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.

TCG – The year ahead…

Happy New Year!  On behalf of all of us here at Traction Consulting Group, we hope your holiday was awesome, and you are ready to get-after-it in the new year!  As a primer to some of the innovations we have set for our customers in 2012, here are some of the exciting things we are working on:

1. BizBoard – Our streamlined web-enabled metrics system is ready to engage your management team. With it, teams will be able to combine metrics from ERP, CRM, Spreadsheets, and other database applications – all into a single dashboarding solution. In addition, each metric will have an associated “Action List”. So not only will the metrics help you better understand your company, but they will also prove as a central hub of activity to improve where there is work to be done. This solution works from any web browser, including iPads and other tablets.
   
2. BizBoard Mobile – We don’t want your iPhone or Android to be left out.  To that, we have created BizBoard Mobile, specifically formatted for phones with web browsers, to better react to just-in-time information while on-the-go.  Alerts are set up to push to users on a daily or hourly basis.  For example: customers and orders requiring follow-up, salesmen not performing to goals, opportunity not closing, and more.  Users can then interact with these alerts, and track them over time, giving them mobile tools to quickly react to changing business data.
   
3. Traction LMS- As part of our ongoing focus of Mentoring & Training as an extension of the Development & Support services we perform for our customers, Traction has created a Learning Management System (LMS) to help customers gain traction within their educational initiatives.  No longer will your employees struggle to find policies, procedures, instruction, and expectations.  With our LMS, teams will find a one-stop-shop for everything – Instructions and procedures, policies, how-to’s, tips and tricks, videos, and more.
4. Traction Alerts – Don’t hunt for information – have the information find you.  Our alerts/reporting system for Salesforce.com, Microsoft CRM, and SugarCRM delivers just-in-time information directly to a user’s inbox.  So instead of salesmen “searching” CRM for information, the information is pro-actively delivered to them.  We have many generic reports, like:  This week’s customers & activities, Customers you haven’t visited in a while, This week’s birthdays, and Opportunity Follow-up; but we can also customize these or add any additional as needs arise.  We also include these services free-of-charge with our Managed CRM Service Agreement.
   
5. Traction Intelligence – For Microsoft CRM Online and Salesforce.com customers, it is often best to have a “local copy” of the information in order to do extended reporting, analysis, and data integration.  Traction Intelligence provides you with exactly that – a copy of your Online information, directly in a local database your resources can quickly reach.  You can choose your database – our data pumping system does the rest.

Thanks again for all your support in 2011, and we look forward to continuing our rock-solid quality, service, and value for you in 2012.

Some (un)Intelligent design in Microsoft CRM…

It’s always a love-hate relationship with Microsoft to me.  I love the way it integrates with Outlook, Office, and the Microsoft stack of tools.  But here is a good example on their engineer’s not “getting it”.

This is a screenshot of me going into Microsoft CRM, and selecting to ”Set Regarding” an email.  First, the term “Set Regarding”.  What?  Couldn’t they use “Save to CRM” or something more intuitive for users?  I can’t begin to describe how hard that term is for us to explain to users during training.

But that’s not the worst part.  When I select the email, I hit ”Set Regarding”, and what do I see?  A complete list of Accounts, contacts, or Leads.  Shouldn’t it have automatically performed a “search” on the email addresses, found the best match, and simply limit the list to those found?  Instead I have to manually “Search” for my contact.  It could have been so much easier…  So silly…

 

We have done what we can to “automate” this type of behavior in core MS CRM.  For example, all of our customers get a script added that automatically prompts the user’s for the Regarding and Required Attendees when they create a new appointment.  This is an automated macro, and save the users plenty of time.  However, it is something that should have been in there as “default”.  Without an associated Regarding (in our case, the Regarding is always the Customer) and Contact, the data is useless to report on.

 

Although we can do this on the CRM form, the Outlook pop-up filter box does not allow us to customize it.  So, sadly, I will continue to have to first find customer “ABC”, then still run another query to find the contacts for customer “ABC”.

