August 22 Blog Review

Let’s check out the CRM news from this week!

CRM Tip of the Day had a series of blogs this week about the Spring ’14 features. They compiled some great videos on: Mobile, Sandbox Instances, Developer Features, Service and Cases, and Other Stuff.

Hitachi Solutions walked through How to Change the Tiles on the Menu using the Sitemap Editor. This shows how to remove tiles you don’t need to make it easier for your users to navigate.

Hitachi Solutions also talked about Lessons Learned using Business Rules in CRM 2013. This walks through situations that are good cases for Business Rules as well as when you should consider a different option.

Also related to Business Rules, McGladrey posted Business Rules in CRM 2013 are missing One Key Feature. This goes of the limitation that Business Rules will only run on forms that have already been saved.

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

August 15 Blog Review

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

Dynamics Café posted 7 Social Listening Tips for Customer Service. Fred Studer talks through tips on how to keep your organization’s social strategy on track including empowering employees and creating a social media policy.

A common trouble administrators have is ensuring their Development environment matches production. PowerObjects talks through How to Create a Copy of a Poduction Instance in Dynamics CRM Online. This describes the process of replicating production in a development environment for CRM 2013 online, through Office 365.

If you need to do more intense analytics than available with the built in options of Charts, Advanced Find, and Reports you can try Exporting Dynamic Pivot Tables out of Dynamics CRM (Thanks again PowerObjects). This walks through how to create a PivotTable from your CRM data and how this can be dynamically updated from CRM.

One of the exciting features of CRM 2013 is the Business Process Flows that can move between entities. Hitachi Solutions discusses Dynamics CRM Cross-Entity Business Process Flow. This discusses a Lead to Opportunity sales process, some items to keep in mind and notes on what the process is actually doing. An important consideration that is highlighted is how this affects your existing records – what will happen for records that are already mid-way through the sales process but at the beginning of the process flow?

Joel Lindstrom of Hitachi Solutions was involved in the CRM 2013 Quick Start book. He posted an excerpt from the book on Quick View Forms on the Hitachi Solutions blog. This discusses the benefit of using Quick View forms and some important information to remember.

All of the new developments in social and marketing are very exciting but it can be difficult to find the information that you need. Leon Tribe compiled all this information into Getting Demos for Social Listening and Dynamics Marketing.

Let’s finish up by looking at a couple CRM Tips of the Day from this week:

• Don’t forget the Cascading – security is more than the Security Role. Also check the relationship properties on the entity to see what kinds of permissions are cascading.
• Understanding Upgrade Options – another excerpt from Joel Lindstrom and the CRM 2013 Quick Start Guide. This walks through the CRM 2011 to CRM 2013 upgrade options and the benefits and risks of each.

That’s all for today.

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 25 Blog Review

Let’s jump right in to the CRM tips and tricks from the past week.

PowerObjects gave some productivity tips in Tracking Records from Outlook to Dynamics CRM. They talk about how to track, CRM features you can use in your reply and the conversion options.

PowerObjects also wrote Performing Form Merges Like a Pro in CRM 2013. This goes through the process of merging your 2011 forms into 2013 forms. They go over best practices and some tips and tricks. This will be very helpful for anyone upgrading to 2013.

Another helpful 2013 tip from PowerObjects was Four Important Concepts Needed to Understand about Actions in Dynamics CRM. This explains how actions work and how they can be used.

Last one from PowerObjects – Using HTML to Format Text in Email Templates in CRM. As you may know, you can copy HTML e-mails into e-mail templates in CRM, but you may not know that you can actually include raw HTML code and it will be converted when the template is sent.

Hitachi Solutions blogged about Accessing Controls within Composite Control Flyouts Using Javascript. This gives some considerations when using Javascript on fields within the new CRM 2013 flyout fields.

Hitachi Solutions also talked about Naming Records using Real-Time workflows in CRM 2013. This walks through how to create a new process that will fill in the name field for your records. This can be useful when viewing default views and can be configured to fit your business need.

CRM tip of the Day also had a few good tips this week. First of all – Keep Batch modifications Under Control. This describes the importance of discussing the implications of changing Modified By/On with the business and other things to keep in mind.

Also from CRM tip of the Day – Functional Roles all Deployments should have. This describes all the different roles that need to be filled to support your CRM deployment. One person may fill multiple roles, but all these duties must be accounted for.

Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

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!

July 11 Blog Review

Today is such a busy day here in America – free Slurpees at 7-11 and Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-Fil-A. Why isn’t it a holiday? How do they expect us to work under these conditions?

Moving on. Let’s take a look at the CRM news this week.

Hitachi Solutions posted New Shoes and Dynamics CRM Upgrades. This contains a great Features Cheat Sheet that describes the new features in 2013 and the Spring 2014 update.

PowerObjects posted a helpful tip: How to Open a CRM XML File on a Windows 8 or 8.1 Device. When you Export some data to Excel from CRM on a Windows 8+ device it will not automatically open in Excel. Follow the directions to fix this.

PowerObjects also posted about how to Display Business Process Values on Forms in CRM 2013. Adding these fields to your form can assist while you figure out reporting or other automation options.

There were several great CRM Tips of the Day. Check out Tip #175: Miscellaneous privileges with multiple access levels to learn where you can trim down the access those miscellaneous privileges offer. Also take a look at Tip #173: Don’t disable Quick Create for Standard Entities. This discusses what happens if you turn off quick create and try to use the tablet app.

Mitch Milam posted Refreshing you Development or QA Environment with Production Data. This goes through the important steps when you want to update the data in your other environments to match production.

Sonoma Partners loves to talk about mobile and this week is no different. Check out The Seven Use Cases Your Mobile CRM Sales Application Must Nail. This talks about the important features that your mobile workforce needs to be able to accomplish on their device. These things are necessary to achieve good user adoption.

That is all the news I have to pass along this week. 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!