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.

September 13 Blog Review

News about CRM 2013 is starting to be released. Earlier this week the Release Preview Guide came out. Now partners are starting to talk about some of the features we should expect.

Let’s talk about the CRM 2013 posts first.

PowerObjects talked to us about two new features in CRM 2013: Quick View Forms and Portable Business Logic. A Quick View form allows you to view information about a record from within another record. To do this create the Quick View form and then edit the form for the related entity where you want the information to be displayed and add the Quick View form component there. This feature enables you to display more of the required information in one place. Portable Business Logic is a built-in way to perform actions usually handled with JavaScript. The blog works through an example and shows how to set up the full rule. This Portable Business Logic is called “Portable” because it can be used on multiple forms and works on all browsers/platforms/devices.

Here is a quote from PowerObjects Portable Business Logic blog:

Portable business logic allows you to define business rules for each record type. You can use it to do any of the following:

• Show a message to the user

• Change a field value

• Set a field as business required/not business required

• Show or hide a field

• Lock or unlock a field

 You can set all of these actions to occur based on conditions you set in the business rule. Conditions can be based on one of the following:

• If a field contains data or doesn’t contain data

• If a field contains a certain value or doesn’t contain a certain value

• If a field equals or does not equal another field value

Richard Knudson also posted on this logic also known as Business Rules. He works through a more complex example and includes lots of good information. There are some limitations to this functionality. For instance, you can only do a single set of conditions. So you can say if A is true, do B; but you cannot add an otherwise (else) if to this. Branching requirements will require multiple rules or going back to JavaScript. You also can only use fields in the Entity that the rule was written form.

McGladrey talks about the Business Process Enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. Process can now span multiple entities. Also the concept of synchronous workflows has been incorporated so users can see the change take place real-time. There is also the addition of Role-Based processes so a workflow can be triggered based on the user’s security role.

Some other new features for CRM 2013 include the new clickable Phone Number fields and Access teams which allow dynamic record access.

As mentioned previously, the Release Preview Guide came out this week. There were several blogs in relation such as CustomerEffective and CRMSoftwareBlog. The Preview Guide covers many of the features we have already talked about today. Most of it is still general but there is insight into the goals of the changes. Obviously better user experience is key with simplified data entry and flat forms. Also it is clear that we are moving into a code-free experience. So many things can now be down with built-in features. This will enable Microsoft to move forward with yearly releases because having all of this built-in with greatly simplify the upgrade process.

Also some great posts came out about CRM 2011.

CustomerEffective describes how to use Cases in CRM to Manage your Email. When you track an e-mail you can convert it to a Case. This is related to the customer and others with access to the customer can assist you when working on the issue or question.

Leon Tribe posted a great blog: Setting Long-Term Workflows in Dynamics CRM. This describes how to set up a workflow that will set up a date 1, 3 and 5 years in the future and wait until that date before resetting the date. It demonstrates how to use the Set To operators as well as Timeouts.

That concludes all the exciting news for today. I hope you enjoyed all the CRM 2013 news on this Friday the 13^th. It is spooky how close we are getting to the release.

August 29 Blog Review

It’s another short week with the Labor Day long weekend. Let’s see what the blog world holds for us today.

PowerObjects posted a Tutorial for Including Case History on the Account. This is good for whenever you want to add a sub-grid to a form. They also posted several blogs about Installing, Configuring and checking your version for CRM for Outlook but I don’t really want to talk about CRM for Outlook more than necessary.

Altico Advisors posted a Tech Tip on IFD Settings. Internet Facing Deployment and everything related is increasingly becoming a hot topic as more people want to access CRM on their mobile devices and as we prepare for the mobile friendly interface in CRM 2013. This blog discusses how to make sure your timeout settings are what you want them to be.

Now, if you are on the cutting edge and using Internet Explorer 10, you should read Chris Cognetta’s steps for setting up IE 10 to use CRM 2011. He describes how to update your compatibility settings as well as current know issues.

The CRM Software Blog highlighted an article about CRM 2013 Frequently Asked Questions. It highlights questions like when will I be upgraded, will my system be offline, and what are the major changes with this release.

The CRM Team Blog talked to us about Preparing JavaScript for the Upgrade. Here is what you need to know:

• Get everything UR 12 compatible. This will need to be done prior to CRM 2013. There is the Code Validation Tool for this, although the output is not very fun to work with. It is a great place to start.
• Get all your endpoints up to date. No more CRM 4.0 endpoints.
• Don’t Modify the DOM. It will not work in CRM 2013.
• Fix your unsupported changes. These will most-likely break as well.

Everyone loves Richard Knudson and he is a smart one when it comes to Business Processes. He wrote a great, albeit long-winded, article on how to create a Flexible Sales Process. If this isn’t something you need, still make sure you catch the tip about editing read-only fields through workflow: you can unlock the field while creating the workflow then set it read-only and the workflow will run and update the field correctly. This only needs to be done in your development environment; it will work fine when you import it into other environments.

That’s all the CRM news I have to pass on today. Have a great Labor Day Weekend everyone!