JavaScript and the CRM 2011 DateTime Field: Deconstructed

Suffice it to say, the DateTime control is not very intuitive when you need to manipulate pieces of it so, if you found your way here you are probably climbing the walls trying to figure out how to manipulate it.

A project I am working on has a requirement where I simply needed to disable the date part of the field. After much searching, I wasn’t really getting where I needed to be until I paired the little information I had with the  which lead me to explore (and document) my findings to help someone else wrestling with this.

If we look at the code snippet below which defines the control in the page (in this case we are looking at an appointment’s “scheduledstart”), we can see that it is quite complex in the structure (the left of the snippet documents the childnode indices of the control). However, by using the DOM, we can achive just about anything we would like.   To access each of the elements, of the control, you traverse the DOM tree using javascript .childnodes property.

//The date textfield of the control
document.getElementById(“scheduledstart”).childnodes[1].childnodes[0].childnodes[0].childnodes[0]

//The date imgbutton of the control (opens the date selector)
//NOTE: if you are disabling this control, set the image to ‘_imgs/btn_dis_cal.gif’, the “greyed-out” control
document.getElementById(“scheduledstart”).childnodes[1].childnodes[0].childnodes[1].childnodes[0]

//This can also be accessed by  crmForm.all.scheduledstartimg
// as I understand it, related imagebuttons will always be named “<related control name>img”

While the time selector part of the control appears to be a standard SELECT control, it is, in fact, a text box paired with an image button. To disable the control, the easiest route is just to disable the TD that the control lives in:

//The time selector of the control
document.getElementById(“scheduledstart”).childnodes[1].childnodes[0].childnodes[2]

If you need finer-grained control and want the parts, while I have not tested this, the indices should be:

//time text box
document.getElementById(“scheduledstart”).childnodes[1].childnodes[0].childnodes[2].childnodes[0].childnodes[1].childnodes[0].childnodes[1].childnodes[0].childnodes[0].childnodes[0]

//time image button
document.getElementById(“scheduledstart”).childnodes[1].childnodes[0].childnodes[2].childnodes[0].childnodes[1].childnodes[0].childnodes[1].childnodes[0].childnodes[1].childnodes[0]

Happy coding!

DateTime Control Snippet

Things I have learned about CRM so far

Things I am having to learn, or have learned, about CRM:

• Individual fields are set “dirty” rather than the entire record, reducing the chance of a collision (if you want to know more, look here)
• The back-end data structure (e.g., where things like user time zone information live – can you say ”user settings“)
• Creating new fields (hey, the “whole number” type can be formatted to display as a time zone list!)
• Processes & Work Flows
• and, of course, all the other pieces to build “the right solution” for the customer (thanks to the Channel 9 crew for a ton of good information!)

I’ll keep posting (hopefully) good information as I learn to leverage the power of Dynamics CRM as well as other CRM and data packages. If I’m lucky, maybe along the way I’ll find better and easier ways to accomplish my tasks and, if not, at least you may benefit from my pain conquering a problem ”the hard way.”

Oh, and if you are listening, Microsoft, would it be that unreasonable to ask for a package like this to make manipulating the UI a little less cumbersome? I mean, really, you already have such a nice AJAX tool set…just saying.

Don’t forget your “Start Date” in Microsoft CRM!

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, one of the most common questions we get is “Why is it so hard to see a chronological picture of the history of an account within the views CRM provides?”  More often than not, the answer lies in the fact that Microsoft CRM does not have a good default method for dealing with dates for activities.

For example, using out-of-the-box CRM, I can create a new Appointment, and it will default to “today”.  This will set the “Start Date” and “Due Date” fields to a value.  This behavior, however, does not automatically happen for Phonecalls, Tasks, or Emails.  This can leave the “Due Date” field blank.

To add more complications to the question, we found you cannot solidify your company on only enforcing “Due Date”.  Due Date is the “end” of the task.  So if you create a report or view, and you do not have room for both Start Date and Due Date, enforcing Due Date will only provide you with the “ending time” of the appointment.

