Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile

Recently, we have had some questions regarding the mobile capabilities of Microsoft CRM 2011.  I did a little digging and found the following tidbits:

• The mobile enhancements are scheduled for Q2 2012.
• It is an extra charge of $30/user/month, with upto 3 devices per user.
• There will be some sort of local data storage/sync for offline use.
• It will support the iphone, ipad, android, blackberry and windows7 devices.
• 

Here are some links that have more detail:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/feb12/02-06CRMMobilePR.aspx

https://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/crmnontechnical/b/crmconnection/archive/2012/02/06/crm-anywhere.aspx

http://crmpublish.blob.core.windows.net/docs/ReleasePreviewGuide.pdf

 

Of course things can change before it goes live, but so far it sounds nice.

Currently working towards rolling out our custom ASP.net CRM system. I’m really happy with the way it turned out, our system makes quoting/ordering easier and more user friendly than in any other CRM system I’ve seen.

We can plug AJAX auto completes into any data streamlining the user interface and allowing for rapid product querying and quoting. It also uses custom integration tools that we’ve developed to synchronize data with outlook.

Save a couple $grand$ on email every year…

For the past several months, we’ve been converting some of our customers over to Office365.  In fact, we’ve been able to prove savings of $2k to $5k per year for each customer (over 3 years), depending on the number of users converted.  This product is a serious cost-savings tool.  And now, Microsoft is making it easier than ever to switch.

Until June, Microsoft’s Big Easy 8 sale is going on.  This means you can get a E1 plan (Exchange, Sharepoint, and Windows Live meetings) for just $8 per user, per month (less than $100 per year per user!).  Or, if you also could benefit from upgrading all users to Microsoft Office 2010, then get the E3 plan at just $20 per user, per month.  This means that for price of Office 2010 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access) you get hosted Exchange and Sharepoint for free!  Microsoft will even give you some additional cash back to use for future training like our Outlook Productivity training for Sales and Operations staff.

We’ve been using Office365 here for about a year.  We switched from Lotus Notes.  For us its a no brainer – we no longer are in the “support” business for our email, and can just get after the business of helping our customers.  We’ve even done it in such a way that we still leverage our Lotus Notes applications as-is – only our email is switched to Office365.  And its been rock-solid reliable, just like Lotus Notes was for us.  (Why did we switch from Lotus?  Simple – momentum.  Most of our customers switched to Exchange/Outlook, so we needed to better support and train them.  The best way to do that is to use what they use.  Sad for Lotus - their job is marketing, our job is helping customers.)

If you haven’t checked out Office365, or haven’t seen a demo, click on our link here to start a free trial.  It will basically set you up with a 25 user E3 account so you can see how easy it is to use its online collaboration features (Sharepoint) for your team.  You can even setup temporary email accounts to test the email features as well.

Or, if you would like someone to just walk you through it, please do not hesitate to give me a call or shoot me an email.

“You go and do this… And totally redeem yourself!!”

A while back, I wrote a rant about Lifehacker telling job candidates to be brief, and skip the cover letter.

Today, they’ve redeemed themselves by posting an article recommending job candidates actually “research” the company they are interviewing with before attending the interview.

I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to interview a candidate just looking for a job. Employers these days want to feel like you actually care where you spend 8+ hours a day.

My tips include: Know what they make, know how they sell it, and try to figure out why they think they are different. Then, discuss what you could do to help. That type of discussion will make your resume jump to the top of the pile – and ends up being more of a conversation about you, rather that a conversation about your skills (which frankly, gets very old after 3 or 4 candidates).

Good luck!

Using MS CRM Online? Don’t forget to grab your SkyDrive!

As I mentioned to my customer today, if you are using Microsoft CRM Online, then you already have a “Windows Live” user id.  This automatically makes you eligible for afree 25gig “hard drive in the sky”.  I use it to send large files to customers, or work on “collaborative” ideas and initiatives.

Since CRM Online currently only gives you 5gigs with your subscription, this is a great way to minimize your storage footprint in CRM yet still get files back-and-forth to your customers.

Log on to your SkyDrive here.

Get more value from Microsoft Outlook…

Meet Chuck:

He’s your “average employee” – struggling to navigate today’s wild-wild-west of daily information, and simply get his work done.  His problem?  He hasn’t been taught how to do that.  He’s been given Microsoft Outlook to be more productive, but unfortunately has only gotten as far as sending emails and booking meetings (lots and lots of meetings!)

Fortunately, we can help.  We have recently developed a class for sales, service, and support teams that helps them immediately become more productive.  The class is delivered in both On-Site or Video/Webinar format – so we can help companies in any location, not just in Michigan.  It is designed to help teams organize their world, get more done, and spend more time “working” – instead of searching for information and drowning in Inbox Overload.

