Activity feeds are a great new feature of CRM 2011.  But, as compelling as they are, there is a problem.  Getting users to adopt them can be daunting.  Some users are not yet comfortable with social networking.  Others don't want to have to go to yet another place to track and record information.  Still others just have a hard time establishing new habits and work patterns.  

But starting to get value out of activity feeds doesn't have to be difficult.  This article outlines 3 practical ways that we have been working with activity feeds to boost the value of them, and the adoption of them by users.  Read on for more - including a free solution to expand how activity feeds are used in your organization.

This is the third in a three part series I’ve been writing on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Outlook integration.  In the first two blogs, we reviewed the pros and cons of using CRM 2011 for Outlook and CRM 2011 for the Web.  In this article, we will take a look at CRM 2011 and Outlook functionality that everyone in your organization should use (regardless of whether they are using CRM 2011 for Outlook or not).  This integration functionality is easy for users to understand, saves a lot of time, and enables your organization to better track interactions with customers and other stakeholders.

For the previous two articles in this series see:

• Part 1: 4 Reasons to Use the Microsoft CRM 2011 Web Client
• Part 2: 6 Reasons to Use Dynamics CRM 2011 for Outlook

Activity Feeds are a great new social feature in CRM 2011 that was made available with the November 2011 update.  Many organizations using CRM 2011 have begun to gain tremendous benefit by enabling Activity Feeds and training their users on how to take advantage of them.  Not as many, however, have started to use the Activity Feeds app for their Windows Phones yet.  This app has some great features, but it also takes a few tricks to get it working with CRM 2011.  This post will focus on the specifics of using Activity Feeds on a Windows Phone – and fixing a known bug with CRM 2011 Online and Activity Feeds on your Windows Phone.

This is the second in a 3 part posting about accessing CRM within Outlook versus from the web.  In the first post in this series, I outlined some of the reasons why businesses should consider training their users in CRM for Outlook.  Given this powerful functionality, why would any business person prefer to use the web version of CRM (also called the “Web Client”)?  Well, as it turns out, there are some excellent reasons for doing just that.  Many of our clients (and many of our internal users of CRM) prefer to use the Web Client for various reasons.  In this article, we will explore the top reasons for choosing the Web Client over Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Outlook.

Do you have old email, templates in CRM that you don’t use anymore?  You want to get rid of them because they’re cluttering up the views of users.  But you don’t want to get rid of them because you might want to use them again some day (or, like me, you’re just a packrat).  Unlike other record types, these don’t include the ability to deactivate the individual template records.  So what’s a CRM power user to do?

This is the first of a 3 part series of blogs that I’m writing on Microsoft CRM and Outlook.

With CRM 2011, Microsoft introduced significant new enhancements in how CRM works with Outlook.  These changes also introduced some differences in how the Outlook and Web versions of CRM work.  In previous versions, if you trained users on one version, they had all they needed to know in order to use either version.  Businesses now need to make an important decision on which version of CRM they will initially train their users on.  Users, too, need to decide which version of CRM they are going to use on a day-to-day basis.  This series of blog entries will examine the pros of using CRM for Outlook, then the benefits of CRM for the Web and will conclude with the CRM and Outlook functionality that you should use regardless of which version of CRM that you’re using.

This first article will focus on the 6 reasons why you should consider using CRM for Outlook as the primary way that you use the CRM application.  Dynamics CRM has always had better Outlook integration than any other CRM system on the market (no surprise there).  With all of the new features and Outlook integration that Microsoft has introduced in CRM 2011, the reasons for using CRM for Outlook are stronger than ever.

Interacting with dashboards in Dynamics CRM 2011 is a powerful way to monitor and manage your business. Frequently, however, it would be helpful to “drill into” only a portion of a chart (such as a bar in a bar chart or a slice of a pie chart) to see the grid behind it. Because of the way that dashboards function, however, it is not readily apparent how to do this. This post demonstrates how you can accomplish this in just two mouse clicks.

1. While hovering over the chart that you want to drill into, click the “view the records” icon on the upper right-hand side of the chart. You will be taken to a grid showing all of the data for the cart (not just the data for the desired section). The chart will also appear next to the grid.
    
