February 27 Blog Review

Let’s get right to the CRM news of the last week of February.

PowerObjects gave a quick tutorial on Creating Monthly Goals in Bulk via Importing. Goals can be a great feature but there is no way to copy a goal. So to overcome this you can import your goals to create a large number at one time.

PowerObjects also discussed Customizable Help Now Available in CRM 2015. This describes how to set up custom help for the system and entity specific within CRM 2015.

Hitachi Solutions posted Great FetchXML Tool for CRM. This talks about the “Download FetchXML” button in Advanced Find and how you can use the XRMToolbox to work with the results.

Hitachi Solutions has also been working on a series about the Social Pane in CRM. Check it out to learn what posts are and how to use workflows to create and intact with them. It consists of Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

The Microsoft Dynamics Team announced this week that there is a new CRM for Outlook ebook. This talks about everything you need to get started with using CRM for Outlook.

Mitch Milam discussed System-Wide Alerts in CRM 2015. This is a new feature in CRM 2015 that allows the user to see new alerts that can be triggered from things such as an import finishing. Still not much is known about this feature but it could be very powerful because it is viewable in Advanced Find and accessible via code.

I think that is all I have for today. Have a great weekend!

January 23 Blog Review

Let’s take a quick look at the CRM news that came out this week.

PowerObjects gave a few quick tutorials to help with CRM 2013. First check out, What to do when: The ‘Set As Default’ button for Dashboards Disappears in CRM. This talks about how to resolve an issue that occurs when your Homepage is set to Dashboards. Then also check out, Accessing the Business Process “Name” in CRM. This shows you how you can create a workflow to populate a field with the current process that is running. This allows you to do charts and reports on that data.

Hitachi Solutions discussed Complex Goal Calculations Using CRM 2015 Calculated Fields. This describes how to use Calculated Fields to determine the weighted percent achieved.

CRM in the Field wrote about the Dangers of Guid.NewGuid();. This is more technical than I usually include but it is very interesting. Apparently when GUIDs are automatically created they are sequential to provide better SQL performance. So don’t try to create your own through plugins/integrations unless you have a very good reason.

Mitch Miliam posted a tutorial of how to Find All Activities for a Particular Entity Type. This is a very helpful tip if you want to only look at Activities regarding Accounts or something like that.

CRM Tip of the Day had an interesting Truckstop discussion about turning off e-mail tracking with CRM for Outlook. You should also check out their tidbit on Dynamic Excel Export Not Working (hint: it has to do with CRM for Outlook too).

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

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!

August 8 Blog Review

Two weeks to review this week.  Let’s take a quick look at the tips and tricks that have been floating around about CRM.

PowerObjects posted a great tip to help you tell the difference between your DEV and LIVE environments. Check out How-to: Change the Default Blue Color in CRM.

CRM Tip of the Day had several great tips worth checking out:

• Recurring Goal Creation Strategies – Goals are a nice feature but you need to create a new one for each time period, I cannot just say I want this same goal every month. However, there are some ways to make this recreation a bit easier. This post goes through those methods and what each entails.
• Check your Duplicate Detection Rules after Solution Imports – I have personally needed this tip within the last few weeks. Make sure you check your Duplicate Detection rules after each release to make sure the rules you need published are still published.
• What does “reparent” Mean? -  This walks through what the Reparent cascading relationship means and the security effect it has on your system.
• How to Display Entity Image on CRM Form – in CRM 2013 you have the option of adding images to your records. This shows how to take advantage of that feature.

The Microsoft CRM Team Blog posted a video last week – Learn a few new Tricks in Quick Tips for CRM for Tablets video. This goes through some features of the Dynamics CRM Tablet app to help you work more efficiently.

Salentica posted a good blog describing a CRM 2011 Rollup 17 issue – Rollup 17 Breaks Deployment Manager. If you are having an issue importing solutions with plugins into your Rollup 17 environment, check the deployment manager and see if this is your issue.

That’s all the CRM blogs I have for you this week. Have a nice 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!