November 4 Blog Review

I apologize for the late blog due to the overwhelming busyness that has arisen. I am still working on compiling all my notes from CRMUG Summit and my mind is still exploding from all the information. I have compiled and posted my Day 1 Takeaways but there is much more to come.

This week was busy in the blog world. Check out the top stories:

PowerObjects presented several blogs on CRM 2013 features to help us prepare.

They have worked with the CRM 2013 iPhone App and gave some first impressions. It is easy to download, configure and navigate. The phone numbers are links to easily call the number on a record; similarly links will open in Safari and emails will open a new email. Users are able to view and edit Activities from within the app so they can manage their calls, tasks and appointments on the go. Although this doesn’t provide all of the features we would like to see, it does provide the features that will be most used on a phone.

PowerObjects also discussed the changes to remove Screen Pop-ups and the Sub-grid refresh button. If these changes with 2013 are really going to cause you grief, there is good news – they are still there! If you right-click on the sub-grid you can open it in a new window and/or refresh the grid.

Finally, they also talked about Modifying the Chart XML in CRM 2013. Although the XML looks scary, it is not too difficult to modify and make small changes that can make a major impact on the business.

For those of us not quite ready to move to CRM 2013, Leon Tribe describes how to make a Synchronous Workflow in CRM 2011.  The trick here is to remember that dialogs are synchronous workflows. The problem is that all Dialogs must contain a Prompt and Response page, but this can be in an If and possibly never displayed. The user will still need to start the dialog and press finish, but this can be a good way to meet a requirement without moving to 2013 or writing code.

CRM Software Blog relayed a story from AbleBride on their Top 7 New Features in CRM 2013. Here is what they said:

1. Quick Create Forms
2. Quick View Forms
3. Portable Business Logic / Business Rules
4. Guided Processes
5. Real Time / Synchronous Workflows
6. Auto Save
7. MoCA (Mobile Client Application) – Note: mobile forms are limited to 5 tabs or 75 fields and 10 lists.

 

If you haven’t seen it yet, Microsoft released a new white paper – Scalable Security Modeling with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. This is very similar to the 2011 Security white paper with the addition of Access Teams.

Sonoma Partners were also busy bees last week posting several interesting blogs.

 

First of all, don’t be sad that the global search is only available on the mobile client – Sonoma has a Universal Search solution for you. It is now 2013 compatible and it is free to use.

In previous versions of CRM the attribute description was only for administrators. Now the attribute description becomes an Editable Tooltip. In CRM 2013, the description is available to users when they hover over the field. This is good to help users know what a field is for, this is bad for administrators who used the description to say who created the field and when.

 Sonoma Partners also talks about Access Teams and how to define and manage them.  Access teams are a new kind of security that allows for dynamic teams, defined at the record level.

Jukka Niranen talked to us about processes in CRM 2013. Check out his two part blog on understanding CRM 2013 Processes (Part 1, Part 2) as well as his tip on how to use Real-time Workflows to Show Error Messages.

 I hope all of you (virtually) attended the Global Premiere event for CRM 2013. No new information, but lots of good, inspiring customer stories. You can check out some of the videos shown on the Microsoft YouTube channel.

I hope you are now up to speed about all the CRM News. Have a great week!