July 3 Blog Review

Let’s take a look at the CRM news on this short holiday week. Actually it was a holiday week for several countries – Canada Day on Tuesday and the 4^th of July on Friday!

PowerObjects is still blogging away about the Spring ’14 wave. They talked to us this week about setting up Server-Based SharePoint Integration in CRM 2013. Also they talked about a cool new service feature, Timers. This allows you to add timers to your case form to track SLAs and things like that. Check Out Update on New Feature: Timer Control.

CustomerEffective (sorry Hitachi Solutions) posted a very helpful blog on Keeping up with the Ever Growing Dynamics CRM Roadmap and More. This explains the different products and add-ons under the Microsoft umbrella and all the key details you need to know.

McGladrey posted a helpful tip in Formatting Date and Time Fields in a Mail Merge. This shows you how you can specify how the date will look in your merge. You probably don’t need to send out a letter that includes the whole timestamp.

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

June 27 Blog Review

The summer busyness continues to take a toll on my blogging. This will be a review of basically the last month of CRM news. Let’s get started with all the Spring Wave news and then we will go through the other blogs over the last few weeks.

Spring Wave CRM 2013 Updates

A hot topic these past few weeks has been the Spring ’14 Wave of features. To get all the information you need, first check out CRM in the Field’s Podcast and Overview of CRM 2013 Service Pack 1. Then read all these other blogs as well:

PowerObjects wrote a great tutorial on Instalingl Spring '14 Wave, Leo Product Updates on CRM 2013 Organization. CustomerEffective also talked about Getting Ready for Spring ’14 and gave some tips on things to keep in mind.

The Spring ’14 Wave had a major focus on the service area, Jukka Niiranen talked to us about Case Creation and Routing. Check this out to better understand the service improvements that could help your organization. PowerObjects also talked about Spring '14 Wave Closing Case with Open Activities, the update gives user the option to complete the case with open Activities and those Activities will be canceled. They also went through many more of the service features in their blog, but there is not enough time to cover them all today. CustomerEffective chimed in with What’s New With Queues.

CustomerEffective also talked about the Spring Wave with more information on the Server-Based SharePoint integration - CRM Online Spring '14: Server-Based SharePoint Integration.

Scott Durow talked about the Command Bar updates in the Spring ’14 wave in And Then There were seven! Now the command bar allows 7 buttons instead of the 5 previously.

Several Blogs produced their top feature list: PowerObjects Top 10 Spring Wave Updates, CustomerEffective’s Top 5 Features You Might not Know about, Scott Durow’s Top 3 Fixes, and finally Preact CRM’s Top 12 Service Improvements.

However, the feature I am most excited for is Workflow OR Conditions in CRM 2013 SP! (Thank you Adam Vero for giving this insight.) Currently if you wanted to create an OR in a workflow condition you would need multiple ifs and duplicated logic and more thinking than should be necessary. This will save so much time in complicated workflows!

Tips

Reporting is a very valuable feature in CRM. It can be even more valuable if you set the reports to run on a schedule and email them out to people. Learn how in CustomerEffective’s walk through - CRM Report Scheduler.

PowerObjects posted a helpful tip is Color Code Tracked Appointments in Outlook. This shows you how to set up conditional formatting so that your CRM appointments will appear in a different color on your calendar.

As new features are released for CRM it is important to know what system requirements need to be met. CRM in the field released Supported Configurations in Next Version of CRM which relates to the “Vega” release of CRM.

Sonoma Partners talked to us about Controlling Access to Access Team Templates. If an Access Team template is deleted, all of the associated Access Teams will be deleted. This could cause a major problem in your system so ensure you lock down this security and train your users.

PowerObjects gave a quick tip - Adding Columns to Marketing List Members Sub Grid. This describes how to add columns to the default view of members of a Marketing List. Keep in mind, if you just need to pull this every once and a while you could also build a find for all Contacts who are a member of a certain Marketing List. This will allow you to pull in all the information you need as well.

CustomerEffective taught us how to Retrieve a Record GUID in CRM 2013.

Scott Durow talked through important system pieces to be keeping an eye on in Monitor! Monitor! Monitor!

If you have ever had issues with workflows utilizing certain records but needing to update the links between Dev and Live, check out PowerObjects’ Utilizing GUID’s for Importing Data to Multiple Orgs. This shows you what can be done to resolve that issue.

