September 20 Blog Review

More and more news is beginning to surface about CRM 2013. Today we start with a success story and some CRM 2011 tips. Then we move on to learn a bit more about CRM 2013.

DynamicsCafe featured the Success Story of New Belgium Brewing. This is to drive interest in the upcoming webinar featuring the brewing company, however they planned it during CRMUG Summit so that will be a problem for some people. This company uses a “Beer Ranger” app for field agents to work off of. You can learn more about this in Sonoma’s Press Release from when this was initially deployed.

In my experience, the E-mail Router can cause a large amount of heartache. Even though it is going away in CRM 2013, we still need to deal with it now. PowerObject posted a great blog on Email Router Troubleshooting 101. It describes how to identify where the problem exists, checking everyone involved has access to the router and what to do next.

CRM in the Field Talks about Multi-Series Bar Charting. Sometimes when you design a bar chart it will have a secondary y-axis; so some of the bars are related to the primary and others to the secondary. This can be corrected by modifying the chart XML to remove the secondary axis reference.

CustomerEffective discusses the Benefit of CRM Activity Management. In the example presented, the author was in a meeting with a customer and trying to remember who was in previous meetings, what they said, etc. This is an excellent use of CRM. We can keep track of all these details for reference later. You never know how the little details could benefit you in the future.

In CRM 2013, we will be able to include a Bing map for an address in the system. Chris Cognetta discusses how to enable Bing Maps API Integration. First of all you will need to buy your key to use the Bing API. This information is entered into the System Settings area. Then you can simply add the map to the form through the form customization Insert tab.

MSDynamicsWorld reviewed the Favorite Features emerging from CRM 2012 Partners. Here is a list of what is highlighted in more detail in the blog:

• Quick Create vs. Quick Forms
• Real-time/Synchronous Workflows
• Search by Phone Number (simply create a call and enter the number in the “Call To” field and CRM 2013 will search for the corresponding record)
• Access Teams
• Form and Field Notifications
• Improved View Filters

Sonoma Partners wants to make sure we are Ready for 2013 and also get us excited about new Lookup Functionality. The new lookups are very nice in that if we enter text into a lookup box and it displays multiple options, it will also display some information from the record. This will make it easier to choose the correct related record. However, you will not be able experience those fabulous lookups if you haven’t fixed and direct SQL Calls, updated all your endpoints and checked all your custom code passes the Code Validation Tool. Follow Sonoma’s Flow chart to see where you are in the process.

There are lots of new features to be excited for in CRM 2013. I feel like we learn about a new feature every week. It will be a big change, but definitely a welcome and beneficial change.

August 16 Blog Review

The MVP Bloggers were fairly quiet this week. I think they are probably working hard on CRM 2013 and not allowed to tell any regular people about it. Perhaps we will know more soon. The rest of the blog world is still a buzz. Here are some of this week’s best articles.

Leon Tribe describes how to make a dialog to use when a Contact Moves Employers. The issue here is if you simply move the Contact from one Account to the other the Activity history will move with it. If we want this information to remain with the old company we should deactivate the old Contact and create a clone contact under the new employer. A dialog can assist with this by copying all information to a new contact and entering the new Account that is entered by the user.

MSDynamicsWorld sheds some more light on CRM 2013 in Behind some Key Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Design Decisions. Key takeaways are as follows:

• Focus on speed to boost productivity and user adoption
• Online users will need to upgrade fairly quickly because there are plans for quarterly enhancements
• Goal was to make the interface simple, easy and seamless across devices
• Focus on outcome-driven experiences
• The business process piece allows businesses to standardize their best practices and assist with new user on-boarding

There is also another article challenging common beliefs when planning out a CRM system – CxM through xRM: Focusing on Outcomes when Modeling Relationship Management in your CRM system. Tenets the article challenges: (1) that a relationship can be managed and (2) that managing a relationship can be done by tracking activities or interactions. You can measure interactions/activities but the fact that they occurred does not necessarily mean that it produced the desired outcome. Rather than focusing on those Activities you can instead manage the desired outcome. Interactions need to be customized to achieve the desired result. “Better interactions lead to better experiences which lead to stronger relationships that in turn produce valuable insights that allow a business to create even better interactions.”

With all the news about CRM 2013 Microsoft also announced a new licensing and pricing system, you can learn more about this in Sonoma’s How Much Will I be Paying for CRM?. Now there are 3 licensing tiers, you can choose the level that is right for you and your users. The blog suggests getting the highest level, professional, for your administrators and power users. Then the lower tiers can be for the rest of users that may not need access to as many features.

The CRM Software Blog posted a Summary of What’s New in CRM 2013. Here are the key pieces they mention:

• Mobile Device and Touch-Optimized Screens
• Configurable Business Rules – rules with automatic actions tied to them such as populating a field, making a field required, locking a field, etc.
• Improved solution architecture
• Image support on all entities
• Quick Create Functionality to quickly create new records without leaving the page you are working on
• Workflow Improvements – Synchronous workflow capability, ability to choose if a workflow runs before or after an action, and workflows will work on all devices. In addition, customizers can now select if workflows should run as the owner of the workflow or as the person who modified the record that triggered the workflow.
• Native Mobile Apps

That’s all I have for you today. Have a nice weekend!