If your team or company may benefit from some low-cost Outlook training, please give us a call.  It’s a quick-win, with topics such as:

Organizing your world 

• Email & Calendar – Setting & Using Categories to track open items for Customers and Projects
• Email – Organize Sent email (not just Inbox) before it goes out
• Email – Creating Cool Rules to cut rough Inbox Overload
• Email – Creating Search Folders to build action lists
• Email – Setting up your Favorites for quicker access
• Calendar – Adding all tasks as “Time” for better productivity
• Email – Junk Filtering for less non-value-add email

Working with people

• Email – Tracking and Managing incoming and outgoing follow-up
• Email & Calendar – Exchanging calendars with external customers and internal teams
• Calendar – Working with multiple calendars, and creating and sharing Team calendars
• Email – Polling users with Yes/No tracking, Approve/Deny, and other Voting

Other Magic

• Email – Multiple signatures for condensed Reply/Forward, new prospects, and more
• Email – QuickParts – Creating, managing email templates for sales, service
• Email – Making custom QuickSteps to automate repetitive actions
• Email – Emailing your vCard, making a QR Code, and other quick tips
• Email – Quickly adding screen prints to emails

Eliminate the dreaded “reply-all” from your company…

We’ve all hate getting them - the dreaded “reply all” emails.  Too often, employees and co-workers continually use and abuse this button, to the extent that email is now “broken” in many companies throughout the business world.  Its sad really.  One little button can essentially ruin a function that was created to actually save people time.  Now however, it is one of the bigger time-wasters in our daily lives.

It’s the equivalent to spam in the business to business world – only you can’t opt-out.  You can fight back, however, and set up your life to better manage these CC’s (and BCC’s) and get back to the world of the important and urgent.

The goal of this post is to:

• Make people “think” before hitting the reply-all button.  Should it go to a shorter distribution list, or does everyone really need to know this?
• Punish those (a little bit) with an immediate confirmation “Thank you” back to the sender.  So, if they reply-all to 20 people, they will get 20 emails back saying “thanks!”
• Explore the use of Social tools within the enterprise to try to curb the reliance on Email for non-critical / non-actionable information within the company.

Setup a Rule

The thing about email systems that most people forget is – you can make rules.  Rules are great – they automate the movement of emails and information as its sent to you.  It can be moved and replied to.  So, if you make a rule to move CC, BCC, and “Reply-All” emails

To set this up in Microsoft Outlook, go into your rules.  You will need to add  separate rules for this.  This is due to the fact that the “reply” rule is a Server-side rule , and the “Move” rule is an Outlook (Client) rule, and Outlook will not let you build a rule that combines both.  But it still works fine with 2.

Hi!

Thanks for including me in your “Reply All” or “CC” email. I like to read these emails once a week (usually Friday afternoons), but sometimes it can take even longer based on my schedule.

If there is something “actionable” that needs my immediate attention, please copy that piece out and resend it back to me (directly). Otherwise, I will read your email when I get a chance.

Have a great day!
_____________________
Joe Wichowski
Traction Consulting Group

The same thing can be done in Lotus Notes as well.  However, you will also need to make an Email Agent (since the Lotus Notes rule system does not have an “auto-reply” capability).  But it still works pretty much the same – 1 rule to “move” the email, and 1 agent to “reply” to the originator.

So, with this rule setup within your company, the next time someone CC’s 20 people, they will in fact get 20 emails back – right now – saying “Thanks! But I won’t be reading this anytime soon”.  If it is truly important, it will be up to the sender to re-send the information if it truly needs to be acted on.  However, more than likely they will just address the new email to those who need to see it (the remaining 18 people will be spared).  AND, the benefit for you is – you didn’t even see the email.  Its waiting for you in your “FYI” folder – when YOU are ready to read it.

Implement Social Tools

The thing about Reply-All’s and CC’s is that those emails are the pieces of information in the company that could truly benefit from Social tools.  If you this in terms of Facebook; what does Facebook really do for you?  It keeps you updated on your friends; it lets you see what they are working on; it lets you know their discoveries; it lets you know their challenges.  But the biggest thing Facebook does for you is – it lets you do all of this on your own time, when you are ready for it.

So twist that around, and apply that to the business world.  Reply-Alls and CC’d are an attempt by employees and co-workers to keep you updated; let you see what they’re working on (or did); let you know their findings and resolutions; let you know where they are stuck.  It’s essentially the same goals.  But when it comes to your Inbox, it does not give you the choice of reviewing it when you are ready.  Instead, it often hinders productivity.

To resolve that, a tool like Chatter or Lotus Live can help migrate these conversations within a context that matters – a social engagement tool that keeps people well-informed, while preserving the Inbox for immediate and urgent things.

A Note On Customer Etiquette

Often, my customers will “reply-all” to me.  I don’t mind.  But I don’t “reply back” to them either.  I usually build 2 sets of “reply” rules – one to reply to my internal staff, and the other to simply move the CC or Reply-All email into a separate “Customer FYI” folder.  I usually quickly scan those headers once a day, to see if anything really demands my attention.

