May 2017 Blog Review

Let's jump right in to this short summer recap!

PowerObjects shared about Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365. This discusses the Relevance Search in Dynamic 365 which allows you to use filtering in your regular CRM searches.

Great reminder from Mitch Milam to Always Maintain Control of your Dynamics CRM/365 Assets. It is very important to have a structured release process that is followed and maintain the details/solutions from these releases.

Sonoma Partners also introduced us to Learning Paths with Learning Path Authoring Basics and Learning Path Authoring Guided Tasks. Learning Paths allow administrators to provide more contextual help to users. One of the tools for this is Guided Tasks which walk users through specific steps within the application.

Jukka Niiranen is keeping us up to date on new things in this CRM Life with Spring in the Dynamics 365 World.

As always, it's a good idea to keep an eye on the CRM Tip of the Day to see which of your issues they are solving.

That's all for today!

November 2016 Blog Review

Before everyone runs off for Thanksgiving, we can take a few moments to be thankful for all the CRM blogs in the world and the knowledge that they bring us. I am so thankful for CRMUG and how much I have learned over the years. This past year I was stretched and presented in webinars and at CRMUG Summit. It was such a great experience and I hope to present even more in 2017!

Now let's catch up on the news from the past few weeks.

Speaking of CRMUG Summit - check out Ledgeview Partners post: CRMUG Summit '16 Highlights Dynamics 365 Announcement. 

PowerObjects was sharing lots of great content here are a few I recommend you take a look at:

• Everything you need to know about Task Flows - Task flows allow you to configure a process that users can walk through on a mobile app. This can be used the simplify data entry and focus on the function. This article walks through what you need to know and how to set up
• How to Use Workflows to Find Cases Not Yet Assigned to a Queue - This walks you through how to create the necessary fields and workflows to effectively monitor cases that need to be assigned
• Dynamics 365 Q&A with Our Sales Team - Read the answers to all of your Dynamics 365 questions

RSM shared Fully Utilizing the Business Process Flow in CRM. This shows some ideas for how to combine Business Process Flows with Workflows, custom fields and other out of the box customization to make a more robust solution. Your Business Process Flow can do more than just show users which fields to fill out when.

Sonoma Partners shared Activity Feeds are Made of This. There may be some confusion about Activity Feeds vs Yammer vs Activities so this blog walks through what entities are involved in Activity Feeds and how to use them effectively.

 Jukka Niiranen also posted about 365 in Reflecting on Dynamics 365. This talks about the change in CRM technology and how Microsoft is changing with the introduction of PowerApps and Flow.

As always, I encourage you to stay up to date with CRM Tip of the Day!

That's all for today! Have a great Thanksgiving!

March 11 Blog Review

Let's jump right in to the blogs posted this week!

CRM Tip of the Day shared The "Silent Observer" Custom Activity. This talks about how you can set Custom Activities to not appear in Activity Menus. This allows you to hide them from users but still use them for tracking of certain communication or events.

Jukkan Niiranen posted on Everything as a Service - Not Just Your CRM. This expands upon Microsoft's announcement of the CRM 2016 Spring Wave just last week.

Sonoma Partners blogged on Surfacing the Right Business Process Flow. Here they walk through a bit of information on Business Process flows such as making them available for certain Security Roles, setting the order/priority and allowing users to switch between processes.

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

February 12 Blog Review

In honor of Valentine’s Day let’s start out with a list of things to love about CRM:

1.       It is a great way to organize all your customer data and manage your business processes

2.       It is extremely extensible for all your integration and customization needs

3.       It allows non-developer types (such as myself) to easily modify the system and build process automation

4.       Lastly and most importantly – the COMMUNITY! The CRM community is awesome because everyone is sharing their knowledge through blogs and CRMUG. You are never alone in any issue or struggle! (And don’t forget the CRMUG Chapter meetings, come out to CRMUGDC on Feb 24)

Note: If anyone can think of a good way to tie President’s day to CRM please let me know so I can have a cheesy tweet for Monday J

The CRM MVP’s are particularly great members of the CRM Community. I want to quickly congratulate Mitch Milam on his 10^th year as a CRM MVP. Keep up the good work!

Now let’s look at the other posts from this week.

