October 18 Blog Review

Relatively quiet in the blog world this week. Everyone is beginning to use CRM 2013 and posting about its features. Of course everyone is also getting ready for CRMUG Summit next week! I will be there and hope to be posting about all the knowledge I acquire.

In CRM 2011, you could set a default view simply by hitting the “Set as Default View” button. This has changed in CRM 2013. PowerObjects talks about Default Views in CRM 2013. Check out the different Pin positions to see how it relates to what is the default and how to pick a new default view.

CustomerEffective discusses CRM 2013 and working Browser Independent. Browsers that are not yet supported will automatically open in Mobile Express, there are several ways to prevent this but you also need to be aware of the limitations and work that is still being done.

Candlewest prepared a great Infographic – One CRM to Rule Them All! It shows us how much faster the Lord of the Rings could have gone if they had a CRM system to keep them organized.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team posted several helpful blogs for us this week – Manage Auto Save, Collaborate with new Access Teams, and New Capabilities in CRM Lookups. All of these give great insight into some of the benefits of moving to CRM 2013. 

Dynamics Café posted about using CRM to Support the New Customer. Customers today have a new way of buying. They research, read reviews, and look to social media. Today marketing is not what it used to be – “It is about social, it is about video, it is about turning customers into future advocates.”

Don’t forget to register for the CRM 2013 Global Premiere Event on November 4^th! This will be an hour long virtual premier live from Barcelona.

Since it’s a quiet week I want to take this opportunity to brag on CRM Rock Star. CRM Rock Star is a place where you can record your CRM and SharePoint experience and it rates you against other Microsoft professionals. This is a great way to showcase your skills and see how you stack up. I am currently #11 in the United States! (You will have to log in to view profiles.)

That’s all for today! I am looking forward to passing on all the news from CRMUG Next week!

October 11 Blog Review

This week was extremely busy for me. It also was busy in the CRM world. The latest Rollup for CRM 2011 was released and CRM 2013 became available as well. Check out this week’s top stories and blogs.

Update Rollup 15 has been released for CRM 2011. You can get all the details from CRM in the Field. The big changes in this rollup are improvements in CRM for Outlook. You can also check out the Knowledge base article for all the details.

Leon Tribe talked about how even if we do not have the Flow UI we can still design Work Processes in CRM 2011. The concept here is to create a workflow off of certain actions that causes tasks to be created. Then we can wait for those tasks to be completed prior to moving forward.

As you prepare for the upgrade, make sure you review your implementation for legacy code that is no longer supported. Check out PowerObject’s Using the Legacy Feature Check Tool to Prepare for CRM 2013.

CRM 2013 is now available. Donna Edwards posted all the links and information you will need to get started. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team also announced the CRM 2013 Customer Center, Implementation Guide and SDK.

PowerObjects discusses how to Create Business Processes in CRM 2013. Business Processes were partially available in CRM 2011 (after the Polaris release) but will be available on all Entities in CRM 2013. The process allows the system to guide users through what they need to do. These are easily created and edited by any users with the appropriate permissions.

CustomerEffective discusses another new feature of CRM 2013, Business Rules. This allows you to create rules on your form without the use of JavaScript. Some rules that can be created are setting fields to required, locking fields, displaying an error message, or doing a calculation.

Chris Cognetta posted about the CRM 2013 mobile offering. Check out the iPad Screenshot Tour and his tutorial on how to Pin CRM Tiles in Windows 8 Mobile Client.

If you are not already convinced to move to CRM 2013, check out Jamie Miley’s 7 Great Reasons to Upgrade to CRM 2013.

That should cover the top stories. Have a nice 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!

September 27 Blog Review

As we approach the impending release of CRM 2013 I suspect that this review will continue to be divided. Half is for the future, half is for the past. Let us begin.

News about CRM 2013:

PowerObjects describes the new Inline Lookup Controls in CRM 2013. When clicking the search button on the lookup, records will display with basic information about the record. If the records shown are not what you are looking for you can either choose “Look up more records” or use the new Quick Create functionality to create a new record.