2. Click the section that you want to see the data for.

That’s it! In two clicks, you’ve been able to drill from a dashboard, to a chart, to the data behind a specific slice of a chart. See the nearby video for a live example.

Customer relationship management systems typically handle relationships between records in a linear format. For example, in the image to the left, an account (aka a company) may have a relationship with one or more contacts (aka the employees of that company).  Similarly, the account may also have one more more opportunities associated with it.

In the strictest sense, this is how the business views the relationships.  Everything is nice and tidy and linear.

Everybody knows that Microsoft Dynamics CRM has always been the leader of the pack when it comes to integration with Microsoft Outlook.  So nobody was expecting to see significant changes in this area with the introduction of CRM 2011.  But Microsoft delivered a very nice surprise to their customers when they not only improved the Outlook integration – but in fact gave it a complete overhaul.  In fact, the upgrades to CRM for Outlook are so extensive, that we expect to see fewer-and-fewer users accessing the Web version of Dynamics CRM at all.  Many of our clients are providing user training only in CRM 2011 for Outlook.

There are so many different improvements in CRM for Outlook that it’s impossible to cover all of them in a single article, so I am going to focus on my favorite new CRM/Outlook functionality – good old email! 

One of Microsoft’s goals with Dynamics CRM 2011 was to deliver intelligent experiences across the enterprise. Some of the most important items that Microsoft included in the CRM 2011 toolbox for that are charts and dashboards – collectively referred to as visualizations. Visualizations not only provide a way to rapidly boil a lot of data down into a chart or graph; they also allow managers and users drill down on data and move from analysis to action very quickly. Visualizations can be created at the “system” level (for distribution across your enterprise), and users can create them at the “personal” level (for their own individual use, or to share selectively with colleagues).  In this entry, I’ll take a look at how to create personal Charts and Dashboards in 5 easy steps.

Which clients should we focus more time on? Are there any clients that we should consider firing? How can we find new clients that look like our best current clients? Do we have clients that should be more profitable?

These are the questions that many B2B firms are asking themselves as they think through how they should prioritize their client list.  So read on for some of the how’s and why’s of establishing a client scoring system.

Our blogs, on-demand videos and events lists have expanded so much in the last year, that we’ve been asked if we can provide some options to follow selected topics only.

So if you would like to focus on information by product (Salesforce.com, Dynamics CRM or Microsoft SharePoint) or by role (Business or Technical) – you have options to do that.  You also have options to choose which channel you want to follow us on (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, RSS or e-mail).

If you’re already following C5 Insight – THANKS.  Take a few minutes today to visit the new follow us page and update the way you follow us so you will get only the information that you want.

If you’re not following us yet, now is the perfect time.  Follow us to keep up with the latest tips, techniques, best practices, on demand videos and live events.

AND … to sweeten the pot … we will be giving away 5 copies of our forthcoming book, “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Administration Bible” to a randomly selected list of those who are following us.  More details are in the full posting.

All it takes is two or three quick clicks.  Click here to follow us: www.c5insight.com/follow

The beta of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is now available and I was trying it out both of the most recent versions of Dynamics CRM – it is definitely worth taking the time to download the free upgrade.

WARNING: Internet Explorer is in Beta right now - I do not recommend upgrading your browser until it is in full release (see notes at the bottom of this entry for more information).

The ribbon menu in Dynamics CRM 2011 is a very popular new addition. This puts many function of the application within reach of all users and presents an interface similar to other Microsoft Office products – resulting in a shorter learning curve.  But it does have one drawback … the ribbon takes up quite a bit of real estate on the screen and users often would like to have that space in order to see more of their form or list. Read on for some options for expanding the available real estate on the Dynamics CRM web forms.

Have you ever been working in CRM and wish you had a way to quickly create (or update) a bunch of records just like you can in Excel?  In many cases individuals just starting to use CRM are more comfortable with Excel spreadsheets and find that, while CRM offers many benefits over Excel, entering and updating records using Dynamics CRM can feel like it is slowing them down.

With Dynamics CRM 2011, Microsoft has rolled out significant enhancements for exporting and importing Excel data that makes data entry in Microsoft Excel a simple process for any user.  Read on to understand how this functionality is designed and how to put it to use!

