May 8 Blog Review

The most important news this week is that you need to be coming to the CRMUG Washington, DC Chapter meeting next Wednesday May 13^th (Blog, Video, Register). You can also see other news and posts below.

This week the CRM Team announced the General Availability for Spring 2015 Release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing. Their post discusses the key improvements to be aware of (and excited for!).

If you need more information, Anne Stanton compiled a list of Great Resources for Dynamics CRM v7.x.x. This links to the Microsoft videos as well as the different announcements.

Related to this update, Sonoma Partners posted CRM Online Spring 2015 – Folder Level Tracking. This is a great new feature which allows users to set up specific Outlook folders which automatically track and even set the Regarding to a specific record.

Adam Vero continued his charting series with “Mind the gap” to make your CRM Charts look better. This describes how to use the PointWidth and MaxPixelPointWidth properties to ensure your chart looks good on all size monitors and devices. These properties set the amount of the screen filled with columns and (from the opposite perspective) the max size that your columns can be.

I also found these two blogs from a few weeks ago from Ms. Dynamics CRM – Import Case, Account and Contact at once in Single File in CRM Import Wizard and Tips & Tricks: How to solve the Common Bulk Import Problem: ‘The Lookup Reference Could Not Be Resolved’ in CRM Import Wizard. Both of these are things that I have never tried but sounds very interesting. I can’t wait to experiment with it!

Finally, from the CRM Tip of the Day – Training? On New Features? Free? Yes, Please! This directs you to some training for the 2015 Spring release that is available on YouTube.

That’s all for tonight. Have a great weekend everyone!

October 24 Blog Review

Everything is settling back in after the excitement of CRMUG Summit last week. If you were not able to be there, make sure you check out my recap blogs (Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3). Let’s see what happened over the last few weeks in CRM.

PowerObjects talked about CRM 2013 Data Import Templates. This walks through how to export the desired import template and import it back into CRM. This is a great way to get data into your system quickly and easily.

PowerObjects also posted about Assigning System Views Based on Security Roles. This talks about a codeplex toll that allows you to set which views are visible by Security Role.

CRM Tip of the Day asked Where do you see Advanced Find View? A commonly forgotten system view is the “Advanced Find View”. This is used to customize what is see when a user opens up Advanced Find for that entity (if not opening from an existing view of course). This can be a great way to help users save time when they are building their views.

Jukka Niianen posted this blog – Don’t Merge your Forms in CRM 2013. This discusses the issues with the Merge form features and encourages you to use this opportunity to optimize your forms for 2013 instead of just matching your old forms.

C5 Insight wrote about their white paper: 4 Reasons your CRM is Failing. This describes the common reasons CRM projects fail and what to do about it.

Have a great weekend folks!

October 3 Blog Review

Somehow it has become fall. Even though it is getting colder, the CRM news keeps coming. Let’s take a look at the news and blogs from this past week.

PowerObjects discusses Importing and Updating Records in CRM 2013. This talks about how to update records if you cannot use the Export/re-import functionality.

Hitachi Solutions also talked about CRM 2013 in The Best Little CRM 2013 Feature you might not Know what to do with: Timers. This discusses the timer feature release with 2013 service pack 1 and how to use it.

The CRM in the Field Blog blogged about Table Bloat Due to Workflow Log Entries. This talks about issues related to workflow history retention and what you can do about it.

Leon Tribe discusses Bringing Graphs Down to the Record Level. If you have ever wanted a graph on a record form – now you can learn how to do it!

Finally, Jukka Niiranen talked about 10 tips for Designing a Great User Experience in Dynamics CRM. Use these tips to increase user adoption and help your users enjoy the system experience.

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

Originally posted here:

September 5 Blog Review

Apparently it is September. So now it is back busy fall work, even though I believe the summer was just as busy but more sunny. Let’s see what was happening in the CRM world this week.

PowerObjects posted Create a List of Values for Workflow Check Conditions in CRM 2013. This talks through the different options you can use in workflows to set up an OR condition. This is especially helpful when working with long lists of values that need to be “OR-ed”.

Hitatchi Solutions wrote CRM 2013 Performance: Form/View Load Analyzer. This discusses the new analyzer included in Service Pack 1 that allows you to track form loads.

CRM Tip of the day blogged about Upgrading Behind the Scenes forms. This specifically discusses the importance of updating your Team form when you upgrade to CRM 2013.

CRM Tip of the Day also posted about When CRM for Tablets last Synced Metadata. If your mobile users are not seeing recent customizations, you can follow these directions to determine when they last downloaded customizations and resolve the issue.

McGladrey blogged about the CRM 2013 Data Import Limitations. This article goes over some of the common questions that come up about the built in data import capabilities and limitations. Although it is written for 2013, the same information applies to 2011.

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

May 16 Blog Review

Now that I caught up and the backlog of blogs earlier this week, I am hopefully back on schedule. Here are the top blogs this week.

Adam Vero wrote a great blog called, Why Use Access Teams in Dynamics CRM 2013. This describes the reasons to use Access Teams and the benefits they can provide to your system. He also links to some other great resources on the topic.

CustomerEffective taught us about design in Form Style in Dynamics CRM: Tips from the Fashion Industry. Some of the tips are: make sure important things are easy to access, make sure the order follows your process, and to update regularly with input from other people. There are also several great style ideas included.

CRM in the Field wrote a how to article to deal with Sitemap Issues after CRM 2011 Import into CRM 2013. Read carefully and take note of the disclaimer before proceeding.

The CRM Team Blog released Important Information about supported Configurations in the next release for CRM. This describes what you need to know for the next major release of CRM.

Sonoma Partners posted about an Activity Feed Quirk when customizing “Follow” Views. This describes an issue when out of the box entities have been renamed and the view names are not correctly renamed in the import.

Jukka Niiranen also taught us this week in Visualizing Your Progress with CRM Goals. One idea brought up in the post is to use a long continuous goal that is limited in the rollup query instead of creating a new goal for each month. Also make sure that your goals are always visible to users where they can be analyzed and acted upon.

Have a great weekend!

July 19th Blog Review

Last week was far too exciting. This week has been a very mellow blog week only a few things to report.

My favorite blog this week can from a guest blogger at Power Objects – Planning a Wedding? Here’s a Novel Use for CRM…. This blog reminds me of my own Real Life CRM blog a few weeks ago. It also makes me really wish I had used CRM for my wedding. My very large spreadsheet seems so silly now.

At the end of last week Update Rollup 14 was released. Microsoft’s CRM in the Field blog has a great summary and all the links you need. See last week’s blog review for the important pieces in this rollup.

Leon Tribe also had a good post this week about Importing Appointments with Multiple Attendees. This can be difficult because lookup fields will only accept one value through import. So Leon suggests we use two imports – one for appointments and one for connections – along with a workflow.

Short and sweet. We need this blog break to recover from last week’s big announcement of CRM 2013, news from the WPC2013 and the release of UR 14. Have a nice weekend!