Topic: ‘Advanced Find’

Creating personal Advanced Find views from within the Dynamics CRM application is a very helpful analytical tool. You can leverage preferred column headers and filter criteria, and you can access the views anytime you need to without having to recreate the criteria. Sharing is simple, allowing you to give other members of the CRM application access to the filter criteria that you’ve created. But static analysis of your CRM data can only be so beneficial – especially for those of us who rely on more visual analytics.

Now, it’s good to know that from within the 2011 version of Dynamics CRM, you have access to charting, which allows you to leverage a visual depiction of your CRM listviews. There are numerous out of the box charts that provide value, and you have the ability to create new charts if you wish to do so. There are some limitations, such as multi-series charts and scatter graphs, but the options available are very robust. Read the rest of this entry »

Fetch XML has a few limitations still which will quickly surface as you start building reports. You need to be aware of these:

• You cannot specify left outer joins – e.g. The following is not supported: “Select all Accounts who do not have a related Completed Appointment record”
• You cannot specify group by/sum queries – e.g. The following is not supported: “Select Account Name, count(*), sum(est. value) from Account Group By Account Name” – You can only select the records in detail and then perform the aggregation in your report. But…
• Fetch XML queries return a maximum of 5000 records. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently had a request from a client who wanted to see, in Advanced Find, all waiting workflow System Jobs that were associated to a specific subset of Lead record that had a related Phone Call Activity in a Closed state AND had a certain field not filled out. The client wants to cancel the workflow jobs in bulk that are waiting in association with already Closed Phone Calls. Read the rest of this entry »

Tips and tricks around the advance find features. Learn more about the report wizard and its expanded feature sets with CRM 2011.

Title: CRM Reporting: Advanced Find & Report Wizard

Speaker: Kristen O’Connor, I.B.I.S. Consultant

I have received a lot of questions regarding Advanced Find views, both from blog viewers and current clients. Most of the questions circle around sharing or assigning Advanced Find views. There are two ways to allow other Users in the CRM system to view an Advanced Find view you create: Assigning or Sharing.

Assigning an Advanced Find view: this will allow the other User(s) to have full privileges with the view (read, write, delete, etc.). At the same time, you are giving up your ability to perform actions upon it. So if I assign one of my views to another User, they now own that view and can do anything they want with it. Unless they give me view access through Sharing, I will not even know the view exists anymore.

Please note – when you are assigning the view, you are not relinquishing ownership of any records contained in the view or pulled by the view’s criteria. You are merely giving the User(s) the ownership of the filter criteria. If I share a view of My Leads from Trade Shows, the person viewing the results of the view will see those specific Leads that are still owned by me.

To assign an Advanced Find view, go to the Saved Views tab inside of the Advanced Find window. The listview pulled contains all of the personal AF views that you currently own. To assign a view (or multiple views), highlight the view(s) and then click the Assign icon (it looks like a guy in a blue suit with a green arrow pointing to the right).
 

Click this, and toggle the Assign to another User option. Specify the User, and then click OK.

Sharing an Advanced Find view: this is the most popular option, especially from a management POV. You can allow your team members to view the filter criteria as long as they have permission to view the records pulled by the search.

Please note – when you share a view, you are not sharing the records pulled by the criteria. You are merely alllowing others to utilize the filter criteria specified within the view, and utilize the view in the entity’s dropdown options. They will still only be able to see, edit, or assign records upon which they currently have privileges.

To share an Advanced Find view, follow similar steps towards assigning (see above), however instead of clicking the Assign icon, click More Actions. Then select Sharing. This will allow you to utilize the basic Sharing functionality.

Select a User by clicking Add User/Team. Then apply the privileges you want to allow them to have. Then click OK.

I hope this clears the air and explains a little more about sharing and assigning personal Advanced Find views inside of CRM.