Bulk editing records in Dynamics CRM can be a huge time saver.  But how to bulk edit Activity records and, in particular, those pesky Campaign Responses?  Responses typically need to be managed in bulk, but accessing this functionality is not a simple for these records as it is for other types.  Fortunately, it's just a couple of extra steps to bulk edit your Campaign Responses.  Read the full article for the scoop...

The ability to tag EVERYTHING in SharePoint 2010 is one of my favorite features. 

But, if you’re like me, you sometimes create a personal or enterprise tag hastily. And you know what they say about haste … you end up with typographical errors or inconsistent capitalization.

And, if you’re like me, it REALLY bugs you to see all of those inconsistencies in your terms.

It's the week after Microsoft unveiled Dynamics CRM 2011 at the Worldwide partner conference and my head is still spinning from all of the great new features and strategic improvements that will be coming soon. Read on to learn about a small number of the most powerful additions you can expect to see in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

Cloud computing has been the subject of much conversation (and hype) for about a year now. Our 4 City Tour (www.successaccelerators.com/4city) focused on this, as did some recent research with one of our partners (white paper forthcoming) and our partner Salesforce.com has long led the charge in the cloud computing conversation.

This past week, cloud computing took center stage at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Washington DC. From all indications, cloud computing will be the number one area of focus for Microsoft for the next 12 months (or more). So just what is cloud computing, why is it important to you and what is Microsoft doing that will impact it?  Let’s tackle each of those questions in sequence.

Microsoft is making a number of groundbreaking announcements at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) this week - in particular relating to the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.  Read the rest of the post to learn more.

The failure to understand and execute an effective activity management process is a leading cause of poor CRM adoption.  There are a variety of issues that can make activity management confusing and frustrating for users in ANY CRM system.  In this posting, I've detailed 11 suggestions for improving your activity management process. 

This is only a starting point.  Proper use of Queues and Workflows - in particular - are areas that can also improve your activity management efficiency and results.

Last week I setup web-to-lead for one of our clients using CRM Online for the first time.  Compared to working with CRM On Premise, I must say that it was a bit of rude awakening.

Like SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 comes in three different versions.  However, the version names have changed and what is available in each version is different.  So if you’re moving from the SharePoint 2007 world to the SharePoint 2010 world, it can be a bit confusing (it has been for me).  The versions are:

• SharePoint Foundation 2010: This is the version freely included with Windows Server and is comparable to Microsoft Windows SharePoint Server (WSS) 2007.  It includes many of the basics and may be all that a small business needs to get started with SharePoint.
• SharePoint Server 2010 – Standard: This is the next level of SharePoint and includes important features such as Enterprise Search and My Sites (including the social media components) that most businesses will find important.  This is comparable to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007.
• SharePoint Server 2010 – Enterprise: This adds more functionality to Standard including better business data connectivity (for connecting to CRM and accounting applications, for example), Excel Services (for showing Excel info in SharePoint – very nice functionality for allowing users to create their own enterprise dashboards), and a number of other advanced workflow management, Office integration and analytics tools.

After merging and holding 5 events in 4 cities in the last 6 months, we have migrated and re-launched our blog!  Welcome to the new AskDynamicsCRM blog.  If you want more information about what content was migrated and what to expect in the coming months, read on.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 there are so many options for migrating, integrating and bulk updating data that it can be quite confusing. This entry presents many of the options and the appropriate time to use each.

 [NOTE: This is a summary - read the full BLOG for more info]

 Are you (or your users) ever away from the office and you need to quickly make phone calls, that you’ve planned in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, from your mobile phone? Do you find it painful to do this from your mobile device?

Wouldn’t you like to be able to just record a Phone Call Activity in CRM and have it put all the information you need (contact name, company name, phone numbers, etc) right into the task description so you can make the call with a single click?

This can be accomplished in CRM using Workflows. Read on to learn how.

When your users contact you saying they cannot share a case or an activity with another user - the first thing to do is to check the basic security role settings for Cases, Appointments and related entities (such as Leads, Opportunities, Contacts - depending on what the Appointments are related to).  If those settings all appear to be correct (I won't try to document the correct settings here), then you should also check your Queue settings.

Yes, your queue settings.  On the Core Records tab.

Make sure that you have the security role set to read for the Organization.  See the image below.

