Dec 26 2007
Twas the weeks before release date and all thru the land, not a user was stirring not even for spam.
The keyboards were hung on the desk with great care,
In hopes that 4.0 would soon be there
The CRM administrators were nestled all sung in their beds,
While visions of better workflow danced in their heads
Happy Holidays from everyone at Unitek!
Dec 21 2007
The recommendations that follow are among some of the first suggestions I make to my customers in order to make using Microsoft CRM 3.0 easier for their users. While the recommended customizations are simple and easy to implement, they contribute greatly toward making the Microsoft CRM easier to use and can potentially have big payoffs in terms of user acceptance. So be a friend to your users and implement these recommendations.
Tip #1: Stop confusing your users.
Microsoft CRM’s Advance Find uses attribute’s Display Name to list each entity’s searchable fields. Having a label on a form that is different from the Display Name of the field can become very confusing and can create unnecessary frustration for your users.
Dec 19 2007
In today’s “Fast Food World,” your customers expect flexibility to meet their needs. As a result, most employees spend a lot of time in Microsoft CRM rescheduling activities for customer’s services. Being able to quickly change service activities means, for example, a receptionist who schedules and reschedules service activities every day, can spend time doing other tasks and your customers can be off the phone and on their merry way. The following scenario takes you through the quick and easy steps to reschedule a service activity.
Barbara, a receptionist at a local Tune-Up Station, answers a call from Mr. Mercedes. He is requesting to reschedule his service activity for his vehicle tune-up and oil change. He doesn’t care when; it just can’t be now because he has another appointment that he must attend. (Golf Tee Time) In Microsoft CRM, Barbara can open Mr. Mercedes’ service activity in the Service Calendar, and then reschedule him for another day and time.
In your Navigation Pane, click Service, and then click Service Calendar.
To find your customer’s service activity, verify that the Look For box is empty, and in the Type list, select Appointment and Service Activity. In the View list, select All Activities.
On the calendar, select your customer’s service activity, and then on the Actions toolbar, click Reschedule.
On the Schedule Service Activity form, locate the Available Times list to select a new date and time for the customer.
Click the Scheduled Start time and then click Schedule. Remember: Do not select any underlined text, like the Service, Resources, or Site, or the record will open.
On the customer’s updated Service Activity form, verify the new date and time, and then click Save and Close.
In just these few steps, you can quickly reschedule service activities to get your customer what they need; flexible service solutions. The easier you make it for them, the more likely they are to keep coming back; because in today’s world, customers appreciate companies that appreciate them.
Dec 18 2007
There are times that we need to access and use data in CRM that we don’t want the users to see. For example we might want to make sure a Contact entity item enters a particular Workflow only once. This can be a tricky proposition when you have Contacts that need to be in Workflow both from the Create action and the Assign action. Utilizing a hidden field in CRM will be our method.
First off, let’s understand the concept of hidden fields. We can add an attribute to an entity and never add that attribute to the form. That in essence is a hidden field. Depending on our usage, we might also make the field Unsearchable. If we don’t then the field appears in the Advanced Find view and we may not want our users to see the data in this hidden field.
Let’s assume our custom, hidden attribute is named “InWorkflow”.
We now have a field that will hold the info we require. In this example we’re discussing how to utilize this field for Workflow. Since our Contact entity has the same rule set for Contacts that are created and assigned, we’ll set up 3 Workflow rules:
It’s possible that a Contact might enter this Workflow more than once and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. In the Manual Rule we’ll use the Check Entity Condition & we’ll check the status of “InWorkflow”.
Now we continue about the Workflow, adding our conditions and actions. If at any point we need the Contact to leave Workflow, make sure you Update the Entity to mark the “InWorkflow” to No.
As Microsoft CRM consultants, we are usually called upon to come up with a solution to a tricky problem. Our customers love it when we come up with creative solutions to what first seemed an impossible task.
Dec 12 2007
While teaching a custom Microsoft CRM 3.0 class for a company, I had a number of students who were asking me about the phone number format in the Account and Contact forms. The issue is that Microsoft CRM accepts multiple formats including dashes, parenthesis and other format combinations and variations. The ability to auto-format various phone number formats that users entered into a common format had been present in their previous CRM software. However the out of the box, Microsoft CRM 3.0 does not auto-format phone number fields in the Lead, Account and Contact forms.
Dec 11 2007
No matter how you divide your target market among sales people invariably there will always be situations where you have to commission more than one sales person for a sale. Out of the box Microsoft CRM does not have any way of handling split commissions. So if you are using the Sales Module of Microsoft CRM and relay heavily on it as your main sales automation tool, you’ll need to devise a way to be able to split commissions.
Following is one way of accomplishing this:
Provide a “Split Commission” button in the action bar of the Opportunity Form of Microsoft CRM and make it accessible to the Sales Admin role. In case of a split, the sales admin would open the related Opportunity and would click the “Split Commission” button. A pop up window will collect the required info; percentage of the split, name of the other sales person, etc. Once the required info is collected, a clone of the Opportunity gets created and percentage of split, the actual split-ed commissionable sales amount and the name of the sales people are recorded in both Opportunity records.
When writing reports you will want to be sure to take the existence of the split opportunity in mind so that you do not double count the number of your won opportunities.
If you are interested in getting the sample code, please e-mail me at royam@unitek.com.
RM
Microsoft CRM Consultant
Dec 07 2007
Many customer relationship applications provide the users an automated process to populate City & State after the user enters a Zip Code, but CRM sadly does not. If your business needs this functionality the following tutorial was written with you in mind.
Using the following methods, we’ll add a new entity in CRM, populate it with zip code, city & state info and then we’ll show you how to make CRM fill in a Contact or Lead’s City & State after a user enters a zip code.
Step 1 - Create the Custom Entity
Click over to the Primary Attribute tab.
Dec 07 2007
Here’s an easy to implement customization that can save users time & clicks. We’re going to force CRM to put a Contacts phone number in the form Title bar, enabling users to view History, Activities, Opportunities, etc., all the while having a view of the phone number:
Dec 05 2007
Reporting is a vital portion of CRM that is often overlooked. Many reports are needed on a regular basis by CRM users and if we stick with the pre-defined methods, users must go to the Reports section of CRM.
We’ve implemented a more user friendly method that you too may like. We design and deploy our SRS reports in Visual Studio.
Once deployed we modify the Site Map, adding links to the reports on the CRM main navigation bar. Since we’re using Site Map, we can put the same link in multiple sub-sections like Workplace and Sales. With a single click, the report opens in CRM’s main window.
Our customers love this easy method for reporting!
