February 12 Blog Review

In honor of Valentine’s Day let’s start out with a list of things to love about CRM:

1.       It is a great way to organize all your customer data and manage your business processes

2.       It is extremely extensible for all your integration and customization needs

3.       It allows non-developer types (such as myself) to easily modify the system and build process automation

4.       Lastly and most importantly – the COMMUNITY! The CRM community is awesome because everyone is sharing their knowledge through blogs and CRMUG. You are never alone in any issue or struggle! (And don’t forget the CRMUG Chapter meetings, come out to CRMUGDC on Feb 24)

Note: If anyone can think of a good way to tie President’s day to CRM please let me know so I can have a cheesy tweet for Monday J

The CRM MVP’s are particularly great members of the CRM Community. I want to quickly congratulate Mitch Milam on his 10^th year as a CRM MVP. Keep up the good work!

Now let’s look at the other posts from this week.

The CRM Support blog shared Dynamics CRM Support with Windows 10, Edge Browser, and Office 2016. This discusses which versions of CRM are compatible with the newest Microsoft technologies.

PowerObjects talked about CRM 2016: What’s New for Unified Service Desk? This talks about some of the new features for USD as well as some of the basics and how to get it set up.

Jukka Niiranen shared CRM 2016 Solution Segmentation for The Rest of Us. This describes how you can now package specific components of an entity. He also walks through what this means and looks like.

CRM Tip of the Day posted Unable to publish solution with calculated fields. This explains the error message you could see publishing a solution and how to get around it. Spoiler alert: you need to include all entities that are referenced in your calculated field.

CRM Tip of the day also directed us to the CRM 2016 Online vs. On-Premise FAQs. Review this list to see which features are supported in which CRM set up.

Finally, if you are thinking new year, new CRM check out RSM’s blog – Are you prepared for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Upgrade? This will provide a few points to consider and think about as you plan your upgrade.

That’s all folks. Have a great weekend!

November 20 Blog Review

Let’s jump right in to the CRM news of the past few weeks!

Update 0.2 for CRM 2015 On-Premise has been released. For all the information review CRM in the Field’s Overview Blog.

PowerObjects shared Manipulating the Value of Days Remaining between Today and the Expiration Date in Calculated Fields. This shows you how to modify the Days Remaining field so that it will not show a “-ve” value when the expiration date is in the past.

Adam Vero the CRMGuru posted an interesting post on Figuring Out Shares in the PrincipalObjectAccess POA Table in CRM. This provides more information about how shares are saved behind the scenes and how to view/interpret that data.

Chris Cognetta shared the Great Microsoft Cloud InfoGraphic! This shows the number of users that are on the different Microsoft cloud offerings. It shows why this is such a large area of emphasis and why this continues to be important for future growth.

Leon Tribe blogged about the Post MVP Summit Roundup. Unfortunately not too much information can be released yet but at least we can see everyone’s smiling faces and get a little glimpse into what it is like to be a CRM MVP. Also mentioned was that the CRM 2016 features that have already been announced were presented and provided a much better understanding of the capabilities. So be excited for more information at the end of the year!

Finally, one quick tip from CRM tip of the day is what to do with Disabled User’s Personal Views. Everyone runs into a situation where a user leaves and their views remain assigned to that now disabled user. Check out this post to see 3 possible solutions.

That’s all for today folks. Have a great day and Happy almost Thanksgiving! (In America, or happy almost Christmas, Thanksgiving was forever ago why are you still talking about it in Canada :) )

September 11 Blog Review

We have lots of CRM tips and news to catch up on from the last 2 weeks. First of all, the big news is the CRM 2016 was officially announced. Check out the press release, video and release preview guide for all the information. This is scheduled to be available at the end of the year as a new version for online and on-premise. It appears that Microsoft is working hard to improve the integrations with other Microsoft offerings like Outlook, Excel and Cortana. It will be exciting to see what is to come!

Ledgeview Partners posted about Using Calculated fields in CRM 2015. This walks through the different formulas available for different field types and how to set up the calculation.

In the last blog I shared the Outlook Synchronization in CRM 2015 white paper. If that was too long to read, check out the EMEA Support Blog’s Recap of Outlook Synchronization. This talks about what happens when you hit Track or Set Regarding, what happens if you delete an email or appointment, etc.

The CRM Team shared my favorite feature of TechNet – Finding you way around CRM topics on TechNet and MSDN or how to be a CRM Technical Documentation Zen Master in 5 minutes. This was one of my top takeaways from CRMUG Summit last year. When viewing an article there is a version drop down you can use to switch between versions. So if your search takes you to 2015 but you need the 2011 article you can find it in just a few clicks!

The CRM Lady tackled the Easy and Hard Questions to consider as we think about Managed and Unmanaged Solutions. Understanding how different solutions interact is one of the hardest parts of CRM. This blog is a great way to build the foundation for that understanding.

PowerObjects talked about Customizing Entity Icons in CRM 2013 and 2015. This goes through step-by-step how to update your icons and everything you need to know.

PowerObjects also walked through Expanding the Field Label Widths in CRM 2015. This is something to look into if your field labels are being cut off on the form.

Finally, there are always great tips on the CRM Tip of the Day. Check it out this week to learn more about Unified Service Desk and OneNote integration.

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

August 14 Blog Review

It seems like a quiet week in the CRM world but we did have the CRMUG Washington, DC chapter meeting! If you are a CRMUG member, make sure you check out the Blog Recap from our presentations on Customer Service.

PowerObjects posted about Adding JavaScript to Quick Create forms in CRM 2015. This talks about how to access the Quick Create form and what you need to know to add JavaScript to it.

