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! 

March 27 Blog Review

It has been another busy week in the CRM world. Everyone is catching up from Convergence last week and spreading all the information. So let’s take a look.

• If you missed Convergence in Atlanta, here is all the information you need:
• Video Library Now Available! Thanks for sharing Ledgeview Partners!
• PowerObject’s Convergence 2015 Takeaways
• Jukka Niiranen posted A Few Notes on Convergence 2015 Announcements
• Sonoma Partners’ Convergence 2015 Keynote Recap
• McGladrey shared Microsoft Convergence recap from a Dynamics CRM Perspective (lots of pictures!)

Lean Tribe posted A Codeless Alert System for Dynamics CRM. This walks through how to use Business Rules to set up an alert for users. This is a great way to get the user’s attention and force them to read a message before interacting with the record. The main benefit is that the business logic for this alert can be easily changed through the interface without needing to involve a developer to modify the code.

PowerObjects discussed Branching and Programmatically Branching Process Flows. This talks about how to deal with processes which change based on certain data and the multiple ways to achieve the desired result.

CRM Tip of the Day posted a great time about Avoiding Duplicate Contacts when Upgrading. This gives some things to keep in mind when you are upgrading your CRM system and the options you have for dealing with the Outlook client.

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

March 20 Blog Review

This has been a very exciting week because it was Microsoft Convergence! Lots of exciting things were discussed and announced so let’s cover that first.

The big announcement of course was the CRM 2015 Spring Release. The CRM Team blog posted the Official Pre-Release Content for you to check out.

Hitachi Solutions posted some great summaries of the announcements each day: Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3. The most exciting enhancement for me was themes which allows you to customize the colors of your CRM system and even add a logo! You can also see this feature on CRM Tip of the Day’s Turn CRM Green.

Microsoft’s Premier Field Engineers shared 3 posts on 15 tips in 15 minutes sessions that they had at Convergence – Upgrading, Optimization, and Customization.

Finally, McGladrey posted the Spring Release Highlights to recap what we have been looking at so far.

Non-Convergence related you should check out PowerObjects’ post on Definitions of ‘Append’ and ‘Append To’ in Dynamics CRM. This describes the difference, why it’s important and how to keep it straight in your mind.

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

February 20 Blog Review

Welcome everyone! Let’s jump right in to the CRM news of the week.

Microsoft Convergence is coming up in less than a month! To get prepared check out Chris Cognetta’s Countdown to Convergence 2015 which covers everything you will need to know to attend.  You can also review Jamie Miley’s Convergence Party List so you can plan your free time.

PowerObjects demonstrated a new feature in CRM 2015 Introduces Nested Quick Create Forms. This shows how you can quickly create a linked record from another Quick Create Form.

CRM in the Field talked about CRM 2015 Upgrade: A few Things you can Prepare Ahead of Time. This discusses the steps you can be taking now to be ready for your next upgrade.

Leon Tribe discussed Setting up Handy Links in Dynamics CRM 2013/2015. This describes how to use test fields with a URL format to add quick clickable links to your CRM forms.

CRM Tip of the Day posted How Rollup Fields make Charts Better. This introduces the idea of using Rollup fields on parent records to get around the 50,000 record limit on charts.

CRM Tip of the Day also discussed How to Open a Record Using Just ID. This shows you the developer-approved way of opening a record using just the entity name and GUID.

That’s all I have for tonight. Stay warm this weekend!

February 6 Blog Review

Welcome everyone to this week’s recap of everything in the world of CRM. Let’s see what we have to talk about today!

Of course the most exciting news this week was I hosted my first CRMUG Chapter Meeting. You can review all the details here! Also make sure you mark your calendar for our next DC Chapter meeting on May 13^th.

PowerObjects talked about Setting Field Values vs. Setting Default Values in Business Rules. This describes how you can use Business Rules to set default values for numeric, text and lookup fields and compares it to using logic to set certain field values.

Adam Vero discusses Special Privileges in CRM Security Role. This talks about privileges that can be set to User and those that can only be set to user as well as deletion access considerations for those permissions.

Hitachi Solutions blogged about The 3 Steps of CRM Success. This discusses the steps of defining the outcome, defining the success factors and execution.

Leon Tribe wrote about Faking JavaScript Codelessly which discusses how you can use Real-Time Workflows and Business Rules to replace your JavaScript with configuration.

