Scribe Online Documentation Tool

If you use Scribe Online with Microsoft Dynamics 365 (or any system really) you need to check out their Google Docs Documentation tool. Start with this article on how to use: https://dev.scribesoft.com/en/g_docs/doc_maps.htm

From inside a Google sheet, you will login to Scribe Online and then it will magically pull down the details of your integration. This will include all of the steps with any queries, steps, field maps, etc.

This has saved me so much time since I learned about it. No more (or at least less) time spent detailing everything the integration is doing, just look like you worked really hard on it. Then take yourself out for coffee.

Solution overview

Step Details

August 28 Blog Review

It was very exciting this week that CRMUG announced the CRMUG All Star Nominations! I am so honored to be nominated. I can’t believe I am even in the same league as the rest of those awesome people. Make sure you check out the survey and vote!

Let’s jump right in to the blog review!

Ledgeview Partners talked about Hierarchical Security with Dynamics CRM. This describes the CRM 2015 feature that allows you to configure security to respect records owned by people you manage.

PowerObjects posted A Day in the Life of a CRM Admin. This talks about the general tasks, how to learn, and what to do to become a CRM Admin.

CRM Tip of the Day posted a Friday video – Tipster Guide to Immersive Excel. This shows you how to use Excel within CRM 2015.

McGladrey shared Four Top CRM End User Training Tips. This talks about the importance of power users, training materials and other things you need to keep in mind when you are training your user base.

The CRM Team also announced a new white paper: Dynamics CRM Synchronization: How it Works. This walks through the architecture of the Outlook Synchronization in CRM 2015.

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

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!

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!

 

October 4 Blog Review

It was a quiet week in the blog world this week. I think everyone is busy getting their systems and solutions ready for CRM 2013. Here are this week’s top stories:

CRM 2011

CustomerEffective was posting this week about integrating your CRM system with your phone system. The specific example was CRM Integration with Avaya one-X. They also talked about how to create a Pop-up with the Phone System.

Leon Tribe posted saying, You Know You Need a CRM System When you Have a BONA. BONA stands for: Business cards, Outlook, Napkins, (Microsoft) Access. You could also switch out Access for Excel. The problems with these sorts of systems are things getting lost, difficult to find contact information or meeting history and no way to collaborate with co-workers because data is all separate. These issues can be resolved by moving to a centralized CRM sytem.

CRM 2013

PowerObjects posted a review of Activities in CRM 2013. They show the different places to access Activities, how to create them and give a brief overview of the different Activity Types.

The Microsoft CRM Team is trying to help us prepare for CRM 2013 with Tips on Checking JavaScript code to Prepare for your Upgrade. They discuss why this needs to be done, what has changed and how to get started resolving the issues. They discuss using the Custom Code Validation Tool, Sonoma Partners also posted about it this week in: These Aren’t the 4.0 API Functions you’re Looking For. They discuss how to interpret the results and some false positives they identified.

Sonoma Partners also posted about some Administration Enhancements in CRM 2013. In CRM 2013, the performance of Quick Find queries is optimized by creating indexes automatically when searchable columns are configured. Also there are improvements to PowerShell support in that scripts can be executed remotely as well as improved error handling and reporting. There is also the addition of the CRM Best Practices Analyzer which looks and CRM Server Roles installed on your CRM Server and provides guidance about best practices and how to address potential issues.

That covers this week’s news. Have a great weekend!