The Dynamics EMEA CRM Support blog shared CRM Online Themes won’t work if Enahable High Contrast Option is Checked. This is a quick tip if you are having trouble using the Themes feature available in CRM 2015.

Let’s also take a quick look at some posts from CRM Tip of the Day:

• Tipsters Guide to Calculated Fields – Video about how to set up and use calculated fields as well as limitations to be aware of.
• Locking Field in Business Rule Can Be Tricky – keep in mind if a business rule changes a field to read-only, any data that was entered in that field before the change occurred will not be saved.
• Tipsters Guide to CRM for Phones: Customizer View – Video walk-through of the CRM for Phones app

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

June 5 Blog Review

I cannot believe it is June already and summer is in full swing! Unfortunately I am not at the beach but we can make the most of it by looking at the CRM posts from this week.

CRM in the Field posted Improve CRM query performance using Compatibility version 120 with SQL 2014. This describes how some users saw performance issues in CRM for Outlook after upgrading from 2011 to 2015. To resolve check the Compatibility level of your SQL server to ensure it is set to SQL 2014.

Leon Tribe wrote Upgrade vs Rebuild, Interest vs Responsibility. This is a case study on the options available to upgrade from v3 to CRM 2015 and the implications of each method.

You should also check out Jukka Niiranen’s Tracking Pipeline Development Over Time in CRM 2015. This is the third article in his Smarter Sales Processes series.

A quick tip that is easily forgotten is that you can hold the Shift key to sort on multiple columns while in Advanced Find. Review Ledgeview Partner’s post on Sorting Multiple Columns in CRM for more details and screenshots.

The CRM Team announced this week the Dynamics CRM Dynamic Help Feature. This allows you to get help on an error within CRM for Outlook (CRM 2015) and be directed to an article for that specific issue. To get this all set up, they need assistance from users! So if you encounter an issue send them the error details and the redirect link so they can develop the necessary KB article.

Finally, here are a few quick tips from CRM Tip of the Day:

• My form Script Changes Aren’t Working – if your script changes did not take effect, try clearing your cache or using ctrl+F5
• Calculate the Difference Between Two Dates – With the CRM 2015 Update 1 you can now use the DiffinDays function to use a calculated field to show you how long an opportunity has been open

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

May 21 Blog Review

It seemed to be a quiet week in the CRM world. Let’s jump right in!

CRM in the Field posted Customers’ choices… The most popular “Dynamics CRM in the Field” technical blog posted from Premier Field Engineering! This reviews the top posts over the last few years. These are full of great information so make sure you check them out.

Leon Tribe discussed Tools for an Awesome CRM Demo. This gives tips to make sure that your demo wows! This includes setting up a portal demo and using a workflow to make emails appear to have been sent.

Jukka Niiranen has been working through a series on customizing 2015 sales processes. This week he talks about Using CRM 2015 Calculated Fields for Opportunity Estimated Revenue. This gives a basic overview and how-to for calculated fields and also talks about some limitations to be aware of.

CRM Tip of the Day posted an interesting tip on creating Mandatory Fields in Dialogs. Although this is not technically possible you can use conditions and logic to force the user to enter a value before proceeding.

CRM Tip of the Day was also busy instructing everyone on SLAs. Check out all 3 parts – Part 1: Fields, Part 2: SLA, and Part 3: FAQ.

That’s all I have for this week!

December 19 Blog Review

Welcome everyone! This is the last Blog Review of 2015! Where did the year go??

To start off, everyone must be sure to check out the Q4 CRMUG Magazine (look at page 33 especially)! I was honored to have been chosen as the volunteer of the quarter because of this very blog!

This week Hitachi Solutions continued their 12 Days of CRMas discussing CRM 2015 features. Here are a few days to check out:

Stop Sync Grinch – In CRM 2015 you can configure the sync pipe so you can control which fields sync between CRM and exchange. This can prevent CRM data from being overwritten by incorrect phone data. Keep in mind that with Server Side Sync, changes to the appointment will automatically be sent out to the customer. That means your notes could be sent out, even those recorded after the meeting. This is also discussed in the CRM Tip of the Day (Prevent meeting notes from going to customers).

Business Process Flows: The Gift that keeps on Giving! – this talks about the enhancements to Business Process Flows including improved look and feel, branching, and being able to loop back to entities multiple times.

Rollups Help Santa with Naughty/Nice Conundrum – This works through an example of using Rollup fields to compare the number of good things you did this year to the number of bad things. You can continue to learn about Rollup Fields in Jukka Niiranen’s Analyzing Customer Behavior Data with CRM 2015 Rollup Fields.

Related to Rollup fields are Calculated Fields. To learn more check out Leon Tribe’s MVP Blog – CRM 2015 Calculated Fields.

PowerObjects released a good tip – Email Attachments Related to an Opportunity Record in Dynamics CRM. This walks through how to use the Sales Literature area to store documents at the Opportunity level.

CRM Tip of the Day posted a few good tips as well. Check out Security Needed to Pick and Route Queue items which discusses the change in 2015 from “Work On” to “Pick”. Pick does not just changed the Worked By field but also updates the Assignment of the item. Also take a look at Going Personal with Microsoft Dynamics Marketing which talks about the MDM product and data security.

The Microsoft CRM Team Blog released the CRM Basic Training ebook this week. This is a downloadable ebook that quickly teaches users what they need to know. You can download this and customize to fit your business needs.

For those upgrading to CRM 2015, be sure to read Sonoma Partners’ blog on Unsupported Customizations in CRM 2015. This gives you some things to check for in your system before you upgrade.

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