June 21 Blog Review

This episode should be filled with valuable information since I missed last week’s edition. I have been very busy with different events and things. All the while wondering what these places use to track those involved. I am usually disappointed when I arrive to see that they simply highlight my name on a list. When speaking to the bank this week I was very tempted to ask what they use but I was too nervous they would blacklist me for suspicious activity. Anyways, back to the good stuff – all Microsoft Dynamics CRM news since our last edition on June 11^th.

What to do to be prepared for a disaster? Keep your towel with you and read CustomerEffective’s Disaster Recovery Strategies.

If you are having trouble with some Reports but would still like to follow the psychological path and think through the solution to your issues be sure to read CustomerEffective’s Force CRM 2011 Fetch Report to Show Subreport Even If There Is No Data.

Chris Cognetta has several items for us today. First, Preparing for Orion – be prepared for a full re-design of your forms to fit the new UI and also be ready to upgrade SQL and Windows Server. Also some issue fixes: Missing Ribbon after Rollup and SQL Server Unavailable during Installation.

Leon Tribe is still in love with this Microsoft Surface and tells you all about it in “Surface: One Device to Rule Them All”. I must get one myself. Also, in our environment we are just beginning to use Campaigns so I was interested in his blog on Associating Opportunities Directly to a Campaign.

I also found this compilation of blogs very similar to mine with the only difference of it gets to be published on MSDynamicsWorld.

VERY IMPORTANT: Microsoft posted about what to be prepared for with the next release. Here you will find docs on the changes to the implementation planning guide and SDK. I have not had a chance to read over these but will pass on my comments when I do.

Sonoma Partners will help us get prepared with their Summary of the new SDK and “Orion is Coming – Be Prepared”.

Finally, Jukka Niiranen has a great post on Advanced Queries with Advanced Find. He has some great ideas especially around getting past the limitation of being able to find a record with two types of related records – for example when searching for accounts that have purchased two distinct products.

That’s all for tonight folks.

Real Life CRM

Sometimes I think to myself that I would like to get my own CRM Licenses just for my personal life. Then I could keep track of everyone and all their information. I think this could be very useful.

However, I do think some friends would be concerned if they learned about all the details I recorded about them there. Oh but it would be so convenient to use the new Skype integration to talk to them and record our call details right there.

I am concerned that I would become obsessive about it; like I may want to have a “Diseases” entity. Here I could record information like prone to cold sores. Perhaps this could auto-create an Alert of some kind that says do not share drinks. I could include those susceptible to colds. Then when making plans around cold and flu season I know to be extra careful with how close I am to them. I think this could be a very valuable asset to my health.

Here is some other information I would track:

• Birthdays (of course) – auto-create phone call for that day so I don’t forget to call them.
• Important Dates – Birthdays are not the only special days; there are also Anniversaries, Job start dates, etc. To minimize clutter on the contact, I would create a separate entity to store any extra dates that I need to keep track of.
• Gift Ideas – any time someone tells me something they want, I can create a Gift Ideas record. The form could include a details box for things like color, specs, etc. Then there could be a URL field to the product online. Next time an important event comes up I can just review the suggestions I have stored.
• Gifts Received – It is important to know who has given you what. That way when they come over you can make sure it is out for them to see. Or when you are chatting you can casually say, “I want to thank you again for _____. We are really getting good use out of it”
• Hobbies/Interests – helpful list of things you know they like to talk about. Perfect to review right before a coffee date.
• Skills/Talents – You always need to know who knows how to play instruments or sing well for special events. Plus this could be used when determining which friends you should send job openings to.
• Favorite Restaurants and food – this helps you know where to invite them when you call. Perhaps there will be a lookup to a list of Restaurants. These can be divided by location and food type of course. Favorite Restaurant could be a lookup on the contact (One-to-Many) but there could also be a many-to-many list (if necessary) to include other top picks.
• Allergies - you need to know what not to feed them of course.
• Connections - this is a built-in feature and would be the most valuable piece. This could be used to track significant others (and more importantly ex-significant others), best friends, worst enemies, etc. This probably would be the most valuable piece.

The real question is: how would this fit with process-driven forms? Should there be a built-in friendship process? Then I can track how far along the friendship path we are. Or should it just be more maintenance focused with no real process? I am feeling it should resemble the Friendship Algorithm from the Big Bang theory. Next question: does Sheldon Cooper use Dynamics CRM or Salesforce?

So people will of course be contacts but do we want families to be the Accounts. This would need to be discussed, it may be difficult with extended families – when do we separate? Also what significant data needs to be captured for a family – can we just use Connections to link everyone together?

Oh and then Event Management. I will need to determine how to record attendance at different functions. I’m sure this could lend itself to very powerful reporting for more successful events in the future. Or perhaps, it will take more time and lead to a less successful social life.

