January 22 Blog Review

The snow is coming down hard (for some of us), so that means you have lots of time to read up on all the CRM news of the last week.

Of course, you should start with a recap of last night’s 2016 DMV CRMUG Chapter Launch Party. We had a very good turnout especially considering the weather concerns. Hopefully everyone is excited about all the chapters in DC, Maryland and Virginia and will come to the upcoming meetings. Only lesson learned to implement next year will be emailing all the people registered to make sure they know it is on and have a way to contact me if they get lost.

Alright back to the blog world.

Ledgeview Partners posted on Retaining History – CRM Best Practices for Contacts changing Companies. This gives two possible solutions to ensure that the contact details are in the right place and history stays in the right place too.

CRM Tip of the day shared about Custom Activity Forms. This talks about which Activity entities can have custom forms and which ones cannot. They also provide some information as to why the custom forms may not be available for those entities.

CRM Tip of the Day also shared Consolidate your Workflows. This discusses the issues that can arise when you have multiple workflows for the same entity and/or trigger event. All of these will be firing, even if no action is taken, and will take resources from the asynchronous processor. To prevent this, review your workflows and consolidate like workflows into one.

Last but not least, Mitch Milam posted on What Exactly ins Minimum Viable Product (MVP)? This is not directly related to CRM but has some very interesting considerations for software and product development. It is ok to build something without fully knowing what the customer wants because they might not know themselves. Just make sure it is made in such a way that it can be easily expanded and built upon when they begin to figure it out.

That’s all folks! Stay warm this weekend!

January 15 Blog Review

Let’s jump right in to the news of the week with Microsoft announcing Microsoft Envision. This is replacing Convergence and will focus on strategic leadership and Microsoft Dynamics. If you want focused learning on the Microsoft Dynamics Products you should look into the CRM User Group Summit.

David Yack talks about Making the Most of your CRM Trial by using the reset feature to go back to the base organization or to look at past versions.

PowerObjects shared about Color Themes in Dynamics CRM 2016. This specifically talks about how your color schemes impact the CRM mobile experience.

PowerObjects also posted The Great Debate: Dynamics CRM Connections vs Lookups. This shows the benefits of using connections including keeping your forms cleaner and eliminating the need for multiple relationships between entities.

Donna Edwards blogged about the CRM 2016 Task Flow. This walks through the new Task Flow feature – how to create and run in the web and via mobile. Task Flows allow you to provide a wizard for your users that can walk through multiple entities to help them finish all the steps for a particular task.

CRM Tip of the Day shared Recently Visited Items in Outlook Client. The Recently Visited button is a great timesaver in the web version of CRM, check this post out to see how to do the same thing when accessing CRM through Outlook.

Finally, Mitch Milam posted about Read Only Fields and the Dynamics CRM Workflow Editor. This describes ways to allow your workflows to update Read Only fields. You can remove the Read-Only condition on your fields while you edit the workflow or you can try one of his more elegant solutions.

Also, for those in DC, Maryland and Virginia don’t forget to plan to come to the CRMUGDC 2016 Chapter Launch Party! This will be a fun event to get to know CRM users in the area and learn more about all the local chapters in the DMV. Register Here!

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

January 8 Blog Review

Welcome back! It is time to recap all the CRM blogs and such that were missed while so many of us were enjoying time with family and enjoying over-eating.

Most importantly of course is the upcoming CRMUGDC Chapter Launch Party on January 21. This is going to be a casual event for people in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area to meet other CRM users and learn about the local CRM User Groups. Check out this blog for more information and then register!

If you didn’t get enough presents this holiday season, make sure you check out CRM Tip of the Day’s CRM Christmas Presents. This gives several tips about gamification, business rules, and Server Side Synchronization. Make sure you also review all of the CRM Tip of the Day posts you might have missed while on vacation.

EMEA Dynamics CRM Support posted about Dynamics CRM SML Schema Validation. This talks you through how to use Visual Studio to edit your customizations.xml file to prevent or find issues before importing your solution back into CRM.

PowerObjects shared CRM and FieldOne: Solutions for Field Services. This gives you a look into the FieldOne acquisition and what it will mean for CRM service module users.

PowerObjects also posted New Year, New Mobile Experience: Mobile Controls in CRM 2016. This describes some of the features designed to improve user adoption of mobile CRM users while also improving data quality.

Finally, Hitachi Solutions shared Great CRM Training is more than Keeping the People Awake (but that’s a good start). This talks about the top training tips to keep your listeners engaged and learning.

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