You are probably asking, "Why the Queue entity?"  Activities and cases are both listed in your queues.  So if you haven't granted permission to read the Queue, then you can't assign your activities or cases to another person's queue. 

You may now be asking, "We don't use Queue's.  How can I get rid of the Queue item from the nav bar using Security Roles while still allowing users to reassign activities and cases?"  That's an easy one: You Can't.  But you can update the site map.

We are frequently asked if each user - or even different business units - can have completely personalized menus in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.  With a little bit of work on the SiteMap XML file, you can give your users a lot of options for a menuing system that is tailored to their specific needs.

 Duplicate Detection is a great feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. But it can also be a pain. Do your users complain that whenever they convert a lead, they get a duplicate record alert when trying to save the contact - and the alert continues to pop up on all future saves? Good news - there is a pretty simple fix for this problem.

Read on for more information on this issue and how to fix it.

Looking for a fast way to get a demonstration of Dynamics CRM, Microsoft SharePoint or Salesforce.com?  A new site: demos.c5insight.com has been setup for just this purpose.  You'll find a variety of demos on the site for different types of users including:

* Fundamentals of CRM, Document Management and Business Process Automation

* Integrating SharePoint and Dynamics CRM

* Comparing Microsoft CRM and Salesforce.com

Looking for a demo that's not available?  Post a comment in response to this blog and we'll try to follow-up on requests that we're seeing most frequently.

Dynamics CRM 4.0 Mobile Express Review

I love the recently released Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.  It has been a long time in coming, but the wait has been worth it.  Read on for the best features ...

Oftentimes, you will want to copy an existing Microsoft CRM workflow.  You might want to create a similar workflow with a few minor changes.  Or, you might have a workflow that is "in production" and you need to make some changes to it - but you don't want the current workflow to be unavailable while you're making changes.  But CRM doesn't provide a way to copy a workflow - this entry explains a quick and simple way to copy a workflow in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

[Read the full entry for the "how to"]

I've seen lots of tools and BLOGs about how to manage dynamic picklists.  But after much searching, I could not find anything about removing just a single item from a picklist on a Microsoft CRM 4.0 form using JavaScript.

Read the full entry for the "how to"

We implemented a workflow that was frequently failing with a message stating "the text entered exceeds the maximum length."  Fortunately, the fix was fairly easy.

[Read the full entry for more information]

 We seem to regulary run into clients who like the idea of converting a Lead into an Account, Contact and Opportunity - but they would also like to be able to convert backwards into a Lead again. 

Why?  Well, maybe someone in the Lead Management group qualified the lead, but when they passed it along to Sales, they could not longer get in touch with the lead.  The options are: (1) make Sales work it until they can get back in touch, (2) train Lead Management to work with Accounts, Contacts and Opportunties, (3) forget about it (which most of them do), or (4) re-create the entire record as a Lead again.

 But now there is another alternative (read the full story for the rest)...

Users of CRM tools are consistently asking for the same thing: “Make me more efficient in managing my sales, marketing or customer service responsibilities.” Tools like card scanners, than can quickly scan a business card into CRM, or “parsers” that can grab a name and address from an email or website and instantly transfer it into CRM are great examples of efficiency boosting applications.

But do they live up to their promise?

I recently purchased two tools to take care of these tasks. Let’s walk through each of them in turn.

Using JavaScript/Jscript to dynamically set a field to disabled or read only can come in handy.  But when you make this change, the colors of the field don't match the standard read only field colors that CRM sets when you manually set the read only attribute.  This post describes how to set a field to read only in javascript AND make the colors consistent with other read only fields on your forms.

We've had to do research into quoting tools for a number of clients and prospects recently.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a single site that has done a good job of listing out the options for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 when it comes to tools that assist with quoting, bundling, kitting and/or configurating.  Here are some quick results from our research that I hope you will find helpful.

At the Worldwide Partner Conference (WWPC) in Houston last week, Microsoft announced the rollout of a bunch of Solution Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.  These will be great tools to significantly improve CRM functionality. Best of all, the accelerators are "free" (see caveaut below).

(read the entire posting for more information)

Web to lead: Creating a new lead record based on a web form automatically in Microsoft Dynamics CRM On Premise.  Complete code for web2lead is included in this entry.