CustomerEffective wrote a great blog on Business Process Flow Lessons Learned. This described the benefits and issues with Business Process Flows and what to consider when you build them for your organization.

I think that is enough for today! Have a lovely weekend!

May 16 Blog Review

Now that I caught up and the backlog of blogs earlier this week, I am hopefully back on schedule. Here are the top blogs this week.

Adam Vero wrote a great blog called, Why Use Access Teams in Dynamics CRM 2013. This describes the reasons to use Access Teams and the benefits they can provide to your system. He also links to some other great resources on the topic.

CustomerEffective taught us about design in Form Style in Dynamics CRM: Tips from the Fashion Industry. Some of the tips are: make sure important things are easy to access, make sure the order follows your process, and to update regularly with input from other people. There are also several great style ideas included.

CRM in the Field wrote a how to article to deal with Sitemap Issues after CRM 2011 Import into CRM 2013. Read carefully and take note of the disclaimer before proceeding.

The CRM Team Blog released Important Information about supported Configurations in the next release for CRM. This describes what you need to know for the next major release of CRM.

Sonoma Partners posted about an Activity Feed Quirk when customizing “Follow” Views. This describes an issue when out of the box entities have been renamed and the view names are not correctly renamed in the import.

Jukka Niiranen also taught us this week in Visualizing Your Progress with CRM Goals. One idea brought up in the post is to use a long continuous goal that is limited in the rollup query instead of creating a new goal for each month. Also make sure that your goals are always visible to users where they can be analyzed and acted upon.

Have a great weekend!

May 9 Blog Review

PowerObjects posted Moving CRM 2013 Business Rules with Static Values from Dev to Production. This describes what to do if you cannot activate one of your solution components due to a reference to the item in a development instance which has a different GUID than the production instance.

CustomerEffective wrote a handy blog on Retrieving a Record's GUID in CRM 2013. This describes how to create a Javascript Bookmarklet that will grab the CRM record GUID for you.

Mitch Miliam posted a helpful tidbit in Workflow Ownership and Disabled Users. Be careful when disabling users that nothing is assigned to them especially workflows which will stop running. Also a good reminder to keep an eye on your waiting system jobs to notice these problems quickly.

Sonoma Partners posted CRM 2013 - Phone Call Fields won't Default from Sub-Grid. This discusses how some fields are not auto populated depending on where you create your Activity from.

Sonoma Partners also posted Five Reasons Your CRM Deployment Needs Enterprise Mobility to ensure that everyone uses the mobile capabilities of CRM 2013.

Jukka Niiranen teaches us a thing or two in CRM Reminder Workflows Done Right. This describes the correct way to create a reminder workflow and some things you should keep in mind.

Biggest news over the last week was the release of Rollup 17 for CRM 2011. Here are the pieces you need to be able to find: Knowledge Base Article, Download Site, PFE Blog. Sonoma Partners also recorded their top picks here. Here is what I picked out of the KB (probably still too much to read but less than what we started with):

Important Fixes

·        Quick Find fails with "Invalid Argument" when whole number fields are added as find columns

·        Removing / Adding any field to the form after enabling the option "Automatically expand to use available space" causes the sub grid to shrink or resize to much smaller in size.

·        Reports cannot be executed once the default filter form the report is removed and the update is saved. The execution fails with the following error on screen. "Reporting Error: The repot cannot be displayed"

·        After applying Update Rollup 16, Solution import fails with overwriting components

·        After installing Update Rollup 16, CRM reports embedded in IFRAME objects (on forms / dashboards /etc...) no longer display correctly when using Internet Explorer 9 or Internet Explorer 10

·        A form has multiple tabs which are initially hidden and then made visible programmatically. Once the tabs are made visible, the navigation bar containing the links to other related entities moves down and part of it gets off the screen, making the users unable to see or select some links.

·        After exporting the results of a Quick Find search to Excel Pivot Table, the resulting file cannot be opened. The following error appears: "[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]The SELECT permission was denied on the object 'AccountBase', database '...._MSCRM', schema 'dbo'."

·        Cannot change owner on create of Appointment after Update Rollup 16

·        Audit setting disabled when changing cascading behavior

·        Activity Types change when importing Solutions. As a result a view on the Activity entity that references the custom activity entity stops working. Warning message on the filter: This condition had one or more list values that no longer exist in the system.

