Microsoft Convergence – 2014 is going to be the year of Dynamics CRM

REPOST FROM MY INTERGEN BLOG POST – http://www.intergen.co.nz/blog/Steven-Foster/dates/2014/3/microsoft-convergence-2014-is-going-to-be-the-year-of-dynamics-crm/

Microsoft Convergence 2014 was a truly amazing event with announcements left right and centre. This year’s event was held in Atlanta over 3 full day’s closing with keynote speakers Biz Stone and Arianna Huffington, and a the final celebration performed by FUN.

With so much information published at the event I will focus my first series of posts on the Dynamics CRM Roadmap. With an announced 8 releases over the next 4 quarters, it is going to be a busy year. Jujhar Singh (General Manager Microsoft Dynamics CRM) presented a key session at Convergence and announced a wave of releases that was focussed on delivering “Amazing Customer Experiences: from core CRM, to Customer Service, to Marketing and finally Social Listening.”

The slide below depicts the 2014 roadmap for Dynamics CRM:

At the core of the release is the Q2 spring release that includes major revamps to the Customer Care module of Dynamics CRM, the launch of Microsoft Dynamic Marketing (a standalone marketing tool with integration to Dynamics CRM) and finally the release the Microsoft Dynamics Social Listening. Quickly following will be an immediate update to the Social Listening component with a Q3 release of Libra that will extend the Social listening capability and integration to Dynamics CRM. The Q4 release will then be another huge release extending the capability further in each of the core products while for the first time integrating some of the great Parature features of Knowledge base and portals into Dynamics CRM.

To be honest each release could be a blog in its own right and over the few days I will try and go into a little more detail on my dedicated Dynamics blog http://www.nakedcrm.com.

So what I will do is set the scene for the Spring release and without going into lots of details about each release, here are the key takeaways.

Leo release

A key point to note on this release is that it will now be both an Online and On Premise release.

The slide above depicts the core new capabilities being introduced with Leo around Customer Care. The highlights for me of this release are the ability to manage SLAs, the new Timer object to time cases, and the Unified Service Desk for developing composite framework environments. Not only are we seeing enhancements to customer care we will also see improvements around productivity including removal of the SharePoint iframe and replacement with a server side sync process, a new Android mobile app, Exchange online sync, and enhancements to Online migration and deployment tools for data.

Mira Release

The Mira release will see a revamped Dynamics Marketing platform built upon Marketing Pilot. The look and feel will be identical to Dynamics CRM and the integration to CRM will include all core entities.

Subra Release

The Subra release will focus on delivering Social Listening capabilities directly in Dynamics CRM as well as a separate application for monitoring brand awareness, customers, contacts and listening to key words across all social media channels.

Licensing

With the Spring release will come a new licence offering around Enterprise customers that will include all capabilities while in addition providing individual access to Dynamics Marketing. The CRM professional licence will also be enhanced to include Dynamics Social Listening by default. As and when the pricing for our region is announced I will further post on this topic.

In summary, 2014 is going to be the year of Dynamics CRM. With the 8 releases we will see a truly enterprise CRM system that will deliver amazing experiences for Customers across the full spectrum of CRM use cases.

2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 27,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Create a Gantt Chart in MS CRM

Great post on creating a gnatt chart using standard CRM bar charts and a little xml update.

crm chart guy

Until recently I thought that Gantt charts couldn’t be done in MS Dynamics CRM without turning to some serious development, which I found unfortunate because this is a popular type of chart and users find them easy to read. Turns out you can, and it’s not that difficult to create a simple Gantt Chart in MS CRM.

Important Update regarding Unified Interface in Dynamics 365.
When converting to the Unified Interface in Dynamics 365 or any Model-Driven Power App you will also get a new charting engine. This comes with some limitations as Min and Max values on a date fields are no longer possible. This Gantt chart method relies on the min aggregation for a date field and will therefore NOT work in the Unified Interface. As of writing, there is no alternate method for a Gantt chart using the built-in charts.
Updated: 3/23/2020

EDIT regarding CRM2011: This…

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Using workflows to validate records to prevent creates, updates, assign and deletes

Business Scenario – I want to prevent a user creating an opportunity if the credit on hold status is set to yes of the potential customer.

I have many ways of doing this for example:

• I could use a plugin
• I could use some JavaScript
• I could use a real-time workflow in CRM2013

The significance of using a workflow is that I now no longer need a developer to perform this development and if I want to the business rule later I can again without a developer. So how do I do this?

1. Create a new process via Settings -> Processes
2. Assign the process a name, associate to the entity the user will be creating that the validation will apply, in this case an opportunity
3. Set the “Run this workflow in the background” to No
4. 
5. Click Ok
6. Now specify when the workflow should fire i.e. On create, change, assign, delete, in my scenario on Create
7. NOTE: Not applicable to on create but is to the other options is when the workflow runs before or after the save event. For validation rules you always want to execute before the change is applied
8. 
9. Now all you need to create is a simple condition in my case to check the related customer to the opportunity to see if the credit status is on hold and if it is prevent the save and display a message
10. The key to a validation rule is Stopping the workflow as “Cancelled” this method prevents the save or action occurring on the record
11. 
12. You will notice a new feature of real time workflows is the ability to define the status message of the reason for cancellation or success. In here we can specify how we inform the user on what to do next and is key to a validation rule.
13. 
14. Now activate the workflow and test

Seeing the validation in action

So I now navigate to my account record and you can see that the credit on hold status is set to Yes.