CustomerEffective describes some of the new Quick Features in CRM 2013. One of Microsoft’s biggest objectives with this release was Reimagined Experience. To aid with this (as well as Mobil and general user adoption) they have created quick features to help users accomplish tasks faster. There is the Quick Create which allows users to create a new record with just basic information without leaving the screen where they are working. There is also the Quick View to see the important highlights of a record. Magnetism also posted a good comparison of these features: Quick Create vs. Quick Forms.

For our CRM Online folks, Chris Cognetta explains what you need to know about the New License Model for CRM 2013. There are now several different license types and you can be flexible and assign different licenses to different users. How do you decide who gets what type of license? See Chris’ response:

Here’s the key – If the user is creating Sales Entities (Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities etc.) then they need the Professional License. If the user is a backoffice user only updating (Not creating these records), then they could use the basic license. XRM applications not making use of the main these records types can really benefit from the Essential license to access Customized Entities.

Correction: Basic User licenses cannot use Opportunities.

Preact CRM posted CRM 2013 FAQ’s. They go through some of the top questions they have received from users with their answers.

Also this week I attended the MSDynamicsWorld Webinar What Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 will mean for the Enterprise customer. Most of the topics discussed were items that have been highly publicized already. They discussed the “One Microsoft” (integrated product suite) with the 4 key goals of: Reimagined Experience, Process Agility, CRM on the go and Social in Context. Also there will be twice-yearly releases for Online with a yearly On-Premise release that will be a rollup of the Online releases. Update Rollups will be delivered every 12 weeks. These twice-yearly releases do not include the Marketing Update releases. See Slide Below.

Most of the interesting points came out in the questions. The mobile apps that will come with the release are built on a new mobile framework called MoCA (Mobile Client Application). This allows developers to write apps that will work on multiple platforms. This will be available to ISVs and partners so they can write their own apps using this framework.

On the topic of marketing – Marketing Functionalities will never be available for On Premise deployments. These features will ONLY be available with CRM Online. This is because of the functionality involving working with other marketers and organizations, sending working copies, etc. This would not be able to work correctly On Premise.

News about CRM 2011:

PowerObjects also wrote about how to Assign Records to Inactive Users. This can be beneficial if you want to migrate old data. You do not want to give it a generic owner but you also don’t want to use too many CRM licenses. So create new users and then deactivate them. If you ensure they have a Security Role, records can still be assigned.

CustomerEffective introduces the CRM Data Detective! This is a cool tool available on CodePlex that allows you to look at how fields are being used in your organization. It is a good way to find fields that you may need to emphasize or remove. This topic has come up in my organization and I look forward to trying out the tool.

Leon Tribe talks to us about how to Report on Activity Parties. The User fields on an Activity (Owner, Required Attendee, Regarding, Sender, etc.) have Activity Party records. So Activity: Regarding = ABC Company; this means that the Activity has a related Activity Party for ABC Company with the Participation Type = Regarding. This is helpful to keep in mind when you build Advanced Find views. You cannot build an Advanced Find based on Activity Parties but you can include them in the filter criteria as a related record. Also, you can create Reports using the Report Wizard and pull in Activity Parties as the Related Record type. Then you can list the Activity Parties directly in the report.

This concludes the review of all the key things that were posted this week. The excitement is building for CRM 2013. We are only a few weeks away. CRMUG Summit is fast approaching as well. I hope to see all of you there!

September 20 Blog Review

More and more news is beginning to surface about CRM 2013. Today we start with a success story and some CRM 2011 tips. Then we move on to learn a bit more about CRM 2013.

DynamicsCafe featured the Success Story of New Belgium Brewing. This is to drive interest in the upcoming webinar featuring the brewing company, however they planned it during CRMUG Summit so that will be a problem for some people. This company uses a “Beer Ranger” app for field agents to work off of. You can learn more about this in Sonoma’s Press Release from when this was initially deployed.

In my experience, the E-mail Router can cause a large amount of heartache. Even though it is going away in CRM 2013, we still need to deal with it now. PowerObject posted a great blog on Email Router Troubleshooting 101. It describes how to identify where the problem exists, checking everyone involved has access to the router and what to do next.

