January 16 Blog Review

It has been a very busy week for me because I have been finalizing the CRMUG DC Chapter Meeting. This is going to be a great year for the DC Chapter so all of you should plan to attend!

Now let’s take a look at what was going on in the world of CRM this week.

PowerObjects posted a great tutorial for new users on Modifying a View in CRM 2013 to Create a Personal View. This shows you how to take existing Advanced Find views and create your own copy with columns and filters that are exactly what you need.

Hitachi Solutions blogged about Using Goals as Rollup Tables in CRM. This talks about how you can use the Goals functionality to replace custom reports you might have created long ago to track progress and distance from a target. Goals recalculate every 24 hours so your numbers will be fresh each morning and will not need to be calculated when you run a report.

Donna Edwards posted about CRM Online Licensing Highlights which goes over a few key takeaways from the CRM Online licensing and pricing guide. As CRM continues to have more attached products (Marketing, Social, etc.) licensing becomes more complex, so any extra help understanding is beneficial.

The CRM Team Blog shared a list of the new CRM 2015 videos. Check these out to learn more about the CRM 2015 offering and the benefits it can bring to your organization.

Finally from CRM Tip of the Day remember to Name your Relationships. If you just set up Relationships with default names the left hand navigation of the related entity could show the same name multiple times. So edit this name on the relationship properties or completely remove it.

That’s all for this week. Have a nice weekend!

Real Life CRM

Sometimes I think to myself that I would like to get my own CRM Licenses just for my personal life. Then I could keep track of everyone and all their information. I think this could be very useful.

However, I do think some friends would be concerned if they learned about all the details I recorded about them there. Oh but it would be so convenient to use the new Skype integration to talk to them and record our call details right there.

I am concerned that I would become obsessive about it; like I may want to have a “Diseases” entity. Here I could record information like prone to cold sores. Perhaps this could auto-create an Alert of some kind that says do not share drinks. I could include those susceptible to colds. Then when making plans around cold and flu season I know to be extra careful with how close I am to them. I think this could be a very valuable asset to my health.

Here is some other information I would track:

• Birthdays (of course) – auto-create phone call for that day so I don’t forget to call them.
• Important Dates – Birthdays are not the only special days; there are also Anniversaries, Job start dates, etc. To minimize clutter on the contact, I would create a separate entity to store any extra dates that I need to keep track of.
• Gift Ideas – any time someone tells me something they want, I can create a Gift Ideas record. The form could include a details box for things like color, specs, etc. Then there could be a URL field to the product online. Next time an important event comes up I can just review the suggestions I have stored.
• Gifts Received – It is important to know who has given you what. That way when they come over you can make sure it is out for them to see. Or when you are chatting you can casually say, “I want to thank you again for _____. We are really getting good use out of it”
• Hobbies/Interests – helpful list of things you know they like to talk about. Perfect to review right before a coffee date.
• Skills/Talents – You always need to know who knows how to play instruments or sing well for special events. Plus this could be used when determining which friends you should send job openings to.
• Favorite Restaurants and food – this helps you know where to invite them when you call. Perhaps there will be a lookup to a list of Restaurants. These can be divided by location and food type of course. Favorite Restaurant could be a lookup on the contact (One-to-Many) but there could also be a many-to-many list (if necessary) to include other top picks.
• Allergies - you need to know what not to feed them of course.
• Connections - this is a built-in feature and would be the most valuable piece. This could be used to track significant others (and more importantly ex-significant others), best friends, worst enemies, etc. This probably would be the most valuable piece.

The real question is: how would this fit with process-driven forms? Should there be a built-in friendship process? Then I can track how far along the friendship path we are. Or should it just be more maintenance focused with no real process? I am feeling it should resemble the Friendship Algorithm from the Big Bang theory. Next question: does Sheldon Cooper use Dynamics CRM or Salesforce?

So people will of course be contacts but do we want families to be the Accounts. This would need to be discussed, it may be difficult with extended families – when do we separate? Also what significant data needs to be captured for a family – can we just use Connections to link everyone together?

Oh and then Event Management. I will need to determine how to record attendance at different functions. I’m sure this could lend itself to very powerful reporting for more successful events in the future. Or perhaps, it will take more time and lead to a less successful social life.

So in conclusion, I think I would like to have a personal CRM so I could store more information than what is available to me with my phone contacts. I fear the setup could be a bit much and probably lead to far too many theoretical questions about the nature of friendship itself.