·        After applying Update Rollup 16 in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, users are unable to remove Deployment Administrators if the account exists in a separate domain.

·        After installing Update Rollup 12, there are changes to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 forms that may impact the visually impaired such as lighter colors and the absence of highlighting on items such as the SiteMap and Tab titles.

Interesting/Odd Fixes

·        Bulk Edit on Cases shows wrong dialog box

·        Advanced Find date range with "last-x-fiscal-years" is wrong when exported to a Dynamic Worksheet

·        When you have an HTML web resource on a form, the web resource is removed when clicking the backspace button in Internet Explorer

·        Users attempting to delete the oldest audit log in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 after Update Rollup 12 receive the following error:

"You can only delete the oldest audit log"

·        If the number of notes on a record exceeds the records per page set in a user personal options, you will not be able to see the additional notes in the control. For example, if the records per page is set to 25, and you have 26 notes on the record, you will not be able to see the first note. Prior to Update Rollup 12 the Notes Control had "Add a new note..." and "Show more notes" hyperlinks on the notes control.”Show more notes" would allow you to display the next page of notes in the notes control.

·        Even though the print preview fits one page, always blank page 2 is printed.

CRM for Outlook Issues

·        When you create service activities and you sync those activities to your Outlook Exchange Mailbox, and you have devices like an iPhone or Windows Phone you will see UNKNOWN:UNKNOWN on the activity parties or invitees on those devices when viewing those service activities. This can lead to invitees getting removed from the service activity or becoming duplicated in CRM.

·        Poor performance with smart matching when the Email Hash and Activity tables have a large number of records.

·        Clicking the mail merge button in the Ribbon bar of the Advanced Find screen opened from the Contacts entity doesn't do anything.

·        The context sensitive ribbon is not displaying in the Outlook 2011 Client when configured to a CRM 2013 deployment

·        After Update Rollup 12 or greater is applied to the Outlook client, the startup time for Outlook.exe can be significantly impacted if the configured organization contains many customizations

·        Microsoft.Interop.Mapi.MAPINameId.GetHashCode module led to Outlook crash

·        Outlook start-up time is impacted post Update Rollup 12

·        Outlook Quick Find does not work correctly for custom entities after Update Rollup 12

·        When users have several forms open in the Outlook Client and then open a model dialog such as a Lookup, several of the forms will be forced to the background, losing focus.

·        An environment where the SendEmailSynchronously OrgDbOrgSetting set to 1 the message below is presented when forwarding e-mails from Outlook.

"A record with these values already exists. A duplicate record cannot be created. Select one or more unique values and try again. Do you want send the e-mail? If you click Yes, the e-mail will be sent out, but no corresponding activity will be created in Microsoft Dynamics CRM."

·        When a manually tracked contact in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook is merged with another contact as a subordinate record, that contact can be incorrectly synchronized to Outlook if the Outlook Client is reconfigured.

·        Untracking an email you do not own results in the email being deleted from CRM

·        Quick campaigns are not working in Outlook client when Critical Update is installed

·        Users of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook may experience issues where shared personal views may not show up on entity grids if the views had been shared or unshared previously.

·        After installing Update Rollup 10, 11, or 12, file attachments for emails get a contentId appended to them. If file name is mywordfile.doc, then the file attachment in CRM will show {cid:somecontentid@somedomain}mywordfile.doc

April 18 Blog Review

In Smart Ways to Use CRM Technology Tools Across the Company, DynamicsCafe discusses how technology has evolved over time and how everything is becoming more digital. Examples are given of how to fit CRM into all areas of your business.

PowerObjects posted, How to Expand the Email Description field in CRM this describes how to expand the description area on an E-mail Activity form. If you use the traditional form editing techniques the description box will not change size. You can follow these directions to edit the XML to actually change the appearance of the form.

If you are receiving an error when Activating/Deactivating records check out this post from PowerObejcts -Error when Activating/Deactivating Accounts or Contacts in CRM 2013.

CustomerEffective posted Dynamics CRM 2013 on Tablets: App or Browser. When looking at mobile options users want to know how they will access CRM – will it be from within the tablet browser or from a special app? This post discusses the differences and how the App can be used in conjunction with the browser to make everyone happy.

Parature: What is it and How Can it Help Boost Customer Satisfaction? This post from the CRM Software Blog discusses the Parature Acquisition and the main takeaways from the Convergence presentation. Parature is a customer service offering that allows you to have a single portal to communicate with customers. This gives a place for customers to look for their own answers or to submit support tickets. It also gives user the analytics they need to see what is helping their customers the most.