July 26 Blog Review

The CRM world is starting to recover from the flurry of news a few weeks ago. Here are the top stories this week:

Everyone is getting excited/nervous for the Orion upgrade. PowerObjects is helping us with their blog Preparing for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. If you are fully up to 2011 standards and compatible with the UR 12 cross-browser functionality you should be in a good spot to move to 2013. Make sure you do not have the “Include HTC support in Microsoft Dynamics CRM forms” setting checked when testing, this will not be available in 2013. To know how long you have to prepare check out MSDynamicsWorld and Putting it in Writing.

Queues in CRM can be a tricky feature. One especially irksome piece is how, in many implementations, users can see a full list of all queues including everyone’s personal queue. A good way to fix this is to decrease the read access level and then use teams and sharing for access. Learn more about this in CustomerEffective’s Taming The Queue View in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

For those of you working on moving to Update Rollup 14, Chris Cognetta advises that some old registry keys should remain in place to prevent poor performance. CRM 2011 Outlook Client: Disable Mapi Caching not working after UR 14.

This week Leon Tribe has been talking about Capturing Multiple Contact Roles in CRM. We know that Contacts can only be parented by one Account, but if they work at multiple companies some problems can arise. Some suggested approaches are: Connections, A Contact Role Entity and A Person Entity. Read the blog to see the Pros and Cons of each approach.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM just celebrated its 10^th birthday. Read some Veterans Reflections at MSDynamicsWorld.

If you missed the WPC a few weeks ago (like me) you can catch the Top 11 Stories here.

That’s all for today folks. Let me know if I missed anything and I can include it next week!

July 12 Blog Review

It has been far too long since my last “weekly” blog review. Lots of interesting things have been happening in the CRM world.

Most importantly, the new version of CRM was officially announced as CRM 2013. We have some news from the Partner Conference as well as Update Rollup 14. Let’s cover the other notable topics of the last little bit.

PowerObjects had a great tutorial on Maintaining CRM for Outlook. I have found the Outlook client to have many odd problems and am always looking for quick fixes. This describes how to use Diagnostics utility (Advanced Troubleshooting area) to delete the temporary files and resolve issues such as disabled ribbon buttons, records not displaying properly and sync issues.

CustomerEffective posted about a good way to set up your Outlook filters so your most-used contacts will sync to your Outlook. This allows you to be more prepared for your calls with clients.

Also, for those in the Health sector, we learned about how CRM is not innately HIPAA Compliant but it is HIPAA Capable – learn methods for securing the information here.

Finally, CustomerEffective also posted a good list of questions to ask when choosing a software vendor. The best vendor for one company is not necessarily the best vendor for every company. When choosing a vendor your company needs to be prepared to discuss your system; needs and future goals, then find out how this vendor can help. Also make sure to ask for and follow up with references.

Chris Cognetta is keeping us up to date on all the exciting news in the CRM world. Check out these great posts:

• Orion Announcement and related posts
• World Wide Partner Conference Subscription Update
• CRM 2013 Screenshots

Leon Tribe has a great blog on The Difference Between Selling and Consulting. I love it because of this line, “idea that the client needs a consultant who will say yes to any request is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster.” This is so true. If the consultant is always saying yes here is the way we can do that, even if it’s complicated or not supported, this is a problem. The system will end up over-complicated and not useable. Consultants always need to have the best future interest of the customer in mind even if it means saying no to something they want – or perhaps looking harder at an easier solution to their issue.

Madrona provides some good tips for Effective Release Meetings. How to avoid the dreaded day-of-release questions/changes.

As already mentioned Microsoft announced that CRM 2013 (formerly known as Orion) will be released in the fall. MSDynamicsWorld has been keeping us up to date on all the news to do with this including the Press Release, Pricing Options and Product Roadmap.

Preact CRM has a good preview of the new CRM 2013 interface, lots of great screenshots. I love the new ribbon look and the easy access to recent records.

Sonoma Partners also has their take on the new release again highlighting that this will feature only the process-driven forms but JavaScript is said to be supported. Also we get a glimpse into Update Rollup 14, more on that below.

Update Rollup 14 – Released on 7/11/2013: Download, Knowledge Base Article

Fixes to take note of:

• Better performance around User and Team caching. For example, a user is a member of 15,000 teams. You login as this user and it takes a long time to cache all the data. If you login as another user, you see the same problem due to clearing the cache.
• Description field in activity views shows HTML style information.
• Outlook folders are filtered only per the user’s security, and does not take into account the security of the team the user is a part of.
• Memory errors in 32-bit CRM for Outlook when you go offline.
• Formatting exceptions occur during data import.
• "Show only my records" in lookup dialog box doesn't always show just my records.
• When you click View existing record in CRM in the Outlook client, nothing happens.
• Sum of currency type field displays an incorrect currency symbol.
• Printer prompts for 8.3" x 11" paper when you print a report that was created in the report wizard.

Sadly nothing as interesting as UR 13’s “You cannot install Update Rollup 11 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on a computer that has a French version of Windows, SQL Server, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 installed.” Or UR 12’s “When the "Preview all items in Auto Preview" setting is enabled for the Japanese language option in Outlook, Outlook crashes.” But that is probably for the best.

Adam Vero also wrote a great blog explaining Security Roles and Teams. It is long but definitely worth the read. The main takeaway for me was that assigning a team a security role gives the users in the team that access relative to the team. Meaning, if the team had a role with Business Unit access to Accounts and it is in business unit A and I am in business unit B. It would give me access to the accounts in Business Unit A (the team’s Business Unit) not my Business Unit.

That’s all for tonight. I hope I covered all the important bits. Sweet CRM Dreams!