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!

December 18 Blog Review

This will be the last blog review before my holiday time so let’s make sure it is interesting.

I must start by reminding you that the CRMUGDC 2016 Chapter Launch Party was just announced! This will be a fun networking event on Thursday January 21^st. It will feature eating, drinking and question-answering. Come out to learn more about all the user groups in DC, Maryland, and Virginia and talk with CRM users in your area. For more details, read the Blog or get Registered.

Within the last few weeks Microsoft announced the release of CRM 2016. This week they announced the acquisition of Metanautix, a data analytics company. No information is given about CRM integration but it will be interesting to see how this develops in the increasingly connected Microsoft product catalog. (Although Salesforce is mentioned in the announcement. Odd.)

With 2016 in mind, check out CRM Tip of the Day’s post on CRM 2016 Postponed Features. This talks about some items that were originally expected in CRM 2016 that have been pushed out to upcoming releases.

PowerObjects was very aware that most of the population was distracted with Star Wars this week and so their blogs reflect that. Be sure to read The Force is Strong with this Version: Top New Features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Online and Light Side or Dark Side? Personalize Dynamics CRM 2015 with Themes.

Adam Vero posted Figuring Out Shares in the PrincipleObjectAccess POA table in CRM. Take a close look at this if you are experiencing any odd access issue and need to dig in to all the sharing going on in your organization.

That’s all for today folks. Happy Holidays!

Announcing: CRMUGDC 2016 Chapter Launch Party

Save the date for the January 21, 2016 CRMUGDC Chapter Launch Party!

The fun will start at 7pm at Higher Logic in Arlington.

This will be a great time to meet other CRM users in the DMV and learn more about the user group. We will have lots of food and drink as well as great networking. We will also have an Ask-It Basket where you can submit your questions and experts will answer them right then! Questions that are not answered may be used as topics for future meetings.

Come see the value of CRMUG - networking and getting answers to your questions!

Learn more about all the chapters in the DMV - DC, Baltimore, Richmond, and Reston (coming soon!)!

This is a great event for regular attendees of the local chapter meetings to meet up with old friends. It’s also a great time for new members so you can learn what the local meetings are all about and make connections before attending the regular quarterly meetings. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

Location: Higher Logic, 1600 Wilson Blvd, Suite 400, Arlington, VA

Register here!

Post any questions in the comments!

December 11 Blog Review

This time of year is very busy with parties and gifts. So we will keep this quick so you can rush off to your cookie exchange.

Microsoft sent us the gift of CRM 2016 last week. This week came all of the documentation and more information about new features. The CRM Team shared the CRM 2016 Product Wave Documentation. This has links to many different documents and videos to help you prepare and transition to 2016.

The CRM Team also shared information about the new Task Flows feature. Check out, What are Task Flows and how do they compare to other tools in CRM? 

Then, when you are ready to build your own you should read, Creating and Customizing Task Flows.

Lastly for today, if you are looking to make a change in the new year you can review Sonoma Partner's Infographic on Resume Tips from the Recruiting Desk.

That's all for today folks. Have a lovely weekend!

December 4 Blog Review

Welcome to the first blog review of December! 2015 is quickly slipping away from us but don’t get too melancholy – CRM 2016 has been released!

Here are all the blogs to check out about the CRM 2016 announcement:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Now Available: ushering in a New Era of Intelligent Customer engagement (Microsoft)
• First Glance at Dynamics CRM 2016 (Jukka Niiranen)
• CRM 2016 is available (CRM Tip of the Day)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 is here! (Ledgeview Partners)
• CRM 2016 General Availability Announced at Convergence EMEA! (Chris Cognetta)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 (Carsten Groth)

Lots of new and enhanced features to look for. I’m sure there will be many more blogs about CRM 2016 in the coming weeks!

Let’s check out a couple other interesting blogs posted this week.

PowerObjects shared Take your Disk Space to the MAX: Automatically Delete Completed Workflow Jobs in CRM 2015. This walks you though how to set up your workflows to be removed when they complete. This is great to save space by removing the completed system jobs for workflows that have been fully tested and are running smoothly.

Leon Tribe posted an interesting article on Calculating the Day of the Week Without Code. This shows you how to use Business Rules to have a field show “Friday” when “12/4/2015” is entered in the trigger field.

That’s all for today folks. Enjoy your weekend!