The CRM Software Blog also shared - How to Manage Cross-Entity Business Process Flows in CRM 2013. This works through how to begin using Business Process Flows from the Analyze/Design phase through to full use. Remember to fully document the process you want first to prevent unnecessary changes later in the build process.

Sonoma Partners discusses Microsoft’s social offerings in Microsoft Gets Social. This describes your many different listening options, tips for your set up and what the future holds.

You might need a CRM system re-launch if...(or how to avoid Zombie CRM) was also posted by Sonoma Partners. The reasons they mention to re-launch your CRM are: Consolidating CRM Deployments (many tools/systems across different departments), CRM system is stagnant (Zombie CRM – bad data quality, low user adoption, behind on updates), or you are outgrowing your CRM implementation partner (need higher quality, desire long-term vision, systems are too complex).

April 11 Blog Review

It was not too busy in the CRM world this week.

Biggest news was that Microsoft released the Spring 2014 Preview Guide. This highlights Marketing enhancements and the new Unified Service Desk. There are many great features on the horizon!

Sonoma Partners featured Clogged Sync? Call the Plummer. This describes the resolution to several issues with the Server Side Sync in CRM 2013. Some of the issues were resolved with Update Rollup 1 but if you are still having issues you should check out their other recommendations.

Mitch Miliam featured a blog on How to Find What Does Not Exist. This describes how to use a Marketing List to find a subset of records that does not possess a certain quality. The limitations of this method is that it can only be used to find Accounts, Contacts and Leads. Also keep in mind that you will need to rebuild the Marketing List each time you want to get this list. So if this is data you need to gather once a week, it is not the best long term solution.

CustomerEffective posted Security Role Specific Dashboards in CRM 2013. In CRM 2013, System Dashboards no longer need to be visible organization wide. Now you can grant different security roles access to specific dashboards similar to how it is done for forms. This blog goes through that process.

PowerObjects described Hiding a Tab using Portable Business Logic. CRM 2013’s Portable Business Logic is a powerful tool that allows end users to create rules on the form that used to require JavaScript. Unfortunately there isn’t a “Hide Tab” rule but if you hide all the fields within a tab then the tab will disappear. Keep in mind you will need an opposite rule to un-hide the fields.

Jukka Niiranen posted about Accessing Special ActivityTypes with the CRM Report Wizard. If you have ever tried to use Advanced Find to view the information from an Opportunity Close or Case Resolution record you probably found it very difficult. However, you can access this information through the Report Wizard. Jukka walks through how to set that up.

That’s all for tonight. 

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!

February 28 Blog Review

Most of the CRM news this week relates to Convergence next week. It should be a great event with lots of CRM MVPs and other superstars there to report back on the news. Let’s take a quick look at the other news this week.

CustomerEffective wrote about a solution to a customer’s CRM 2013 SubGrid to Associated View button. Basically the issue is that a sub grid on your form may not have the button to see the associated view for that record. The issue results from removing that related record from the main record type’s navigation.

CustomerEffective also wrote about Design and Scalability Considerations when using Access Teams in CRM 2013. This compares traditional owner access with sharing to Access Teams. Both access methods have their advantages but must be used in moderation. Using sharing as the primary method for access can result in slow performance especially in organizations with a large number of records.

McGladrey wrote an interesting blog on Export Limitations from CRM to Excel. As you probably know, there is a limit to the number of records you can export (for good reason because you don’t want people exporting all your data, perhaps accidentally, and causing performance to go down). However, you can get around this either by changing the export limit or through a changing the parameters of a dynamic Excel workbook.

The CRM Team posted the Integration Guide: CRM Online and Office 365 to help our CRM Online readers.

Sonoma Partners posted two blogs this week about dealing with vendors – Six Questions to Ask Before you Sign your CRM Contract and CRM Software RFPs – When Good Ideas go Wrong.

Sonoma Partners also posted about What’s New in CRM 2013 for End Users: Quick Create. Quick Create is a great new feature that allows users to create records without needing to leave what they are working on.

Scott Durow posted Real Time Workflow or Plugin? There are advantages to both options. Two principles discussed are that you should use plugins if there are already plugins on an entity, or if you know that it will need a very high throughput. However the advantage of Real-Time Workflows is that they can be created by end users.

