February 14 Blog Review

Here are the top stories from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM world this week.

Microsoft posted a few things we need to be aware of. Via the Microsoft Premier Field Engineers’ CRM in the field we have the links to the CRM 2013 Implementation Guide and SDK. From the CRM Team we have a new white paper on Process Enablement with CRM 2013. This describes how to create business processes in CRM 2013 and the best practices you should follow.

Security can be a very confusing concept in CRM especially in organizations that require stricter rules and more separation of Data. To help with this PowerObjects posted CRM 2013 Business Units and Data Silos. This describes what the different pieces of security are and how they work together.

CustomerEffective also talked about security this week when they compared CRM Owner Teams vs Access Teams. Access Teams are new in CRM 2013 and still somewhat mysterious to new users. This could be a good option for you if you have rapidly changing teams that can be changed by regular users. However, Owner teams will be necessary if you currently require the team to have a security role.

PowerObjects talked to us about Customizing Sales Process Flows in CRM 2013. They discuss best practices when modifying sales processes such as creating a copy to work from. Also when you are making changes to one process, think about the other processes that should have the same changes made.

So often we hear stories of failed implemtations. To try to prevent that, CustomerEffective wrote 5 Ways to Make Your CRM Implementation More Difficult. The list includes making your security more complicated than necessary, using supported customization and making processes that require a large amount of user interaction to function properly.

The interface has changed drastically in CRM 2013. This can make it difficult for users to find things they used to find easily. One of those features is Advanced Find. Jukka Niiranen wrote a great blog on Finding Advanced Find in CRM 2013.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!