The CRM Support blog shared Dynamics CRM Support with Windows 10, Edge Browser, and Office 2016. This discusses which versions of CRM are compatible with the newest Microsoft technologies.

PowerObjects talked about CRM 2016: What’s New for Unified Service Desk? This talks about some of the new features for USD as well as some of the basics and how to get it set up.

Jukka Niiranen shared CRM 2016 Solution Segmentation for The Rest of Us. This describes how you can now package specific components of an entity. He also walks through what this means and looks like.

CRM Tip of the Day posted Unable to publish solution with calculated fields. This explains the error message you could see publishing a solution and how to get around it. Spoiler alert: you need to include all entities that are referenced in your calculated field.

CRM Tip of the day also directed us to the CRM 2016 Online vs. On-Premise FAQs. Review this list to see which features are supported in which CRM set up.

Finally, if you are thinking new year, new CRM check out RSM’s blog – Are you prepared for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Upgrade? This will provide a few points to consider and think about as you plan your upgrade.

That’s all folks. Have a great weekend!

December 4 Blog Review

Welcome to the first blog review of December! 2015 is quickly slipping away from us but don’t get too melancholy – CRM 2016 has been released!

Here are all the blogs to check out about the CRM 2016 announcement:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Now Available: ushering in a New Era of Intelligent Customer engagement (Microsoft)
• First Glance at Dynamics CRM 2016 (Jukka Niiranen)
• CRM 2016 is available (CRM Tip of the Day)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 is here! (Ledgeview Partners)
• CRM 2016 General Availability Announced at Convergence EMEA! (Chris Cognetta)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 (Carsten Groth)

Lots of new and enhanced features to look for. I’m sure there will be many more blogs about CRM 2016 in the coming weeks!

Let’s check out a couple other interesting blogs posted this week.

PowerObjects shared Take your Disk Space to the MAX: Automatically Delete Completed Workflow Jobs in CRM 2015. This walks you though how to set up your workflows to be removed when they complete. This is great to save space by removing the completed system jobs for workflows that have been fully tested and are running smoothly.

Leon Tribe posted an interesting article on Calculating the Day of the Week Without Code. This shows you how to use Business Rules to have a field show “Friday” when “12/4/2015” is entered in the trigger field.

That’s all for today folks. Enjoy your weekend!

July 10 Blog Review

It is a beautiful day! Really makes you want to go to a baseball game!

Let’s quickly jump in to the news of the day!

CRM Tip of the day posed a video: Tipsters Guide to Folder Level Tracking for End Users. This shows users how to set up folder level tracking when you are using Server Side Synchronization.

Hitachi Solutions shared a quick tip – Hey! Where are the Users in CRM 2015!? In CRM 2015, instead of having users directly under Administration you need to look under Security.

The CRM Support Blog posted Dynamics CRM Support with Windows 10, Edge browser, and Office 2016. As some have speculated only CRM 2013 and CRM 2015 will be supported with Windows 10.

Finally, Jukka Niiranen discusses the State of Dynamics in 2015. This is a look at many topics around the state of Microsoft and CRM.

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

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 21 Blog Review

It seemed to be a quiet week in the CRM world. Let’s jump right in!

CRM in the Field posted Customers’ choices… The most popular “Dynamics CRM in the Field” technical blog posted from Premier Field Engineering! This reviews the top posts over the last few years. These are full of great information so make sure you check them out.

Leon Tribe discussed Tools for an Awesome CRM Demo. This gives tips to make sure that your demo wows! This includes setting up a portal demo and using a workflow to make emails appear to have been sent.

Jukka Niiranen has been working through a series on customizing 2015 sales processes. This week he talks about Using CRM 2015 Calculated Fields for Opportunity Estimated Revenue. This gives a basic overview and how-to for calculated fields and also talks about some limitations to be aware of.

CRM Tip of the Day posted an interesting tip on creating Mandatory Fields in Dialogs. Although this is not technically possible you can use conditions and logic to force the user to enter a value before proceeding.

CRM Tip of the Day was also busy instructing everyone on SLAs. Check out all 3 parts – Part 1: Fields, Part 2: SLA, and Part 3: FAQ.

That’s all I have for this week!

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!

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 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 13 Blog Review

I’m sure everyone has big romantic plans for the weekend so I will try to run through the news quickly.