“It is true that Plugins will out perform RTWs in terms of through-put but if the frequency of the transactions are going to be low then this usually will not be an issue. If you have logic that is going to be firing at a high frequency by many concurrent users then this is the time consider selecting a plugin over a RTWF.”

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

 

February 21 Blog Review

It’s time to start enjoying the weekend! So let’s cover this week quickly.

PowerObject’s Creating If Then Else Logic in CRM 2013 Business Rules – Tutorial on how to handle AND and OR conditions in your Business rules.

CustomerEffective’s A Better Way to Control User Synchronization Settings in CRM – this describes a new tool that allows you to set up the default sync filters and reset users to the default sync filters in Outlook.

CRM in the Field’s PFE CRM Trace Log File Reader – describes the CRM Tracing log reader and how to use it to gain more information about issues you are having.

Leon Tribe’s Developer Essentials for the Functional Consultant – this is an excellent post that describes things that non-coders should understand – JavaScript and Plugins. He gives details on each, their limitations and alternatives.

Jukka Niiranen’s Information Overload: Cleaning Up CRM 2013 Forms – some helpful tips on how to clean up your CRM 2013 forms and clean up titles.

Jukka Niiranen’s How Would You Change the CRM Navigation? – this post links to several suggested CRM improvements on Microsoft Connect. Login and vote for these items so that the product team will consider including then in a later release.

Mitch Miliam’s Searching for Emails to a Specific Person – This is a handy tip describing how to find all E-mails a contact was involved in using Activity Parties.

Also when working with E-mails, if you need to search for all E-mails To or from a specific e-mail address you can use the contains operator. Try searching for E-mail where the TO field contains test@emailaddress.com and you will see all the messages sent to that address.

 

Have a good night folks!

February 14 Blog Review

Here are the top stories from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM world this week.

Microsoft posted a few things we need to be aware of. Via the Microsoft Premier Field Engineers’ CRM in the field we have the links to the CRM 2013 Implementation Guide and SDK. From the CRM Team we have a new white paper on Process Enablement with CRM 2013. This describes how to create business processes in CRM 2013 and the best practices you should follow.

Security can be a very confusing concept in CRM especially in organizations that require stricter rules and more separation of Data. To help with this PowerObjects posted CRM 2013 Business Units and Data Silos. This describes what the different pieces of security are and how they work together.

CustomerEffective also talked about security this week when they compared CRM Owner Teams vs Access Teams. Access Teams are new in CRM 2013 and still somewhat mysterious to new users. This could be a good option for you if you have rapidly changing teams that can be changed by regular users. However, Owner teams will be necessary if you currently require the team to have a security role.

PowerObjects talked to us about Customizing Sales Process Flows in CRM 2013. They discuss best practices when modifying sales processes such as creating a copy to work from. Also when you are making changes to one process, think about the other processes that should have the same changes made.

So often we hear stories of failed implemtations. To try to prevent that, CustomerEffective wrote 5 Ways to Make Your CRM Implementation More Difficult. The list includes making your security more complicated than necessary, using supported customization and making processes that require a large amount of user interaction to function properly.

The interface has changed drastically in CRM 2013. This can make it difficult for users to find things they used to find easily. One of those features is Advanced Find. Jukka Niiranen wrote a great blog on Finding Advanced Find in CRM 2013.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

January 31 Blog Review

This week appears to be relatively quiet. Most of the news is for those just getting started with CRM 2013.

If you only look at one link this week it should be the CRM Team Blog Handy Links for CRM 2013. This compiles all the blogs you will need as you implement, upgrade and get started on CRM 2013.

In CRM 2013 you can now add Tool Tips to fields. PowerObjects talked about this in Tool Tips for CRM 2013. This will make use of the Description field on the attribute. That means two things: 1) if you have behind the scenes information in that field (who created it, why, etc.) you will need to remove it and 2) you will need to put valuable information in that field.

CustomerEffective talked to us about several new features in CRM 2013. First, Working with Subgrids in CRM 2013. Subgrids allow users to view details from related records of another entity within the record they are viewing. In CRM 2011 the ribbon was context sensitive, meaning that if you clicked in a subgrid your buttons would change. This was powerful but could be confusing. This has changed in CRM 2013, now there is only two buttons per subgrid – an Add New and an Expand. The Expand allows you to get back to all the other buttons you once had.