When working with clients, I get plenty of questions surrounding Advanced Find, especially from companies that are utilizing SSRS Reports. “What can it do for me?” or “How do I do this?” or “I don’t want to have to run this every day. Can I save it?” All of these questions are great for many reasons, including educating the client on things that they can do on a day-to-day basis in terms of informal “reporting,” and generating personalized views to see on a daily basis for personal or group utilization.

Advanced Find, which in my opinion is kind of like an informal BI tool, allows you to manipulate the data in numerous ways, giving you ad-hoc insight into the data you have in your system without having to shell out the big bucks for a SSRS Report. This is something that end users can do anytime of the day without the need for a technical consultant. I am going to highlight a few questions that I am usually asked as well as answers to those questions, and I will also provide some AF ideas for you to use inside of your system.

First of all, here is a quick Q&A:

1. What can it do for me? AF can manipulate the data contained in your system by allowing you to create what are called “clauses.” You can create AND/OR clauses to display conglomerate or mutually exclusive results, or you can create one single clause to display a large amount of data with less specific properties. How many Leads have been created in the past week? Month? Year? How many of these have not been modified in 7 days? 14 days? How many customers do I have in Atlanta, GA? New York, NY? Miami, FL? How many Leads do I have without an email address? As you can see, you can find all of this information easily by adding one or two clauses to the AF query. After you have the results, you can do a number of different things with it: save it as a personal view (or share that view with related parties who are CRM users), export it to Excel, perform a mail merge, etc.

2. Is it easy to use? Yes, it’s very easy to use. Once you get used to the language of the Advanced Find criteria queries, you’ll be fine. But it does take some time to get used to. If you’re a technical user, you may understand it and how to use it the first time. However, some others may find that they need to spend about 20 minutes trying a few different queries before fully understanding it. All I can say it – do not give up if it is frustrating. The value you get from utilizing this ad-hoc search feature is priceless.

3. Can I choose what fields I want to see in the results view? Yes, the columns are completely customizable. Before you click Find to pull the query results, you simply click Edit Columns on the main criteria window view. This will allow you to add or remove columns as you wish. You can add columns from related entities as well (for example, if you’re searching for Contacts, you can add a field from the Parent Customer (or the Account) related to those particular Contacts).

4. What if I don’t want to run this every day? You can save it as a personal view for yourself (it will appear as an option in that entity’s listview options), or you can create it as a personal view and share it with other users. This is handy for regional views – you can create one for each region and share it with the respective users.

I use Advanced Find extensively on every project, so I’ve been exposed to many view types and criteria. I’ve generated some great view ideas that users can easily generate themselves and use on a day-to-day basis:

1. Lead turnover query: Open Leads created more than 1 month ago

Leads should be in the system no longer than one or two weeks (one if you have a large amount of Leads coming in, two if you have a large amount of Leads coming in). Sometimes Leads may slip through the cracks, and going back and seeing which Leads are past due may not be on your priority list. Having this quickly accessible view on hand will keep you from having to do unnecessary research.

2. Opportunity pipeline queries: Open Opportunities closing in the next three months

There is already an Opportunity view that displays all Opportunities closing in the next month; however this new view allows you to look at a kind of “quarterly” opportunity pipeline. It may not be the exact 1st, 2nd, etc. quarter, but looking at a three month pipeline will give you a good view of future income without looking too far into the future. You can add additional clauses if you would like, or adjust the months.

3. Prospect list: Active Accounts that have an Account Type of Prospect

The out of the box environment does not have views that separate the different Account Types. This view allows you to see all of the current Prospects in the system. You could also streamline this into all of the current prospects that YOU own.

This allows you to easily access an exhaustive, real-time Prospect list within seconds. You could manipulate this view to look at any other Account Type in the system, as well.

As you can see, Advanced Find has the ability to allow you to manipulate data inside of the CRM system. You can create these ad-hoc “reports” almost instantly and without much effort, and the amount of value you can gain from utilizing this functionality is exponential.