Bottom line for me – Customers always come first, but work needs to get done.  I think by creating the proper set of rules within your email system, and engaging in a social tool, will put your company on the healthy path to better productivity.

If you would like to discuss your productivity challenges, and get some insight into Social tools that may help your organization, please don’t hesitate to give me a call.

Traction @ IMPACT 2012…

For those in the Detroit area, we will be exhibiting at IMPACT 2012 at the Automation Alley headquarters in Troy.  We’ll have some of our new Mobile stuff on display (namely BizBoard Mobile).  If you are in the area, you should consider attending – the agenda looks really good.

Updates on Lotus Notes & Domino (Lotuspehere 2012)

Some interesting news from Lotusphere 2012:

IBM has announced a couple interesting items at this week’s Lotusphere – namely, the new “Social” edition of the Lotus Notes client, as well as extended email capabilities within their IBM Connections product (their Social Business tool).

I’ve summarized some of the highlights below – if you would like some additional information on them, please don’t hesitate to shoot us a call.

IBM Connections 3.0

Social in the business setting is an interesting proposition. Most notably, it can help larger corporations engage disparate resource teams, and help them better mine innovation that already may already exist within another business unit.

IBM’s version of Social is pretty much the same as Facebook – users can make profiles of themselves, tell colleagues “what” they are working on, share files and start discussion threads with specific groups, and so on. However, one thing that sets Social Business apart from Facebook is in the “Activities” department.

IBM Connections allow you to create centralized activities, and “invite” other users to participate in the task in a Social way. So if you envision the “email overload” that most companies face, this might just be the solution – If your users can take an incoming email, and turn it into a larger “work effort” through Activities, you can essentially eliminate all of the spreadsheets and “FYI” emails that cripple today’s Inbox’s.

What makes this more compelling is that before you were required to have Lotus Notes email in order to “move” an email into IBM Connections. Otherwise, users were required to “copy and paste” the email information inside the Activity. Now, with their direct “Inbox app”, IBM Connections can link directly to the Inbox of Microsoft Exchange as well as Lotus Notes & Domino. So just about any company can now benefit from the Workspaces and Activities apps within IBM Connections.

IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.4 – Social Edition

The new Lotus Notes release, called “Social Edition”, has a new feature set called “Embedded Experiences”.  This capability should let developers make applications that can “live” inside a Lotus Notes email message.  For example – if a customer emails in an order into your Customer Service Inbox, there can be an embedded “What would you like to do?” type application directly inside the email.  The embedded application could prompt the user what to do – automatically initiate the order inside ERP, start a new collaborative Activity regarding the order, “snooze it” for later review, and so on.  These embedded applications can be dynamic to the content that it is “reading” – so you can make Smart Email by comparing the From of an email with your CRM system, to provide different actions and capabilities for Vendors and Customers alike.  Pretty powerful stuff.

Lotus Notes Plug-In Lets You Run Standard (Legacy) Lotus Notes Applications Inside A Web Browser

Also in 8.5.4 will be a Firefox plug-in to let you run Lotus Notes application directly inside the web browser (no conversion required).  This can help companies eliminate the Lotus Notes Client entirely, yet still utilize their old Lotus Notes applications unchanged.  From what they are saying, these will be standard Notes applications.  This poses some difficulty, as a lot of the development in Lotus Notes is now utilizing XPages and Composite Applications.  The plug-in will not work for these apps (which is why we believe the plug-in will not work for Lotus Notes email).  In addition, it will be a 100meg download – not huge with cable modems these days.  But the size is something to consider (to be fair, Java is about 125megs, and Adobe Reader is close to 70megs – so the idea of a “small plug-in” has been abandoned long ago).

IBM XWork Server

On a side note, IBM has a new, “slimmed down” license for IBM Lotus Domino.  If you have moved off of Lotus Notes email, but still have some applications running inside the Lotus Notes client, the IBM XWork Server allows you to reduce your cost.  The charge is $2,000 fixed-price yearly.  So if you have over 100 users, this would make sense.  Or, if you have an old Domino server that is not currently under maintenance, this is a good way to get back to current without having to repurchase full Lotus Notes client licenses.

Disabling all “TextBoxes” and “DropDownLists” on an Ironspeed ASPX page programmatically

I recently had a requirement to make all but one field on an Ironspeed ASPX page ready only when certain conditions are met on the form. I could have easily hardcoded the controls I wanted to disable, but this had to be dynamic for new fields that may be added to the form in the future. I wrote this function to loop through all of the controls (and the many nested controls) and disable all of the text boxes and drop down lists.

 I added this function to Region #1 of the CS file for the page:

Once this is set, I just call this function passing in the top level control on the page from the prerender event if the record was flagged as an “Order” and the current user was not an administrator.