CustomerEffective also posted about Real-Time Workflows in CRM 2013. As you know, in CRM 2011 if you wanted something to happen synchronously you would need a plugin. Now we can set a workflow as real-time so it will run synchronously. Keep in mind that this could impact your performance so it is best to use asynchronous unless it needs to be processed immediately. 

Have a nice weekend everyone!

January 17 Blog Review

Seems quiet in the CRM blog world this week after so much to cover last week. Let’s jump right into it.

PowerObjects is always working to instruct and train new users. This week they came out with 13 CRM 2013 How-To Videos. This can be a great way to start learning and spend some time looking around the PowerObjects How-To Portal.

CustomerEffective has a great blog about CRM 2013 Access Teams. This explains some of the surprising features of Access teams such as:

• You can control who has access to add members to Access Teams
• You need to use a different SDK call to programmatically add the first member to an access team than the regular add member because this also creates the team
• There can be a maximum of 2 Access Teams per entity
• Also Access Team Templates cannot be moved between environments but the subgrid on the form needs to be related to a specific Access Team Template. So you will need to use a tool to move these between environments

Jukka Niiranen posted about the Microsoft Acquisition of Parature. This is a Customer Service product that already had an integration with Dynamics CRM. Since this was just announced, it is likely that any major new functionality from this will be a year or so out.

The Affiliated CRM Blog posted a good tip for upgrading to CRM 2013 – Avoiding Disappearing Lookups and Data Loss. This describes that in CRM 2013 lookup fields cannot be linked to a record with no name filled in. In CRM 2011 this would just show up with the icon and no text, now it is just blank. To avoid losing this data in the upgrade process, make sure you use an import or some kind of workflow to clean these up.

That’s all the CRM news I have for this week. Have a great weekend (long weekend for some)!

January 10 Blog Review

I have been a horrible blogger. The holiday seasons got the best of me. My last recap was November 21, so I guess we are talking about all the news from the last 7 weeks.

PowerObjects has been busy blogging away. Here is a recap of the top articles:

• Creating Dialogs in CRM 2013 – walkthroughs creating a sample dialog in CRM 2013. This is very similar to CRM 2011.
• Control Access to Business Processes by Security Roles in CRM 2013 – One of the features of Business Processes in CRM 2013 is role-based processes. That means you can determine which processes are available for which security roles. This is similar to role-based forms (understandably since the process appears as part of the form).
• How to user CRM Workflow Templates – workflow templates can be very powerful as they all a round-about way to “save as” a workflow. Basically you can turn your existing workflow into a template then create a copy from that template. Workflows can be changed from Process to Process Template and back at any time.
• Table Merge Error with Upgrading 2011 Organization Database to 2013 – When upgrading from 2011 to 2013 there is a change that will require you to merge the tables within the database (no more extension base tables). When you go to make this change you may encounter an error, this blog explains how to resolve it.
• Adding Custom Rules for Ribbon Buttons Using JavaScript in CRM 2011 – How you can define a custom rule on the ribbon using JavaScript within a web resource.
• Removing the Guided Process Bar in CRM 2013 – To remove the Guided process bar, simply deactivate the running process.
• Formatting a Phone Fields in CRM 2013 – Presents the JavaScript code necessary to automatically format phone number fields when they are modified
• Best Practices Analyzer for CRM 2013 – The Best Practices Analyzer is a new tool for CRM 2013. It allows administrators to test the server’s configuration and receive recommendations based on best practices. Check out the end of the blog for other helpful links to prepare for CRM 2013.
• Retrieving Data from a Related Entity with Real-Time Workflows in CRM 2013 – Relationship mappings can be very helpful if the child record is created from in the parent and if the parent never changes. However, if the child is created in different circumstances you need a way to get this data. Real-time workflows allow you to fill in those fields as soon as the parent field is set.
• Actions in CRM 2013 – Actions are a new type of process in CRM 2013. Default actions are things like Create, update, and delete. Custom Actions allow us to build functionality that is then called by a plugin. Then this functionality can be updated as necessary without the help of a developer.

PowerObjects also announced The CRM Book. This is an online resource that is free for everyone. Check it out the next time you are researching.

 CustomerEffective was getting into the spirit of New Years with a recap of the best blogs – 2013: The Year In Microsoft Dynamics CRM from the Customer Effective Blog. This highlights their top blogs in different categories such as solutions, technical or general news. They also celebrated Christmas with 12 Days of CRMas, this features 12 blogs on their favorite CRM features.