Ledgeview Partners posted the list of Featured Speakers at Microsoft Convergence 2015. If you are planning or considering heading to Atlanta for convergence in just a few weeks, take a look at this to see what to expect.

CRM Tip of the Day commanded Don’t Hack the Button! This presents all the reasons for creating new custom ribbon buttons instead of modifying existing buttons.

CRM Tip of the Day also talked about Once Upon a Time this Rollup Field was Recalculated. This talks about how Rollup fields are calculated and how to check the updated time on a per-field basis.

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

April 4 Blog Review

It seems so quiet this week after last week’s review of all of March! Here is what has been going on in the CRM community this week.

Dynamics Café posted Connor Marsden’s recap of Convergence - New Solutions and Excited Fans Come together at Convergence 2014. This is a high level overview of the announcements in the areas of Social Listening, Parature, Marketing and Unified Service Desk.

PowerObjects presented some Tips for Using Mail Merge in CRM 2013. This includes when to use it and how to change fields to Date Only within the Microsoft Word Template. Mail Merge is a very powerful tool, just remember to always print a sample of your letters to verify before distributing it to users. Also remind them to always check the letters for issues in case one of the fields being pulled in is blank on the record or incorrect.

The big news from CustomerEffective is that they were Acquired by Hitachi Solutions. This gives Hitachi Solutions access to CustomerEffective’s custom work as well as all the employees which will now work for Hitachi.

Leon Tribe wrote a great blog, Case Study: Pet CRM – Valuable Community Service vs Big Brother. If you read this, make sure you read all the way to the end. Very interesting (bizarre?) concept but …

Jukka Niiranen discusses Configuring Outlook Contact Synchronization Settings on Behalf of Your Users. This discusses a bit about how the synchronization between Outlook and CRM works (including Server Side Sync in CRM 2013) and a tool available to help you manage the sync filters for your users.

That’s all the news for today. Have a nice weekend!

March 28 Blog Review

The past few weeks have been very busy it seems - work and vacations and family and all kinds of stuff. So this is not really a weekly review but basically the whole month of March review. It has been a busy month in the CRM world with Convergence and all of the news from there. Make sure you check out Virtual Convergence. There are many sessions you can watch online for free so you can learn some of what those that attended learned.

This month Microsoft released the Scalable Security Modeling with CRM 2013. This is an expansion on the 2011 document including the new information on Access teams.

Since we have so much to cover I will try to hit the highlights quickly:

Power Objects:

Lookup Types and Customizing Lookups in CRM – this describes how to resolve the issue where a lookup only looks at a team instead of user and team.

Preventing Users from Going Back with Child Dialogs – Neat trick on how to prevent duplicate actions from users using the previous button within a Dialog in CRM 2011

Unwanted Activity Types in CRM – Options on handling Activity types you do not want users to use

Adjusting CRM 2013 Field label sizes – tips on how to make your forms look the way you want them to in CRM 2013

Customer Effective: CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2 – Recap on the changes with the CRM 2013 UR 2 release. Also check out the PFE CRM in the Field Overview

Donna Edwards: Update Rollups – Should I or Should I Not, that is the Question – a look at how to know if you should install Rollups and how to plan for that

CRM in the Field:

Useful Tools and Features – a list of tools that they are using from CRM 2011 and 2013 that you may find useful as well

CRM 2013 Form Upgrade Experience – this discusses what to keep in mind when upgrading your forms for CRM 2013

Dynamics CRM Team Blog: CRM Online Sandbox Instances – some changes for CRM Online customers for non-production instances

Mitch Milam: KnowledgeBits – Make sure you sign up for Mitch’s newest tips and tricks newsletter

Salentica: CRM 2013 Form for Every User Error – how to deal with the “There must be at least one form for every user” in CRM 2013

Sonoma Partners:

Convergence Recap – Part 1, Part 2: Unified Service Desk and Part 3: Sonoma Partners Booth – check out everything you may have missed at Convergence

CRM 2013 Upgrade Considerations – things to keep in mind as you plan and execute your upgrade to CRM 2013

Jukka Niiranen:

Spring Cleaning for your CRM System – how to find which fields are not on your forms or which fields do not have data and what to do

Synchronization vs. Tracking: Understanding Activity Management Options in CRM – Understanding the differences between syncing and tracking and determining how you should handle your activities

2014 CRM Roadmap – a look at the 2014 roadmap as presented at convergence

Power User Tips for CRM 2013 – learn how to use CRM like a power user and be productive

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