 

I click on the plus icon on the Opportunity grid and get presented with the quick create form. 

I complete the details and save, I get presented with my nice status message, and the user can not create an opportunity.

 

In summary …

Simple or complex validation rules can not be applied using workflows by non developers that enable the business to own the validation of the system. Very cool new feature and again shows you can do a lot before you need to customise!

Creating Event Labels from Dynamics CRM with a QR code, for quick attendance recording

So you run events and at the event you want to quickly update who has attended. You use Dynamics CRM to capture the event details and you record who has RSVP’d via campaign responses. You use mail merge to print out labels for the event.

Have you ever considered using QR codes on your labels to register people in? Did you know you can do this through standard Microsoft Word features (Word 2013 only) using mail merge? Well if you didn’t here is what you need to do:

1. First you need to record the URL of the Campaign response record as a field on the campaign response. To do this you will need to do some minor config as follows:
   1. Create a new field on the Campaign Response record called “Record URL”
   2. Create a workflow that fires on Create of a new record to update the Campaign response Record URL using the field “Record URL (Dynamic)”
   3. 
2. Next on to the mail merge, campaign responses do not support mail merge, to get around this simply export out the campaign responses using the standard export feature but ensure you include your new Record URL field.
3. Now open Word 2013 and start a mail merge, select the exported out records to form the list to use.
4. To add a QR code to your label you simply click “Insert Barcode Field” in the mailing ribbon, Select QR Code and select the Record URL field.
   1. 
5. You now have generated a unique QR code for each record.
6. Print your labels and you are done.

Now at the event you can scan the QR code as they arrive and update the status reason of the record to Attended.

Mobile Express gets a face lift on CRM2013

So I have provisioned myself my first CRM2013 online APAC org as a trial and I have to say it is running very nicely! Connected the mobile Win 8 App and all works, but I thought what about Mobile express?

Well you would be pleased to know it has had a facelift not a redesign of any of the configuration side, but it just looks nice!

Here are some images:

CRM 2013 – Synchronous workflows – Real time workflows

Great new feature of CRM 2013 is the ability to trigger a workflow synchronously, meaning I update a field, it triggers a workflow, that updates a field on the form in real time with no refreshing? Say goodbye to some plugins!

To make a workflow real time, click the actions menu and select real time option:

Once you have enabled this then you have a few more settings to work with to define how the workflow is triggered.

So depending on how the workflow is triggered will determine whether you can start the workflow process before the record has been created or after if trigger on create, otherwise if trigger any on change then again before or after and likewise on delete.

Another important point is how you execute the workflow. You now have the option to execute as the owner of the workflow thus the owner may have greater security permissions or run as the owner of the record that may have limited rights. Things to think about when designing workflows.

To note:

Like any workflow consider the impact of real time on performance and likely trigger ratio. In addition think about the impact that it may have on imports, we found real time workflows severely impacted the time to import records as real time workflows were triggered regardless of resource availability

CRM 2013 – Merging Forms and content

So I have upgraded and I want to add my additional fields to the new look and feel CRM 2013 forms, how can I do this efficiently without having to one by one drag them in to the form?

Simple use the Bring in Another Form option to append the fields from the old form on to the new form. You can then just simple drag and drop the fields on the new layout.

CRM 2013 – Description Tool Tips

So how do I provide help for my users on what they should be filling in on a particular field?

Its easy with CRM 2013, use the description on the field. In CRM 2013 the description on a field is displayed when you hover over the field, in essence a tool tip or help option.

Things to note:

If you are upgrading you may want to review what your descriptions include as they could be developer guides and not user friendly.

CRM 2013 – Quick View Cards

A great new feature of CRM 2013 is the quick view feature.

Quick Views – The ability to display a read only view of a associated record within an existing form.

What this means is that I am looking at the Account screen and I can quick view the details of the primary contact or even the details of the primary account.

So how do I create a quick view?

Its simple in CRM 2013, you simply navigate to the entity form area and create a new quick view form. You can then add fields, subgrids and sections to the view. See image below:

Once you ave created the form you save it and publish it. You can create many quick view forms for any entity.

To display the quick view on the form

Again so simple, open up an existing form, select the area you want to add the quick view form and click the insert quick view see below:

Then you select the lookup on the form for which you want to display the quick view form of and you are done:

Once you have added it, you save and publish the form and your quick view card will be displayed. If no record exists in the lookup associated to the quick view then the quick view will not be displayed.

See screen shot below of Parent Account quick view.

Possible uses:

Display details of a contact or product associated to a Case on the case form.

Display product details on a quote product

Display competitor details on an opportunity

As you can see many uses of this very cool feature!