So in conclusion, I think I would like to have a personal CRM so I could store more information than what is available to me with my phone contacts. I fear the setup could be a bit much and probably lead to far too many theoretical questions about the nature of friendship itself.

Late Weekly Blog Review – June 11

My Friday Blog review is very late since it is now in fact Tuesday. Still, let’s see what we can find.

Leon Tribe has some interesting thoughts on Associating Opportunities Directly to a Campaign.

Madrona posted a Review of Polaris Features. Interesting, most has been covered in the blogosphere already. One point I did find interesting is that in Polaris the Outlook Client search will be consistent with the Quick Find behavior in the web client, as opposed to just searching within the view.

MSDynamicsWorld has an interesting article discussing “Will Marketing Acquisitions change CRM competitiveness?” ExactTarget may be bought by Salesforce soon which could impact the many other CRM software platforms that are integrated with it. Also, with Microsoft’s acquisition of MarketingPilot some marketing vendors may be worried about losing business. General conclusion is that yes, things will change but it will take time. Marketing vendors have been working in the Marketing space longer so they will be able to stay in front of the curve.

Recently CRMUG hosted a great webinar about User Adoption, Gamification and the Yankees. You can read the summary on MSDynamicsWorld. If you are a CRMUG Collaborate member you can view the PowerPoint Slides as well.

Quick Tip from Mitch Milam about Working with Queues – create a new system view for all queues whose name does not begin with “<”. Use this to quickly hide all your personal queues.

Sonoma posted a review of the recently released Scalable Security Modeling White Paper (jump directly to the White Paper if you like). Main takeaways as highlighted in the article are: be careful with using too much sharing, do not have more than 1000 Business Units, don’t put users on too many teams, don’t modify team membership or user details often and be careful if a many users are logging in at the same time.

That's all the goodies for today. Good night!

May 31 Blog Review

The blog world was relatively quiet this week, seems like everyone was out enjoying the long weekend. Leon Tribe was reading over the weekend and posted a Book Review for an Applications Certification Guide. Personally, when I took the Applications exam I only used the Microsoft training. Since they wrote the test I assumed they knew what was on it. This worked very well for me. Although now studying for the Extending CRM certification I feel I could use a Certification Guide to fill in the missing pieces so I can understand the Microsoft training.

There were several good blogs from PowerObjects this week. First, Comparison: Using Workflows vs JavaScript vs Plugins in Dynamics CRM, this helps describe what processes when and how to decide the best tool for the job. Also, How to Create a Power View Report in Excel with CRM Data showcases how to use the Excel add-on, Power View to manipulate and analyze your CRM data. It is also cool to see the use of Excel 2013. It matches the design of the new CRM process-driven forms nicely. Note: Power View is an Excel Add-on from Microsoft not Power Objects, even though it has Power in the name.

Jukka Niiranen has a post on MS Dynamics World about Preparing for Orion. Some important tidbits (or Timbits for my fellow Canadians):

•           The left navigation bar is being replaced by the top navigation ribbon. This means that after Orion, there is no going back – only the new user interface will be available. You can no longer go back to the “classic” forms.
•           End user training will be required
•           Time will be required to map your business processes to the process-driven forms and test that this is the best layout
•           No more legacy support for CRM 4.0 APIs – start replacing these today
•           Remember forms will now auto-save – think about how this will affect your plugins, workflows, etc.
•           Be prepared for scripting changes
•           Upgrading to Orion most-likely will be necessary to use the new add-on features such as Yammer integration, Skype integration, MarketingPilot, Netbreese, Bing Maps, new mobile client
•           Partners will need to evaluate their add-ons for compatibility and modify to blend in with new UI – make sure your partner is ready!

Microsoft posted how to get started with your CRM surface Apps, complete with code and screenshots.

That’s all for today! 

May 24 Blog Review

PowerObjects provides a great blog on how to use Query Strings to populate data on a form.

CustomerEffective describes how to create meaningful charts to show campaign ROI. First, track your campaign costs on the campaign form and relate them to Opportunities where you capture revenue. On your Opportunity form add a “Source Campaign Cost” field and populate it via workflow (just grabbing the rollup field off the campaign). Then make a handy chart on Opportunities showing “Actual Revenue” and “Source Campaign Cost”.

If you have ever been confused about what “The Cloud” is and the benefits of “moving to the cloud” check out Altico’s Infographic on the subject.

While On-Premise Deployments are still catching up to Online, you may want to disable the new Process Driven Forms to display a more accurate representation of what a new user’s experience will be. Leon Tribe discusses how to Get Rid of the Flow Forms by using Form Security.

Congratulations PowerObjects on being name the 2013 Partner of the Year. Check out the summary on DynamicsWorld.

DynamicsWorld also hosted an MVP Interactive discussion this week hosted by Donna Edwards. The session is now available On Demand.

You can also check out Chris Cognetta’s introduction to Geoflow.