Instead, we have created a 2-step approach.  First, we default the Due Date to “now” on all Phonecalls, Tasks, and Emails.  This way, if a user does not think to enter in a value, at least we enter the current date/time.  We do this with a Form OnLoad script:

//Automatically set DueDate if empty
function tcgSetDueDate() {
  if (Xrm.Page.getAttribute(‘scheduledend’).getValue() == null) {
     var date = new Date();
     Xrm.Page.getAttribute(‘scheduledend’).setValue(date);
  }
}

We then make a workflow that automatically sets “Start Date” for Phonecalls, Tasks, and Emails equal to the Due Date on the form.  So, the Start/Stop time of the phone call and task will essentially be the same:

The result is then for us to change all of the Activity Views of the system, and have Start Date as our primary date.  This allows us to have a unified view of History, in the most logical manner possible.  (Note:  This essentially gets you the same type of view you get when working with Salesforce.com, Goldmine, Act, Saleslogix, or any of the other commercial CRM applications.  Our opinion is that it should work this way without any customization, but it doesn’t).

What exactly did I do last month?

In this month’s Wired magazine, Clive Thompson talks about how Daniel Giovanni utilizes 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo to mine his 4-square check-ins.  He then gets a daily summary of where he was last year.

What a simple idea, and a great concept.  Sales teams often forget about the repetitive nature of sales – they end up focusing on “This Month’s Deal” instead of also making progress and touch-points on ideas and connections in the past.

This offers a great opportunity for our daily alert streams that we create for our customers.  By sending Sales teams a summary of where they were, who they talked to, and what they talked about – 1 month, 1 quarter ago, or 1 year ago ”today” – we can help remind them of the conversations and activities of the past, to continually “work” the opportunities of the future.  (The Daily Alert streamer is one of the custom tools we’ve created for our customers - if you need additional details, please email me)

If you don’t have our daily alert streaming system (or some other alert-type system), you could also facilitate this via a simple report or view in Microsoft CRM, Salesforce.com, or SugarCRM.  It won’t “push” to the user, but you could add it to your “Monday Morning Process” and train sales teams on how best to utilize it.

Microsoft CRM User’s Guide

There is a new manual out from Microsoft.  Although it misses the “why” and “when” of CRM, it is still a good read (and a good place to get content to put into your own manual).  My view is the docs Microsoft makes do not have enough pictures in them.  So if you use any content, you may want to take ”actual CRM” screenshots so the user’s see their own data, and can really understand “where” the buttons are located on the screen.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27134

We recently created 3 cool Microsoft CRM tools. They are all admin-style “command line” tools, which can be run manually, or from the task scheduler. They are:

1) Microsoft CRM Exporter – Given a FetchXML query (usually generated via Advanced Find), this tool will export the records into a standard-structure XML file. Useful to take a data-dump of records, or us it with a tool like Talend Open Studio. Works for CRM Online and On Premises.

2) Microsoft CRM Newsletter – Given a FetchXML query, this tool will create and send an email formatted with a table, with the returned records. Useful in scheduling a daily or weekly newsletter to send to sales and operations staff. Works for CRM Online and On Premises.

3) Microsoft CRM Report Emailer – Given a CRM Report name, this tool will run the report, export it as a PDF, then email the PDF to the specified user. Useful in scheduling daily or weekly reports to send to sales and operations staff. Currently only works with CRM Online, but we are working on another tool to work with On Premises (there is a story here, will publish some other day…)

We’ll be posting them later this month, but if you need a look at it sooner, send me an email and I can give you some screen shots. Our plan is to duplicate these tools for Salesforce.com and SugarCRM as well.

After doing a good amount of development work in CRM 2011 I have to say I am impressed at how much more powerful it is than CRM 4, there are a lot more out of the box features that are useful to developers and users alike.

There are some strange restrictions that if you run into, a generic error message will pop up with no details on what the error is (when dev errors are off of course). One that I ran into: if you are trying to create a dashboard in CRM 2011 and are getting an error “Unable to retrieve etc etc..” check to see how many records it is returning. There is a built in limit of 50k. In my case I chose to use strategic filters to limit the amount of data returned, but there are ways to manually lift this restriction.