For those of you that have upgraded to CRM 2013 the Microsoft Premier Field Engineering team posted some helpful information:

• Overview of CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1
• CRM 2013 White Papers and Technical Documentation List

Richard Knudson discussed Conditional Field Requirements with Business Rules and Real-Time Workflows. Previously requirements such as these needed to be coded in JavaScript on the form. Now anyone can create these rules in CRM 2013.

Jukka Niiranen posted several interesting blogs over the last few weeks:

• Similar Opportunity Analytics with CRM 2013 Quick View Forms – interesting scenario where a customer wants CRM to tell it which products to recommend to a customer. This solution uses the Quick View forms to do it.
• Auto-Numbering with CRM Workflows – The basic concept of this solution is to create a “Counter” entity to hold the current counter value, this is linked to the entity you want to count and then you use a workflow to set the value on the record and increment the counter. This can be done with a regular asynchronous workflow but your values will not be unique. Instead use a Real-time workflow so that the processing happens right away.

 Chris S posted a good two part blog on how to handle E-mail bounces: Part 1: Creating the entity to capture the bounce and Part 2: Importing the bounce record.

That is all the news I have time for today. Hopefully we will be able to continue this new year on a more consistent schedule.

November 21 Blog Review

It was a somewhat quiet week this week. Here is this week’s news:

If you are interested in Marketing Automation take a look at CustomerEffective’s Marketing Automation with CRM and SilverPop. It discusses the basic ideas and terminology of marketing automation and some of your options to accomplish it.

McGladrey talks about some of the new features in CRM 2013. CRM 2013 has several features that customers have been asking for. Access Teams provides a good flexible security option. Also previously if customers wanted tool tips for a field it would require extensive development work, now tool tips are available as part of the built-in functionality.

The CRM Team was busy this week, here is what they posted about:

• CRM for Phones – What can and cannot be done, customization options and where it is available
• Inline Multi-Party Lookup – walkthrough of the feature in CRM 2013
• Disabling Auto Save on an Individual Entity –Describes how to disable the auto save feature on just one entity. This is a JavaScript change and will not cause the explicit save button to be visible, so users will need to save with ctrl-s.

Also Develop1 wrote about how to Add the Add Activity Buttons back to CRM 2013. This change will add the different Activity types to the bottom of the record ellipsis so new Activities can be added quickly.

That about covers all of this week’s news. Since you have some extra blog reading time, you should check out my (somewhat late) coverage of CRMUG Summit 2013.

October 18 Blog Review

Relatively quiet in the blog world this week. Everyone is beginning to use CRM 2013 and posting about its features. Of course everyone is also getting ready for CRMUG Summit next week! I will be there and hope to be posting about all the knowledge I acquire.

In CRM 2011, you could set a default view simply by hitting the “Set as Default View” button. This has changed in CRM 2013. PowerObjects talks about Default Views in CRM 2013. Check out the different Pin positions to see how it relates to what is the default and how to pick a new default view.

CustomerEffective discusses CRM 2013 and working Browser Independent. Browsers that are not yet supported will automatically open in Mobile Express, there are several ways to prevent this but you also need to be aware of the limitations and work that is still being done.

Candlewest prepared a great Infographic – One CRM to Rule Them All! It shows us how much faster the Lord of the Rings could have gone if they had a CRM system to keep them organized.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team posted several helpful blogs for us this week – Manage Auto Save, Collaborate with new Access Teams, and New Capabilities in CRM Lookups. All of these give great insight into some of the benefits of moving to CRM 2013. 

Dynamics Café posted about using CRM to Support the New Customer. Customers today have a new way of buying. They research, read reviews, and look to social media. Today marketing is not what it used to be – “It is about social, it is about video, it is about turning customers into future advocates.”

Don’t forget to register for the CRM 2013 Global Premiere Event on November 4^th! This will be an hour long virtual premier live from Barcelona.

Since it’s a quiet week I want to take this opportunity to brag on CRM Rock Star. CRM Rock Star is a place where you can record your CRM and SharePoint experience and it rates you against other Microsoft professionals. This is a great way to showcase your skills and see how you stack up. I am currently #11 in the United States! (You will have to log in to view profiles.)

That’s all for today! I am looking forward to passing on all the news from CRMUG Next week!