May 17 Blog Review

Here is my overview of some of the interesting blogs and news in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 World this week:

This week PowerObjects keeps the daily tips coming with Out of the Box Repoty: Dynamics CRM User Summary. If you haven’t already seen this feature you should check it out. Consider the situation where someone says to you, I want to change this role how many people will be affected? Sadly, there is no way to search for users who have a specific role using Advanced Find. So how do you do it? Go to your Enabled Users view and then to Reports -> User Summary. Make sure you choose all records in all pages of this current view. Do not choose all applicable records because then you will see data on records that have already been disabled. This report will list all users by business unit and indicate the roles that they have.

CustomerEffective told us to Use the Right Tool for the Job in their article about reporting and analytics within CRM. There are many analytics tools built right in CRM such as Advanced Find, reports, dashboards, etc. Plus you can always export to Excel. Each of the tools available can fit specific use-cases and levels of complexity. There are several things to keep in mind when determining the right tool: Limitations (views have 5,000 limit, charts have 50,000 record limit), Questions that need to be answered (what you trying to find out?), Next Steps (what is going to be done with the data?), Don’t forget about Pivot Tables, Don’t forget about SSRS Reports and other such tools and finally keep it simple. Use the least-complex tool for the job.

Altico’s Friday Funday helps us out by explaining some abbreviations and acronyms that might have us confused. They also led me to this article, Secure Software Standard in the Spotlight, which talks about how Microsoft is working to push a new security standard/framework/lifecycle to encourage developers to build more secure systems.

DynamicsWorld discussed lowering costs and improving patient care with Automated CRM Systems. Chronic Diseases were mentioned specifically as the long-term nature of these diseases causes them to be very expensive. Also many lifestyle factors can contribute to chronic diseases so health care providers need to find ways to modify these behaviors in patients. CRM can automate notifications, integrate systems, ensure compliance as well as patient services such as automated alerts and online portals.

Jukka Niiranen had a great article: LinkedIn, Dynamics CRM and Social Selling. It describes your options for integrating with LinkedIn and the troubles associated with actually getting that data into your CRM system.

That’s all folks! Have a nice weekend!

Webinar: Best Practices in Leveraging Extensibility Options for Dynamics CRM

Today, I attended a webinar about extending CRM featuring @MitchMilam hosted by CRMUG. Mitch discussed the extension options, their features and limitations as well as some examples with possible solutions. I wanted to review the main takeaways here.

Always remember there is not one correct answer but many different options. Depending on your situation and requirements, one of the options may be more correct than another.

There are 3 main questions to ask when looking at a project: immediacy, available resources, and Budget.

Immediacy: Does the user need to see what’s happening (JavaScript)? Can it be done on the Save (Plugin, Workflow)? Think about Asynchronous operations versus Synchronous operations.

Available Resources: Do you have someone who can do what you need? Can you hire a programmer?

Budget: Not just money budget (hiring developer, consultant, purchasing a tool) but also time budget. Do you have time to hire someone new or learn a new skill?

I compiled some notes on the tools along with my knowledge of the matter.

Feature	Type	Skill Set	Pros	Cons	Notes
Bulk Import	Built-in	Customizer	Allows you to quickly create records from a file	Limited duplicate checking against only one entity, cannot create additional records	Consider instead writing a custom App that can do exactly what you need
Bulk Edit	Built-in	Power User	Quickly update a set of records	Same edit to all, no logic
Advanced Find	Built-in	Power User	Find specific groups of records for other operations (Marketing Lists, etc.)	Limitations	This came up in the context of deleting E-mail Attachments - you can find E-mails with Attachments by using Advanced Find but you can only delete the whole message not just the Attachment.
Workflows	Built-in	Customizer	Quick, no developer necessary, can create/update records, send e-mails, etc.	Limited processing options but can be extended with Custom Workflow Activities, all run asynchronously
Dialogs	Built-in	Customizer	Allows for user interaction	Requires user interaction, cannot be run on multiple records, runs as the user	Note: if a Dialog calls a child workflow it runs with similar access to an on-demand workflow, as the user.
Field Level Security	Built-in	Customizer	Can allow user to see/update the data only if they are included on the FLS Profile	Based on User/Team membership not security roles	See more information in my earlier post
Role Based Forms	Built-in	Customizer	Can hide data from the form but expose to other users, based on Security roles	Data is only not visible on the form, users would still have access in Advanced Find	This could be combined with FLS for more granular permissions
JavaScript	Extension	Customizer	Can run whenever the form is loaded, saved or a field is changed; does not necessarily require a developer	Performance (form load time) can become an issue
Plugins	Extension	Developer	Can be asynchronous or synchronous; can run as the user or as another user	Runs on the save, user will not see the change unless they refresh; requires a developer
External Applications	Extension	Developer	Can be designed to fit any business need; many options	Requires a developer and time to design/write.

 If you are a CRMUG Collaborate user, you can watch the recording and download the slides.