At the end of last week, Rollup 2 for CRM 2013 SP 1 was released. So here is the KB Article and the Premier Field Engineers Overview.

PowerObjects posted Access Is Denied: How to Identify and Fix a Security Role Issue. This walks through some approaches for dealing with access issues and gives some helpful things to keep in mind.

Sonoma Partners talked about Custom Help Content in CRM 2015. This describes how to set up global and entity-specific help pages for your users.

Jukka Niiranen discusses CRM 2015 Rollup Fields: The Gotchas. This talks about the schedule on which rollup fields are calculated and the interesting fact that rollup field changes cannot trigger workflows.

CRM for Outlook is always an exciting adventure. CRM Tip of the Day discusses how to deal with duplicate contact issues in When Outlook Attacks.

CRM Tip of the Day also posted Qualify Lead – CRM 2011 vs CRM 2015. This walks you through what occurs when a lead is qualified in 2011 and 2015.

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

December 19 Blog Review

Welcome everyone! This is the last Blog Review of 2015! Where did the year go??

To start off, everyone must be sure to check out the Q4 CRMUG Magazine (look at page 33 especially)! I was honored to have been chosen as the volunteer of the quarter because of this very blog!

This week Hitachi Solutions continued their 12 Days of CRMas discussing CRM 2015 features. Here are a few days to check out:

Stop Sync Grinch – In CRM 2015 you can configure the sync pipe so you can control which fields sync between CRM and exchange. This can prevent CRM data from being overwritten by incorrect phone data. Keep in mind that with Server Side Sync, changes to the appointment will automatically be sent out to the customer. That means your notes could be sent out, even those recorded after the meeting. This is also discussed in the CRM Tip of the Day (Prevent meeting notes from going to customers).

Business Process Flows: The Gift that keeps on Giving! – this talks about the enhancements to Business Process Flows including improved look and feel, branching, and being able to loop back to entities multiple times.

Rollups Help Santa with Naughty/Nice Conundrum – This works through an example of using Rollup fields to compare the number of good things you did this year to the number of bad things. You can continue to learn about Rollup Fields in Jukka Niiranen’s Analyzing Customer Behavior Data with CRM 2015 Rollup Fields.

Related to Rollup fields are Calculated Fields. To learn more check out Leon Tribe’s MVP Blog – CRM 2015 Calculated Fields.

PowerObjects released a good tip – Email Attachments Related to an Opportunity Record in Dynamics CRM. This walks through how to use the Sales Literature area to store documents at the Opportunity level.

CRM Tip of the Day posted a few good tips as well. Check out Security Needed to Pick and Route Queue items which discusses the change in 2015 from “Work On” to “Pick”. Pick does not just changed the Worked By field but also updates the Assignment of the item. Also take a look at Going Personal with Microsoft Dynamics Marketing which talks about the MDM product and data security.

The Microsoft CRM Team Blog released the CRM Basic Training ebook this week. This is a downloadable ebook that quickly teaches users what they need to know. You can download this and customize to fit your business needs.

For those upgrading to CRM 2015, be sure to read Sonoma Partners’ blog on Unsupported Customizations in CRM 2015. This gives you some things to check for in your system before you upgrade.

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

November 14 Blog Review

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

PowerObjects posted Keeping Afloat with CRM System Requirements for Dynamics CRM. This goes through the dynamics related products and the support dates that you need to be aware of.

PowerObjects also blogged about Understanding Global Option Sets. This describes what Global Option Sets are and how to create them.

Several new videos were highlighted this week. Adam Vero takes a look at CRM 2015 videos from the MS Product Team. These are more technical videos focusing on new functionality available in CRM 2015. Hitachi Solutions also highlighted a video, CRM 2015: Every Interaction Matters. This is an ad from Microsoft showing the value of using the integrated Microsoft products and what we can expect in the future.

Adam Vero also blogged about Modifying Dashboard properties in CRM 2015. In CRM 2013 the properties button was removed when editing dashboards so you could not change the description once the dashboard was initially created. This is corrected in 2015 and you have the option to enable multiple dashboards for tablets.

Jukka Niiranen recapped his top 2013 blogs in CRM 2013 in Retrospect. This is a great way to remember the most-exciting features of 2013 before our focus shifts to 2015.