CRM in the Field Talks about Multi-Series Bar Charting. Sometimes when you design a bar chart it will have a secondary y-axis; so some of the bars are related to the primary and others to the secondary. This can be corrected by modifying the chart XML to remove the secondary axis reference.

CustomerEffective discusses the Benefit of CRM Activity Management. In the example presented, the author was in a meeting with a customer and trying to remember who was in previous meetings, what they said, etc. This is an excellent use of CRM. We can keep track of all these details for reference later. You never know how the little details could benefit you in the future.

In CRM 2013, we will be able to include a Bing map for an address in the system. Chris Cognetta discusses how to enable Bing Maps API Integration. First of all you will need to buy your key to use the Bing API. This information is entered into the System Settings area. Then you can simply add the map to the form through the form customization Insert tab.

MSDynamicsWorld reviewed the Favorite Features emerging from CRM 2012 Partners. Here is a list of what is highlighted in more detail in the blog:

• Quick Create vs. Quick Forms
• Real-time/Synchronous Workflows
• Search by Phone Number (simply create a call and enter the number in the “Call To” field and CRM 2013 will search for the corresponding record)
• Access Teams
• Form and Field Notifications
• Improved View Filters

Sonoma Partners wants to make sure we are Ready for 2013 and also get us excited about new Lookup Functionality. The new lookups are very nice in that if we enter text into a lookup box and it displays multiple options, it will also display some information from the record. This will make it easier to choose the correct related record. However, you will not be able experience those fabulous lookups if you haven’t fixed and direct SQL Calls, updated all your endpoints and checked all your custom code passes the Code Validation Tool. Follow Sonoma’s Flow chart to see where you are in the process.

There are lots of new features to be excited for in CRM 2013. I feel like we learn about a new feature every week. It will be a big change, but definitely a welcome and beneficial change.

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.

Q3 CRMUG DC Recap – CRM 2013 Demo

The DC CRMUG chapter also had the privilege of welcoming MVP Chris Cognetta from Tribridge via WebEx for a quick Demo of CRM 2013. Personally, I am extremely excited for CRM 2013. There are so many awesome new features and many new ways to eliminate code. This will make future upgrades easier because everything is built-in and will not need to be tested and re-written. I want to cover some of the key things he showed us without spoiling all the surprises.

When you first log in to CRM 2013 there is a quick welcome tutorial. This is great because it reviews the key changes to help users get started. 2013 is much easier to use but users will still struggle and this will help them with the adjustment.

As you have probably seen, the new screen layout removes the left hand navigation and gives you much more screen real estate to work with. Now there is a ribbon that you click down through to access each area. Some of your existing Ribbon customizations will work because it is modified in a similar way. Of course these still should be evaluated to make sure they fit the new model.

All of your classic forms will be migrated to the Basic form, meaning the nice new form without the process flow. You will need to modify these to improve the look and feel.

The new Business Process Logic is part of the form editor. It is a way to build Java Script that will work on all devices and without actually writing the Java Script. It allows you to take actions instantly on the screen, without needing to reload the form. You can do things such as When a field is set to a specific value set another field to equal that field or to a specific value.

We also have two new categories of Processes: Actions and Business Process Flow. Actions replace some functionality provided by plugins and SDK code. They can gather information and then use workflow steps to act on this information. Business Process Flow is process behind the new process driven forms. There is also the new option for Synchronous Workflows, these will run on the screen in real-time.

On the backend the ExtensionBaseTable has been removed and there will now be only one table per entity. This will help to prevent SQL deadlocks and improve performance. The merging of existing tables can be postponed so you do not need to do this at the same time as the upgrade.

The Outlook Client is also improved, most notably by breaking the processing into 3 separate threads: Outlook functionality, CRM Browsing, and Synchronization.

There was so much more covered but too much to be mentioned here. It will be a big upgrade to 2013 but all the changes are for the better. Be prepared to rewrite your code with Business Process Logic on the forms and the new Process types. This will help you be prepared when we welcome CRM 2014 or 2015. Also if you haven’t seen it yet, make sure you check out the Release Preview Guide to learn more about these changes.