July 18th Nationals Game

If you are in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area - make sure you plan to attend the Nationals vs the Dodgers game on Saturday, July 18th at 4:05 PM.

This is a great way to connect with other CRM users and learn more about the CRM User Group especially the DC and Baltimore chapters.

I will be in the neon pink shirt and I will be handing out #CRMUGDC wristbands! Just come meet me in the Red Loft Bar. I plan to be there from when the doors open until 6pm. 

If you are planning on coming, let me know by Registering with CRMUG or commenting below.

Also make sure you buy your tickets! Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

July 1 Blog Review

This week’s blog review is a bit early due to the Holiday but the CRM news-machine is still running. Lots of great tips and tricks to share with you today.

PowerObjects posted two great how-to articles. How to Hide the Lead Qualify Button without Coding talks about how you can remove the Account and Contact create permissions to prevent some users from being able to qualify their leads.

Also see Aging using the ‘Older Than’ Clause with Advanced Find. This talks about the new “Older Than” option in Advanced Find with CRM 2015 Update 1. This will allow you to look at calls that are older than 24 hours or even Leads that were created 5 minutes ago. The possibilities are endless!

There are also a few CRM Tip of the Day posts that you should read. If your Child Workflow needs more than One Entity describes two options for getting the information to the child workflow. In CRM 2015 Update 1 you can create a process as global or you can use an intermediate entity to pass all the data (don’t forget to clean these records up!).

No email Without Activity reminds us that if you enable an entity for email you also need to enable it for Activities.

We have looked at Leon Tribe’s Secrets to a Successful CRM Deployment over the last few weeks. This week he released Part Three – Technology. This includes embracing and using the new features CRM offers such as Hierarchical views, Business Process Rules and Business Process Flows. All of the improvements in CRM 2015 (especially update 1) make CRM a very appealing product which will help make your project a success.

As organizations are updating from older versions to CRM 2013/2015 many questions come up in regards to what should stay in code and what should take advantage of the new features. If you are in this situation, be sure to read C5Insight’s article – Business Rules or JavaScript in CRM…that is the Question. This talks about the benefits and limitations of Business Rules to keep in mind while you are making your decision.

Finally, the CRM Team is continually working on providing better training and documentation for CRM customers. This week they announced a CRM eBooks and Videos Page. This is a great tool for finding the resources you need.

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

June 26 Blog Review

Apparently everyone is off on vacation except for me. I just have a few quick posts to highlight for you this week.

First of all, several weeks ago we talked about the importance of people in your CRM deployment. This week Leon Tribe talked about the Top Ten Secrets to a Successful CRM Deployment: Part two – Process. This stresses the importance of planning the system with the future in mind and fixing data quality issues early before they get too out of hand.

Next I love Hosk’s blog on CRM 2013 – How to stop these Annoying Things in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This talks about fixes for annoying things such as the Outlook download reminder, pending emails notification and send error report question.

Finally, PowerObjects provided a step-by-step walk-through of Collapsing Business Process Flows in CRM 2013/2015. This shows you how to create a web resource that will hide all the Process Flow details until the user needs them.

That’s all I have. Have a great day!

Attention CRMUG Members of the DMV - 3 things to do this Summer!

If you live in DC, Maryland, or Virginia watch this video to learn about the 3 things you need to plan on doing this summer!

CRMUGDC Summer 2015 from Kylie Kiser on Vimeo.

1. Register for CRMUG Summit - The Summit Early Bird Deadline is June 30. Summit is a great place to connect with other users and learn how to use CRM better. Also see the Sneak Peek of sessions to be offered.
2. Nats Game Chapter Meetup - Plan to come to the July 18th 4:05 PM Nationals game vs the Dodgers. Come to the Red Loft Bar throughout the game to meet other CRMUG members in the area. This is a great way to get to know the user group especially if you haven't been able to come out to one of our quarterly meetings yet. Make sure you register with CRMUG and buy your tickets.
3. Q3 Chapter Meeting on August 12 - Come to the Microsoft Office in Chevy Chase the morning of August 12 to discuss Customer Service in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We will have a customer talking about how they have used CRM to improve customer experience and AdxStudio will also present on using portals to improve customer engagement.

I am looking forward to seeing all of you at these events. Please let me know if you have any questions!

July 19 Blog Review

Let’s jump right into our CRM news of the week!

This is a bit more technical than I usually include but you should check out Hosk’s Don’t let bugs get into Production Environments. This stresses the importance of making sure you look for issues throughout the whole design and release process. It will be harder to fix the longer you let it grow!

Hitachi Solutions posted about 10 ways CRM Benefits the Individual. There are many benefits to using CRM. You users need to understand the ways it benefits them so that they will use the system and take advantages of what it provides.

C5Insight shared CRM Deployment Options … How to Decide? This walks through your deployment choices and the factors that will need to go into your decision.

Leon Tribe blogged about the Top Ten Secrets to a Successful CRM Deployment: Part One – People. This walks through ten reasons why people are essential to your CRM success including executive buy-in and training.

Finally there were two great tips posted by PowerObjects that are worth checking out:

• Clearing a Field Value Using Business Rules – This walks you through writing a business rule that will remove the value from a field on your form
• How to Make Unused OOB Fields Unsearchable in Dynamics CRM – Advanced Find is a great tool to empower your users but it can be very overwhelming when users see a long list of fields. To make it easier, set your unused fields as unsearchable so they will no longer appear there. Just keep in mind the limitations of unsearchable fields.

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

June 12 Blog Review

Welcome everyone! Let us quickly review the CRM news this week so you can get back to enjoying your summer!

The CRM Tip of the Day posted several great tips this week:

• Some things are Irreversible – Keep in mind anytime you create a currency function the system will create transactioncurrencyid and exchangerate fields. These will not be deleted even if you delete the currency field.
• The Mysteries of Sync – this discusses a few interesting behaviors of the CRM for Outlook sync
• Convert your SQL to FetchXML the Easy Way – this talks about using the SQL2Fetch Converter to change your CRM on-premise SQL to FetchXML statements for CRM Online

PowerObjects posted Product Bundles with Variable Product Quantities. This walks through how to create the Product Bundle and how to use this on an Opportunity.

The CRM Team announced this week that there is a new Web API for CRM Online 2015 Update 1. Make sure you check out the available documentation and samples.

The CRM Lady shared Time for Graphics, Easy Graphics from CRM with Excel PowerBI. This walks you through how to export data and plot it on a map using Excel PowerMap. This is a very cool feature to play with!

Finally who doesn’t love a good infographic? Check out, Somoma Partners INFOGRAPHIC: 2015 State of Knowledge for Customer Service. This reviews some stats about customer service about things that customers are expecting and employee challenges. This points out how important it is to have a robust, user-friendly CRM system to help your employees get the information they need quickly.

Don’t forget – the CRMUG Chapters for DC and Baltimore will be meeting up for a summer networking event at the July 18^th Nationals game. You can register here and buy tickets from the Nationals directly. Meet us at the Red Loft Bar anytime during the game!

That’s all for today folks!

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!