Let’s finish off with some CRM Tips of the day:

• How can Administrators update read-only fields?
• Google took me to the 2013 documentation when I want 2011, what do I do? (This is so helpful – it was part of my 6.92 Summit Takeaways)
• What happens when I delete tracked Outlook tasks?

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!

October 24 Blog Review

Everything is settling back in after the excitement of CRMUG Summit last week. If you were not able to be there, make sure you check out my recap blogs (Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3). Let’s see what happened over the last few weeks in CRM.

PowerObjects talked about CRM 2013 Data Import Templates. This walks through how to export the desired import template and import it back into CRM. This is a great way to get data into your system quickly and easily.

PowerObjects also posted about Assigning System Views Based on Security Roles. This talks about a codeplex toll that allows you to set which views are visible by Security Role.

CRM Tip of the Day asked Where do you see Advanced Find View? A commonly forgotten system view is the “Advanced Find View”. This is used to customize what is see when a user opens up Advanced Find for that entity (if not opening from an existing view of course). This can be a great way to help users save time when they are building their views.

Jukka Niianen posted this blog – Don’t Merge your Forms in CRM 2013. This discusses the issues with the Merge form features and encourages you to use this opportunity to optimize your forms for 2013 instead of just matching your old forms.

C5 Insight wrote about their white paper: 4 Reasons your CRM is Failing. This describes the common reasons CRM projects fail and what to do about it.

Have a great weekend folks!

October 3 Blog Review

Somehow it has become fall. Even though it is getting colder, the CRM news keeps coming. Let’s take a look at the news and blogs from this past week.

PowerObjects discusses Importing and Updating Records in CRM 2013. This talks about how to update records if you cannot use the Export/re-import functionality.

Hitachi Solutions also talked about CRM 2013 in The Best Little CRM 2013 Feature you might not Know what to do with: Timers. This discusses the timer feature release with 2013 service pack 1 and how to use it.

The CRM in the Field Blog blogged about Table Bloat Due to Workflow Log Entries. This talks about issues related to workflow history retention and what you can do about it.

Leon Tribe discusses Bringing Graphs Down to the Record Level. If you have ever wanted a graph on a record form – now you can learn how to do it!

Finally, Jukka Niiranen talked about 10 tips for Designing a Great User Experience in Dynamics CRM. Use these tips to increase user adoption and help your users enjoy the system experience.

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

Originally posted here:

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!

July 18 Blog Review

Let’s jump right in to the CRM news for this week!

Hitachi Solutions presented an innovated way to keep users up to date with Sending Text Message Alerts from CRM 2013. This explains how to use regular CRM email to send texts to your users. Use this to notify them of alerts, things that require their attention or goals they have reached.

 Rollup 3 for CRM 2013 has been released. Check out CRM in the Field’s Podcast and Overview for more information. This contains all the links and information you will need to get started with Rollup 3.

CRM Tip of the day had several helpful tips this week to keep us working efficiently. First of all, Do you know what a Wildcard is? This discusses how to use the * as a wildcard when searching in CRM. This is a very helpful feature and is often forgotten or overlooked. Personally, I like to use it on entities that have phone numbers as search fields. That way I can leave off the area code and not worry about formatting differences.

Another tip this week was Understand “First Response Sent” for SLA. This discusses some specific details as part of the Spring Wave enhancements for CRM 2013.

One more helpful tip this week was Adminless Traceless Troubleshooting. This describes how you may be able to use the URL for troubleshooting when you receive the generic “An Error has Occurred” message.

Mitch Milam is helping us this week with Monitoring Prospects and their Email Preferences. This describes the functionality of the “Do not allow Email” and “Do not allow Bulk Email” fields. As well as some discussion on how to review contacts with these fields set and then what to do about it.

Also this week the CRM 2013 Quick Start book was released (only ebook currently). You can get more information and a summary of the chapters on Julie Yack’s blog.

Jukka Niiranen wrote a great blog this week on Update Rollups, Service Packs, Major Releases: Understanding Dynamics CRM Versioning. This goes through what those confusing version numbers actually mean, how to interpret and what to expect going forward. It also has some great explanations of what a Rollup means compared to a Service Pack. This is one to read carefully, not skim!

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

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!

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.